My Million-Dollar Donkey Read online

  The right crowd. That comment alone made me uncomfortable. Obviously raising kids in a place where you have to step around a

  minefield of ignorance was going to take work. A country upbringing was all well and good when living here provided us the time and inclination to sit around the campfire to enjoy nature’s stillness and the inspiration of changing seasons, but exposing my children to an endless stream of drugs, teen weddings, and ignorant attitudes was more than a little threatening.

  The country was genteel and charming, but the more I came face to face with life under the surface, the more I questioned the integrity of our life choice. Ninety percent of the girls in the area wanted nothing more than to get married and have kids on or before their eighteenth birthday. Thirty percent of the girls in our area were married by the time they were 16! Would one of these empty-headed Daisy Dukes date my son and get pregnant, expecting him to step up to the plate and spend the rest of his life in this nowhere town? (How quickly “quaint” turns into “unacceptable” when it involves your child’s future.)

  Worse yet, would my youngest daughter decide to get married and pregnant on or before her eighteenth birthday, influenced by peers who enthusiastically claimed it was the thing to do if you were really in love? How would Neva know marriage at the age of 15 was not a normal part of the adolescent dating experience in America today? She may grow up one of the sexually responsible few, but still, I wanted my daughter to become a female of substance and purpose, not one of the country belles whose primary concern was her looks, her popularity, and forging a family based on the traditional dynamic of the fifties.

  Complex and important life issues would continue to rear their ugly heads as long as we stayed in the country, forcing us to throw sticky subjects out on the table to reaffirm our family mindset. If we were going to stay in Blue Ridge we really would have to home church our children.

  In the end, I came to the conclusion that the great task of raising conscientious, responsible kids wasn’t easier or harder due to geographical location. Just different. I loved that our kids were growing up less consumer reliant and with less stress, but diligent and mindful effort would be needed to hardwire their minds to be less prejudiced, less close-minded, and less likely to pass judgment on others here, too.

  The problem is, no matter how mindful parents may be, it takes a village to raise a child.

  “As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.”

  — Henry David Thoreau

  THE MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION

  Old friends continued to ask me, “What are you doing with your life now?”

  I explained we were taking a few years off to live in the mountains so we could focus on family.

  They inevitably said, “Wow, you two are living a dream.”

  It took all my self-control not to blow a big raspberry right into their faces.

  I don’t want to kill anyone’s idealism. We all want to imagine contentment is waiting for us if we just turn our back on worldly pursuits and remember what counts. Everyone agrees money can’t buy happiness, but deep down we all believe money can, at least a little. But be careful, lest your dream become a nightmare, too.

  On any given day, I’d drive all over the county, shuttling the kids to school, feeding the animals, tutoring Kathy, taking a pump class at the closest gym, 40 minutes away. On this particular day, as I was driving to pick up my kids from school, the family’s new puppy began whining and circling as if he had to go to the bathroom. My new car had already been ravaged by rustic living fallout. Hay was between the back seats and two fifty-pound bags of grain had leaked into the trunk. That week, Mark put a tree stump in the trunk, and though he eventually reclaimed his prize, he didn’t bother to remove the bark and moss residue left behind. All things considered, a puppy accident, while unpleasant, would hardly be noticed in this car. I tossed a towel on the floor, hoping that the puppy would find this more inviting than my coat, which happened to be resting on the seat next to him. Of course, my coat proved a more appealing toilet, probably because the coat smelled like a donkey.

  I was trying to simultaneously steer and take care of the puppy when my husband called to share the day’s slew of frustration and conflict regarding his log home project. He ended with yet another explanation about why we wouldn’t be moving into the dream house on schedule.

  He also told me that even though he had spent the entire day at the house site, he ran out for some more materials before bothering to feed the livestock, as he had offered to do that morning. I now had to drive over myself to do the task or let the horses go hungry. I picked my kids up from school and took them to the land, grumbling about wasted gas and time. They argued the entire way about who should hold the new puppy. I tuned them out and turned up the music on my CD player. The CD skipped.

  Rain fell nonstop all day. Our pasture, formerly a rolling valley of green grass, had turned into a mud pit with no hope of repair anytime soon. Having never encountered this kind of problem in suburban Florida, I was exhausted from lying awake nights listening to the rain, watching the temperature drop, and feeling increasingly bad about the conditions my animals had to endure. My still-injured horse, Peppy, deserved a safe, dry place to heal, and since there wasn’t an ounce of grass left in our pasture, he needed dry hay too. I didn’t know where a person could buy a full load of hay, nor did I have a place to store a bunch of bales if I did. So I kept buying one bale a day at the feed store for three times what hay cost in bulk and toted it home in my car’s back seat because my husband’s truck bed was reserved for the things he felt were important, like new tools or grapevine for wreaths he might someday make. I felt guilty about the cost, frustrated by the inconvenience, and dismayed by my quickly deteriorating car.

  I parked my mud-encrusted, puppy pee-and-hay-filled car in the grass, and went trudging into the pasture, ankle deep in mud and horse dung. This wouldn’t have been a problem except for the fact that I was wearing my best pair of high-tech sporty workout shoes, which I had donned because I was assured I wouldn’t have to make this trip today.

