Several years ago, while I was trying to restore running water to my old farmhouse, I unearthed this "artifact" under the house(CLICK ON THE PHOTO). This deadly weapon once belonged to the "Front Row Kid," and was frequently used to defend such notable cowboys as Don "Red" Berry, The Drango Kid, Wild Bill Elliott, Lash LaRue and Jimmy Wakeley, the "Singing Cowboy." In most instances, my heroes had gotten themselves in serious trouble at the Ritz Theater on Saturday afternoon. They had stumbled into an ambush. When things looked desperate, it was then that the "Front Row Kid" was rise, his cap pistol blazing to assist his friends. My gun was sometimes confiscated by the owner of the Ritz and I was lead away, but I usually got some scattered applause from some other cowboys sitting in the dark.

GALLOWS THIEF by Bernard Cornwell Reviewed by Gary Carden

Gallows Thief by Bernard Cornwell
New York: HarperCollins, Inc.
$24.95 - 297 pages

For some thirty years now, Bernard Cornwell has been one of the most prolific writers in the western hemisphere. With over forty books to his credit, he has settled comfortably into the “historic fiction” genre and has become famous for his “Sharpe series” that follows the adventures of his protagonist, Richard Sharpe during the Napoleonic Wars (twenty-four novels.) The entire series is being filmed by BBC and suddenly, American readers are struggling to read and/or view the film versions in their correct order. In addition, Cornwell has a “Starbuck series” that deals with the American Civil War. There are also additional series, including a King Arthur trilogy, a Holy Grail series and a “Saxon series” set in 9th century England (not to mention a few best selling “thrillers” and the adventures of a protagonist named Captain Rideout Sandman who lives a precarious but exciting life in 19th century London).

Considering Cornwell’s impressive list of works, this reviewer decided to select a work at random. (I found Gallows Thief in the “used book section” at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva.) I immediately found myself totally engrossed in the daily life of Captain Rideout Sandman, a colorful survivor of the Napoleonic Wars - an honored soldier who has fallen on hard times. When Sandman’s father is forced to declare bankruptcy, the subsequent shame brings ruin to the family. After the father commits suicide, honorable Sandman sells his commission in order to pay some of his father’s debts; however, the resulting scandal eventually results in the cancellation of Sandman’s wedding to Lady Eleanor Forrest. Within a short time, Rideout has serious financial problems and is attempting to eke out a living by playing cricket. When some of Rideout’s friends recommend him for employment with the government, he is suddenly offered a “temporary position” by Viscount Sidmouth, a high-placed official of the Royal Court. Specifically, Sandman is asked to investigate the recent murder of the Countess of Avebury, even though the allegedly killer has been arrested tried, found guilty and is awaiting execution at London’s notorious Newgate Prison. It seems that the Queen of England has expressed a personal interest in the affair and the Viscount has been instructed to submit an official report regarding the specific details of the crime - a duty he readily delegates to Sandman.

At first, Rideout thinks that the “investigation” is merely a rubber stamp procedure to satisfy the Queen; consequently, he mistakenly believes that his official duties will be over in a few hours - especially since everyone assures him that the condemned felon, a painter named Charles Corday, had raped and stabbed the Countess of Avebury in the studio where she had recently posed for a commissioned (nude) portrait. However, when Captain Sandman visits Corday in prison, the accused turns out to be a frail “ pixie”: 19th century London jargon for a homosexual. (Gallows Thiefis permeated with street jargon.) Rideout’s subsequent encounter with the bloated and offensive Sir George Phillips, Corday’s “mentor/employer” suggests that Corday is not only innocent, but is a “stand-in” for someone else. In addition, a witness to the murder, a house servant named Meg, has mysteriously vanished. Finally, if matters were not complicated enough, Captain Sandman finds himself at odds with a “gentlemen’s club” called the Seraphim. The membership of Seraphim consists of wealthy, arrogant young men who spend their time in gambling, drunkenness and “carnal indiscretions” (much like London’s Hellfire Clubs of the early 1700’s). One of the Seraphim’s current hobbies is the collecting of nude painting of notable aristocratic ladies...like the Countess of Avebury (who is not what she seems).

As Captain Sandman searches for Meg, he finds himself dealing with a daunting number of additional problems, including assassins and debtors. His morale is somewhat improved when he discovers that the Lady Eleanor not only still loves him, but has even suggested a future elopement to Scotland! A man sent by the Seraphim Club to kill Rideout turns out to be Sergeant Berrigan, another veteran of Waterloo. When Berrigan decides to cast his lot with Captain Sandman, the two become friends and set off on a nerve-racking journey to prove Corday’s innocence. It is an odyssey that will end with the two friends (and Robin Hood) standing before a scaffold at Newgate Prison, surrounded by a raving mob.

