Atticus   

The smell of garlic pills, moldy pages and matted hair. People normally busying themselves on the message boards at Democratic Underground or dressing their dogs in outfits taking time out to scramble like barn cats sparring for table scraps over a $1 paperback of Memoirs of a Geisha.

It must be time for the first free day of the 40th Annual Brandeis Used Book Sale at the Toco Hills Shopping Center here in Atlanta.

At least I assume that’s how it always is. Yesterday was my first experience — pouring rain, 10 a.m. and a highly disproportionate number of men needing a good beard trimmer and wearing bucket hats and women in denim work shirts worn as jackets over pastel T-shirts.

It was worth every minute. For $20, I snagged Kaye Gibbons’ Sights Unseen, Reynolds Price’s Kate Vaiden, Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain, Silas House’s The Parchment of Leaves, Larry Brown’s Joe, Walter Kirn’s Up in the Air, Barry Hannah’s Yonder Stands Your Orphan, Dorothy Allison’s Bastard out of Carolina and Pat Conroy’s My Losing Season. Five of them were hardcover.

And in case you think I made up the title in the headline, it represents the best moment of the adventure. A book bearing exactly that title slid to a stop atop a row of books my friend Craig was browsing. An elderly woman had tossed it in his direction as if it were a used condom that had fallen into her lap. I only wish he’d belted out in a singsong voice, “I think some-bo-dy’s hin-ting at a good Moth-er’s Day pre-sent!”


Further evidence of my nerd status
When the shapely 20something guest speaker for the “Just Say Yes to Saying No” assembly announced to the crowd of high-school students that she’s a virgin, one boy shouted “What a waste!” followed quickly by “Not for long!” and “I’ll be gentle!” from others.

That’s an indirect quote from an excerpt that Tom Perrotta read to us from his upcoming book, The Abstinence Teacher, at the last two days of the North Carolina Festival of the Book, April 29-30.

Perrotta was one of several writers I traveled to hear speak. (Yes, normal people make plans to visit every major league baseball park or quit their job to follow Widespread Panic. I, on the other hand, travel seven hours to listen to a group of English professors.) He spoke about American subcultures with Jeff MacGregor, whose reading from his book Sunday Money left an audience consisting mostly of people uninterested or unfamiliar with NASCAR wanting to read about stock-car racing.

People stood in line for more than an hour for Tom Wolfe on Saturday, Doug Marlette and Pat Conroy on Sunday and Kaye Gibbons, Doug Marlette and Mary Chapin Carpenter also on Sunday.

Highlights from MerleFest in Wilkesboro on Friday included Thad Cockrell & Caitlin Cary, Chatham County Line, The Wilders, The Duhks, Gillian Welch and Jim Lauderdale.

Great trip. I’d love to return next year.


“I say it’s no fun/bein’ an illegal alien
— everybody sing! ...”
On my way home from Raleigh, on The Day Without Landscaping, I swear it was total coincidence that I stopped to eat at not only Taco Bell but also Moe’s.

Probably more thought should’ve gone into plans for demonstrations — in Mexico — against the evil, oppressive U.S. regime when even NPR reporters openly questioned whether its impact would be positive or negative.

That was the case on Day to Day, Here and Now and Talk of the Nation, which I heard on 88.5 WFDD.

When I later saw photos of protestors in San Francisco on Monday carrying signs bearing a number of variations on “Workers of the world, unite!”, I was reminded of the predictions I frequently see online that sharia law will one day play a role in European government as a result of the exploding Muslim population on that continent.

Call me a xenophobe, but I’m a little uneasy about giving sudden voting power to a huge swath of people from countries where, in many of them, socialism is spreading like Jon Favreau’s waistline. One of the benefits of making it a challenge to become a citizen is it requires an individual to first become familiar with our history, our customs and our political system.

In other words, do as we say, not as we do.


Running short on Texas tea
Maybe the oil companies are doing us a favor.

Not on purpose, mind you. Like it is at most other corporations today, their only goal is to raise their stock price or make as much money as possible without finding their executives staring down a prison sentence. None of that mamby-pamby “serve the customer” or “produce a product we love” along with it, no siree.

Despite extravangance for CEOs that would shock even Emelda Marcos, I don’t believe the oil companies are guilty of unfair pricing. But let’s say experts discover the folks at Exxon and Texaco, indeed, have been gouging the American people.

Maybe enough of us will get fed up to the point the gas crisis should’ve pushed us 30 years ago: a place where we seriously examine our dependence on oil, our country’s future and the other options we need to explore for meeting our energy needs.

What do I drive? Umm, a Ford F-150. Why do you ask? When I said “us,” I meant “you people.”