  I checked the injury on Peppy’s leg, dreading the fact that I’d have to spray the putrid homemade medicine on the wound and fling baking powder over the area myself. The leg was covered in a hard, wrinkly brown shell and I couldn’t tell if this was a scab or hardened mud collected in the wound. If the shell was mud, I’d have to remove the mess to get the medicine into the wound. If I started pulling scabs off a horse’s hurt leg, he might kick my brains out. There was no plumbing on our land yet, so the only water source was the creek.

  I batted my eyelashes at my son. “Help your old mom out, will you?”

  Kent grudgingly slopped through the muddy pasture to bring me the first of several buckets of creek water, his new Reeboks instantly ruined.

  I poured the freezing water down the horse’s leg and pulled at the gross, compacted wound. A leaf came loose. Fairly confident the hard shell was just dirt now, I spent 20 minutes picking and rubbing the wound with a towel while dodging four annoyed, stamping feet. The rain came down with more force. My fingers were frozen.

  The mud that had been up to my ankles now reached my thigh. It splashed up onto my t-shirt, which didn’t exactly make me look like a contender for a wet t-shirt contest, but more like some out-of-shape, middle-aged hillbilly wearing a soaked camouflage potato sack with a hundred dollar pair of brown Nikes oozing goo. Not cute.

  With the wound cleaned up at last, I asked Neva to get out of the car to help her brother. Kent’s designated role was to catch the goat and drag him by the horns to a tree so we could tie him up. Otherwise Freckles would make himself a nuisance and get between the horses and their feed.

 
The goat ran this way and that in an excited frenzy, my son hanging on and slipping and sliding behind him like a surfer dude riding waves of mud. Watching the drama of the badly behaved goat, I couldn’t help but wonder if goatburgers were a delicacy we might one day consider trying after all. I turned my attention back to the injured horse.

  Meanwhile, Kent was so intent on keeping a handle on the goat’s horns, he’d forgotten to shut the gate. The other two horses and the donkey came charging out. Loose now, the big animals started running every which way, their eyeballs rolling back in their heads as they snorted and whinnied.

  So, there we were: three crazy huge animals running loose, two city-bred kids running for their lives, and me, anchored in place with the wounded Peppy, shouting for the kids to calm down and help me corral the animals. My brave offspring were sure they’d get trampled, so they ignored me, screaming in such a panicked way the animals grew more agitated. Neva high-tailed her butt back into the car. Kent released the goat and dived behind a tree, shouting in bloodcurdling fear that we were doomed. Of course this meant the goat could now join in the rampage as well. Thanks, son.

  Goliath, the largest and most spirited of our horses, was behaving like a loco stallion from an old John Wayne movie. I tried to cut him off, but he headed the other direction, snorting and bucking. I wasn’t so much nervous as I was pissed, imagining I could develop a taste for horseburgers, too, at this point.

  After about ten minutes of this fruitless equestrian chase, it occurred to me that hungry horses would come for food. Oh.

  I poured some feed into the bucket and Goliath trotted up. I stared him in the eye and plunked the bucket down. He stared back at me, leery. I held his halter over the bowl, an obvious sign that the fun was soon to end. He lowered his head to nibble, his nose neatly fitting into place. I tied the lead, whereupon he instantly became the docile and sweet horse I needed. Just like a man to put up a fight and then turn into a big baby the moment he realizes the girl has control.

  The horses were finally situated and eating. My fingers were frozen. My ears were frozen. I was mourning my shoes. My daughter was waving, humming happily because she got to stay in the warm car with the puppy during most of the ordeal. Meanwhile, my son was flailing his arms dramatically.

  “Did you see that? Goliath was charging at me but I dodged just in time! I’m lucky to be alive.”

  I lifted one eyebrow. “Yeah, thanks for the help, cowboy.”

  Peppy hobbled forward. He hadn’t eaten much and his leg looked even more swollen than yesterday. I petted his nose and apologized for the fact that I didn’t have a dry, clean barn for his convalescence. He ignored me, except to look for apples in my pocket. The rain made his hair sleek against his skin, revealing his now-protruding ribs, so I gave him all three apples.

  Donkey looked on with gentle eyes, as if to say, “This wouldn’t happen if it were just the two of us.” He leaned into my side, the only creature in my world that seemed to understand I could use a tender nuzzle once in a while. I gave him some extra feed and a cookie.

  Before driving home, I stopped by the chicken house. No eggs still. Damn birds.

  I would describe my car after that episode, but I do not possess the required eloquence to paint a picture of the filth and unbelievable mess our mud-laden shoes made. Ah, well. I loved my car. I loved my land. I just had to be resolved to loving one inside the other.

  I came home to the find the construction crew had disconnected my washer again which now sat on the porch, rusting. That morning they’d promised my laundry facilities would be up and running by that afternoon, but clearly, cleaning clothes at home would not be an option for days, if not weeks. I wanted to kick the machine, but thought better since mud was oozing through my socks.