Much of the appeal of Bernard Cornwell’s novels is due to the amazing depths of his research. For example, some of the most harrowing passages in Gallows Thief contain graphic descriptions of Newgate’s stench and squalor with particular emphasis on its notorious public executions. Indeed, the novel’s Prologue gives a surreal (and historically accurate) account of the bizarre practice of allowing aristocrats the privilege of being seated on the scaffold so that they may witness the death struggles of the condemned The carnival-like atmosphere, the casual cruelties and the inept methods employed by the hangman are described with meticulous accuracy.

Thankfully, Cornwell’s penchant for detail is also evident throughout the novel. As Captain Sandman attends cricket matches, drinks with his friends in the Wheatsheaf Tavern or watches a musical extravaganza at the Covent Gardens Theater, the pages of Gallows Thief exude the smells, sounds and sights of London in the 1820’s. In one scene, Cornwell captures the image of a louse crawling in a gentleman’s powdered wig at the theater; the raucous laughter of the audience when a pickpocket’s fingers are snared by the fishhooks in his would-be victim’s coat. Amid the flicker of gas lights, he notes the sheen of sweat on the powdered faces of elderly aristocrats - and the pervasive smell of unwashed bodies.

Gallows Thief contains an impressive assortment of vibrant characters, including the earthy and decidedly sexy Sally Hood, sister of the notorious Robin Hood (who manages to pursue his career as a master highwayman while occasionally assisting Captain Sandman in his quest for justice); an assortment of venal, privileged lords, ministers and lawyers - all captured in true-to-life portraits. In addition, Cornwell’s minor characters: beggars, doxies, and posturing nobles, all become vividly alive as they move through the varied scenes: ornate and often abandoned mansions, taverns, slums, prisons and rural farms.

Cornwell’s appeal can be summed up by a recent quote from the Washington Post: “The strength’s that have come to characterize (Cornwell’s) fiction - immaculate historical reconstruction and the ability to tell a ripping yarn.” Perhaps that means that Cornwell will launch yet another series: the adventures of Captain Rideout Sandman, late of the King’s army.

Review of Stephen King's Under the Dome

Under the Dome by Stephen King
New York: Scribner - 2009
$35.00 - 1,074 pages

“And that inverted Bowl we call the Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop’t we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to It for help - for It
Rolls impotently on as Thou and I.”
Omar Khayyam



Before I had read twenty pages of Stephen King’s new opus, I found myself thinking about Thornton Wilder’s "Our Town" - not because the small town, Chester’s Mill in Under the Dome resembles Wilder’s Grover’s Corners, but because ...it doesn’t. Although Chester’s Mill is small (less than 3,000 people), provincial and - like Wilder’s classic small town,-it has a generous number of eccentrics, misfits and delightful young people; however, appearances are deceptive. There is an underlying darkness and a raw, cynical attitude that never surfaced in Wilder’s Our Town. It is as though Chester’s Mill represents Grover’s Corner’s fifty years later.

Chester’s Mill has become a tarnished, corrupt little town in which the superficial veneer of civilized behavior strains to hold the town together. All that is needed is a catalyst - an unforeseen crisis that will test the town’s moral and spiritual resources (or reveal their absence). That catalyst is the Dome.

The Dome appears on a beautiful summer day when the inhabitants of “the Mill” are pursuing the innocent pleasures of any all-American town. Kids are fishing in the Prehistle Stream; a Seneca V drones over the town and an old woodchuck scampers along the shoulder of highway #119 checking out the litter for tidbits of fast food. Then, in an instant, an invisible barrier crashes down, causing a number of instant fatalities (including the old woodchuck).

The Dome encapsulates Chester’s Mill like an inverted bowl. Nothing can penetrate it, including birds, planes, cars and ballistic missiles. In a short time, the town’s boundaries are marked by a litter of debris (human and animal) as well as the wreckage of crashed planes, cars and trucks. All attempts by the “outside world” (military and scientific) to breach the Dome fail. Eventually, the town is faced with life-threatening issues: lawlessness and the possible depletion of food, water and clean air.

In a sense the plot of Under the Dome resembles the description of an inhuman laboratory experiment. As the inhabitants of Chester’s Mill struggle to survive, they begin to resemble microscopic life forms in a petri dish. Within a week, the town government undergoes some radical changes: incompetent, mildly corrupt officials becomes increasingly oppressive. The police force begins to “beef up” by employ young men with a penchant for blue uniforms and the approval of the town’s political leaders who readily endorse brutality. As this pleasant village morphs into a Facist nightmare, the growing violence is orchestrated by a sinister being - “Big Jim” Rennie, a scripture-spouting used car dealer (“You’ll be Wheeling, if Big Jim is dealing!”). Rennie is also one of the three Selectman (the New England equivalent of a governing board) and since his fellow Selectman are his puppets, he is in total control. He also perceives the Dome as an opportunity that will enable him to acquire total power.