  We all undressed in the cold at the front door and left our muddy clothes in a pile. The kids showered while I cooked dinner. As the stove heated up, I tried to clean my shoes, now looking like they’d been worn on a trek through Mongolia. I would have thrown them out except for the fact that, gross as they were, they looked better than my other six pairs.

  We’d been living without a TV for eight months, so after cleaning up the dishes, there was not much to do but go to bed with a magazine. I read an article about how easy teaching horses perfect manners could be. Obviously, this author hadn’t met my horses.

  I fell asleep and dreamed. My dream was not of Paris and Porsches, nor of the peaceful life I thought would be ours without question once we unloaded our business, but was instead filled with visions of mud and loneliness and fitful worry about money.

  I awoke to another day. And more rain.

  “Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.”

  —Henry David Thoreau

  WHINING, DINING, AND WINING

  On one of our first visits to Blue Ridge, Mark and I checked out the one and only decent restaurant in the little town. We were enchanted by the quaintness and earthy quality of antlers and Appalachian wildlife taxidermy teeming on the walls.

  A waitress wearing the nametag “Trudy” asked us what we’d like to drink. I hadn’t even looked over the menu, so I just ordered a glass of wine.

  Trudy blinked dully. “No can do. This is a dry county.”

  “What does dry mean exactly?”

  Trudy smacked her gum. “Most people in these parts consider drinkin’ a sin. We don’t serve liquor in Fannin County. If you want to get drunk, you need to go to Ellijay.” (Ellijay is a town 35 minutes away.)

  “I don’t intend to get drunk. I just want a glass of wine,” I muttered. I ordered a diet Coke and couldn’t resist adding, “If residents are forced to drive to the next town to drink, aren’t we likely to have more intoxicated people driving on the roads around here?”

  A couple from another table leaned over to explain that beer and wine could be purchased at the grocery store, but no hard liquor could be purchased anywhere in Blue Ridge. There was a BYOB system in effect, however, that allowed customers to bring their own bottle of wine to some of the restaurants.

  I glanced around at all the other couples enjoying a nice meal in the rustic restaurant. No one had a bottle nestled in a paper bag on their tabletop—no doubt because of how awkward it would be to request glasses from someone who thought of wine as the nectar of sinners.

  I have never been much of a drinker, but my not being able to order a glass of wine made me want one now for reasons I couldn’t explain.

  “How do you suppose a restaurant like this survives without liquor to build revenue?” I said, knowing how important a bar bill is to a restaurant’s bottom line.

  “I guess they don’t need liquor sales to get by,” Mark said.

  But over the next few months, the establishment changed hands three times. Eventually, the place closed altogether. Word was the owner moved his business to Ellijay so he could meet an upscale restaurant’s overhead by offering a full service menu—meaning liquor.

  Visiting a dry county on vacation had been quaint, but now that we lived in the area, “quaint” felt annoying, if not a bit controlling. Popular franchises steered clear of the town because the strict liquor law made implementing their successful formats impossible, and independent restaurateurs couldn’t survive without the high return from premium beverages. That left the town with a Dairy Queen and a smattering of burger joints to meet the area’s culinary needs. Meanwhile, what could have been much-needed local tax dollars landed in the next county’s coffers as residents took their dining business one town over.

  The local economy struggled as a result, so the residents grew divided on the issue of liquor sales. The people who wanted to lift the drinking ban argued that the ordinance was threatening the town’s economic stability. They also argued the Bible doesn’t really state drinking is a sin, so religion is no excuse for disallowing beer and wine in area establishments. The
die-hard Southern Baptists responded that scripture does point to drunkenness as an undeniable evil. They claimed the ordinance was in place to protect citizens.

  The arguments ping-ponged back and forth over the net of economics, religion, and free choice, but in the end, the issue was mostly about change: those who wanted change and those who didn’t.

  As happened every few years, the ordinance was challenged by a local vote. For months the landscape was littered with “vote no” or “vote yes” signs. People wore buttons proclaiming their stance, and conversations around the post office or feed store hummed with passionate opinions about alcohol sales.

  On voting day, churches brought buses of senior citizens from nursing homes to the polls. The elderly were closer to meeting their Maker and thus more inclined to embrace His teachings, (especially after hearing a few passionate lectures on the evils of alcohol en route.) Ministers demonstrated at the voting booths in hopes of “saving” the less pure of heart or at least intimidating guilty folk into avoiding the polls. Meanwhile, the people who believed the dry county ordinance was unconstitutional stomped by the demonstrators to boldly place a vote that might jumpstart the flagging economy.

  I found it remarkable that we lived in the one place left in America where the lure of commercial success could still be thwarted by a 1950’s mentality. ‘Change’ had become the buzzword all over America. Our new black president had proven the concept of change was powerfully seductive, but in the mountains, no one wanted anything to do with progress of any kind.

  Personally, I understood the need for the economic boost that would come with lifting the dry county ordinance, and I resented others thinking they had the right to decide whether or not I could order wine with dinner. At the same time, I had an aversion to franchises, and secretly I was grateful that the self-righteous attitude of the Bible thumpers kept the quaint town at a growth stalemate.