If King’s message were not obvious enough, he makes numerous references to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, an English novel noted for its depiction of a group of English schoolboys who revert to savagery when they are marooned on a desert island. In addition, King occasionally paraphrases writers noted for their grim appraisal of mankind’s inherently brutal and godless nature. (T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, for example). Under the Dome also resembles Albert Camus’ The Plague, a novel, in which the inhabitants of a beleaguered town discover the disease that is destroying them is an outward representation of their inner (spiritual) decay.

King presents Chester’s Mill as a microcosm of America. Although he acknowledges the courage and nobility of a small number of characters who struggle against the tides of lawlessness, it becomes increasingly obvious that their the town is doomed - primarily because their essential goodness makes them incapable of understanding the nature of their enemies or the crimes they are willing to commit to accomplish their ends. In a sense, Chester’s Mill’s week-long ordeal is a holocaust in miniature. All of the evils of the Third Reich, including the bigotry, the lust for power and the willingness to brutally crush all resistance, blossoms and flourishes under the Dome.

Since Under the Dome contains over sixty characters (and three memorable dogs), any discussion of personalities and their interaction becomes a daunting (impossible) challenge . In addition, there are at least a dozen sub-plots that wind their way through this dark tale. A few of the most intense include: a serial murderer with a brain tumor(“Big Jim’s” son); a newspaper editor that finds herself reduced to distributing photocopies when her office is burned; a minister who addresses her prayers to a deity she calls “Not There;” a veteran of the war in Iraq who finds his worst nightmares resurrected in Chester’s Mill; a Jesus-haunted fundamentalist minister who struggles to reconcile his conflicted roles: the secret operation of a crack mill industry, and his fervent religious beliefs; a town Selectman who becomes increasingly inept due to an Oxycontin addiction; a lecherous academic who finds a kind of redemption in the Chester’s Mill hospital, and a brutalized rape victim who decides to pursue her own version of justice.

Under the Dome is vintage King. The novel’s tension builds slowly like a train that chugs out of the station and then gradually accelerates until it reaches a dizzying speed. Although this novel’s awesome number of characters makes it hard to keep track if them, King has provided his readers with a complete cast (along with a map of Chester’s Mill) in the book’s preface. The dialogue is brisk and colored with an assortment of dialects (including a misplaced New Orleans denizen) and a whole gaggle of teenage skateboarders who speak a delightful but bewildering jargon. All of the characters are deftly created. In short,this is a hell of a book.

What’s not to like? Well, yeah, there is one thing. The weakest link in the whole novel is .....the Dome. King’s final revelation .... it came from outer space! The somewhat whimsical departure of the Dome at the end of the book, lack credibility. Frankly, I don’t think this is a significant flaw. King’s raw and gritty tale of a small town descending into the heart of darkness needs a catalyst so that all of his bells, whistles and sirens could be launched. Any King reader knows that he/she is expected to “willingly suspend his/her disbelief.” In this case, that includes the acceptance of the Dome as being created by... Are you ready for this?.... juvenile delinquents from outer space. Sounds reasonable to me!

Winter Solstice at the Carden Estates

It got a little grim up here in Rhodes Cove last week. The temperature dropped to 17 degrees, my cat, Booger came in for the winter and my car doors were frozen shut. That is my old hot tub in which I bobbed and bubbled for three years while I listened to Nina Simone... before lightning struck it (twice). In the distance, you can see my barn (click on the picture) on which I once painted two game roosters fighting. A rumor started that I was holding illegal "cockfights," and I was "staked out" by some silly state investigators with binoculars. Somebody is always giving me credit for being more exciting/illegal/depraved than I am.

BOOGER HAS COME IN FOR THE WINTER

This is Booger, my semi-feral cat.
When the weather turned bad last week, she came inside. Our relationship is characterized by the understanding that I will refrain from trying to pick her up. She definitely does not like to have her picture made and this is one of about fifteen attempts...fourteen of which were nothing but shots of my books and/or the tip of Booger's tail since she had vanished before I could take a picture. I found her abandoned when she was a week old (one eye had not opened) and I made the mistake of trying to make the tiny kitten with an unnerving screech into a "barn cat." It didn't work and she vanished. A month later, I found her in the garden, so coated in begger lice that she couldn't walk. It took all day to clean her up and she has never trusted me since. She lives in the woods above my house and comes in late at night for a snack. She sometimes sleeps with Jack, my Jack Russell, but she is gone by daylight. That changes in the winter when the temperture drops below freezing. She does not trust me, but I sometimes find her playing by herself in the kitchen late at night. Right now, she is sleeping in front of the shelf where I keep my Dan Simmons. She is about twelve years old now, and this winter she has been showing up at 3 a.m. on my new electric blanket.

Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping

Have you seen this guy? If not, sign off my blog right now and go to YouTube and watch any of twenty or thirty clips of Reverend Billy. He has an ice cream suit laquered, blond hair and a Jimmy Swaggart persona. Watch him lead a charge on Walmart! See him speak in tongues in Victoria's Secret, Hear him and the Choir of Stop Shopping in Targets and Starbucks as they boogie down the aisles and lead exorcisms of credit cards. Is he funny? Yes, and he is wonderful, and if you listen to what he says between his comic skits, you will hear something else: about the death of small town America, about slave wages in China and Indonesia.He also has much to say about commercialism and the American belief that love is a commodity that can be bought. When the police haul him away, listen to him shout SHOP LESS, GIVE MORE! I am obviously a fan. Hell, if he would have me, I'll join the choir provided he can teach me to boogie. So far, I've seen him on Glenn Beck, Atlanta's WGN,CNN and CBS. He is even in Europe and he has a movie, too: "What Would Jesus Buy?" He has a tour and he is coming to a mall near you.

OLD CHRISTMAS

OLD CHRISTMAS

The customs and traditions attending the observance of January 6 as the “true date of Christmas” is one of the most persistent in a large collection of fading rituals. Even at this late date, there continues to be observances of the “twelve days of Christmas” – not only in Appalachia, but in isolated communities in Texas and remote villages in England. The origin of this ritual is fascinating and goes something like this.

The first calendars developed in the western hemisphere were lunar. However, the moon proved to be notoriously inaccurate. Consequently, Julius Caesar instituted a calendar year that was based on 365 (and a quarter) days and was “sun-centered.” Although the Julian calendar was a vast improvement, it over-estimated the length of a year by eleven minutes and fifteen seconds. This added up to an entire day every one hundred and twenty-eight years.

By the time the 16th century rolled around, the calendar was over ten days over the actual year. In 1582, Pope Gregory decided to correct the situation by simply cutting off (deleting) ten days. Suddenly, the world had two calendars. England continued to honor the Julian calendar while Paris adapted the Gregorian. For over a century, England was eleven days ahead of Paris. This situation became increasingly troublesome, so in 1751 England passed the Calendar Act. In order to bring England into line with the rest of the western world, the English citizens were told that On September 2ed, 1752, the next day would be September 14th.

Many people were not able to understand this change. There was an outrage over the fact that the government had stolen “eleven days (and a fraction) of their lives.” In some parts of England, there were riots and marches in which people demanded that their eleven days be returned. Many refused to make the change and this is why January 6 is called Old Christmas Day.

Old Christmas Day was a time filled with magic and premonitions. There are still families in western North Carolina (and many more down on the coast) who observe the old ways: Never loan anything on Old Christmas day because you will never get it back. Bread baked on this day had curative powers, as does water which had been poured over objects made of pure silver. Wreaths of holly and doorways adorned with mistletoe conveyed an atmosphere of peace and good will.

Were our forefathers that stubborn or did many of them live in remote areas where they never got the word? At the time that the Calendar Act became law, it was also a time when Protestants did not take kindly to edicts that had originated from a Catholic Pope.

As for me, I sort of like the idea that maybe “somebody” stole eleven days out of our lives and maybe everything has been out of whack since the theft. Maybe there will come a magic night when our stolen hours will return, and all of the clocks in the world will run backward (like Benjamin Button’s), and the world’s cogs and wheels will realign themselves. Yeah, I know that is pretty silly, but I’m just trying to find something positive about this “misalignment.” Selah.

A RARE PHOTOGRAPH OF NANCE DUDE

Several years ago, following a performance of "Nance Dude," a member of the audience told me about a photograph that she owned that included Nance and a number of relatives. I asked her to bring the photo to Livingston Kelly's Studio in Sylva and she did. In addition, she (or someone) identified a number of people in the group and related a story about Nance in her final years. Nance is easy to identify in the front row. The fellow on her left is her son, William. I don't know the identity of anyone else in the picture.

NANCE DUDE RECEPTION AT CITY LIGHTS

I only have two photographs of the "Nance Dude" reception and I decided to print both of them. I had a packed house, and a lot of the people are not in these pictures since they are sitting on the floor behind me and out in the halls. When some folks couldn't get in the room, they went home, and some of my best friends were among them. I am inordinately pleased by the turn-out, but I am also distressed that there were people who could not get in the room.

I showed scenes from the DVD and responded to questions for two hours. It was a fantastic night!