A Red Marble Nighthawk

Vol. 107, July 2nd, 2024 Published a day early online

The Little Red Marble

Downtown drowsed in the Friday afternoon heat, sweaty. The blue hills and the blue signs called, the freeway gained, and the arrows all pointed to a dreamy haze. Go West, young man. Who am I to disobey the beckoning mountains? A workday might easily see four hundred miles under the tires, but that’s planned. Sometimes the Unknown must be visited. So, after the gig and lunch with a friend, I rolled into the Catawba valley, gassed up at the last station, and turned left.

Why not? The road turned left again. The mountains guided my little red car straight south, like a marble in a track, no choice for west now. The road dived into the forest, dappled light splashing on the pavement. Just as suddenly, it would crest a hill, displaying a grand vista with all the flourish of a magician presenting a rabbit, while a farmhouse watched.

I asked myself what I was searching for. I wasn’t sure, and sometimes that’s the point. Logic and the “Shoulds” need a balance now and then. I stopped by a cliff and looked for fossils. Even the rocks were empty.

A forgotten chimney stood by the road, keeping watch. I watched back, and rolled on, a little red marble, adventuring.

Home and Hearth

An old chimney keeps watch over Bradshaw road in the next valley west of Salem, at the foot of Sawtooth ridge.

Quote of the Week

“One man with courage is a majority”

–Thomas Jefferson

Happy Birthday, Hound Dog

Elvis records his 1956 cover today of the song made famous by Big Mama Thornton.

Here he is on Ed Sullivan a few months later:

Carol’s Appalachian Word of the Week

Warsh–wash. “Warsh behind your ears, too!”

Nothing like a little twang to make it sang...

Book of the Week

Declaration of Independence (Jefferson and his band of ruffians, 1776)

“Sticking it to the man” never sounded so eloquent. Unlike punk rockers, these guys actually meant it.

Give it a read here.

Letters from Josh

(A weekly update from Josh Urban’s adventures on the farm and in the city. #192)

Appearing in the Altavista Journal, etc: The Third of July

Howdy, folks, and welcome back to the show! Happy Independence Day eve. Dig this quote from Sam Adams.

“It does not take a majority to prevail...but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”

What a year 1776 must have been. Tom Paine dropped his incendiary pamphlet Common Sense that January, shedding the idea that kings should be obeyed. Don’t be ruled. Brilliant stuff, and tinder for those brushfires of freedom. Put another way: ‘Murica. Oh, to be a fly on that wall.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that history is past, old, locked up in a museum. Well, it was. Now I keep saying “what a time to be alive.” My grandma lived through the Great Depression and WWII. Her stories make me itch to play my part, to build a better nation. I suspect the time has arrived. As America bakes under a July sun, restless, uneasy, I’ve been thinking about the Third of July.

Squint your mind’s eye a bit with this timeline, as it’s not perfect history, but: the Third of July is when they could have stopped. Thomas Jefferson could have crumpled up the draft of the Declaration of Independence with a “guys, let’s see if we can work it out with the king, and let all of this blow over.” George Washington could have listened to his mother. She didn’t want him to go to war.

“It’s dangerous, Georgie. I don’t understand you sometimes.”

But on the Third of July, they saw what needed to be done, and didn’t ignore it. On the Third of July, they decided. On the Third of July, they said “full send”.

In that way, it’s always the Third of July, for all of us, forever, now. There’s always a king to disobey, brushfires to kindle in the minds of men, and freedom to ring. We’re not revolutionaries in strange hats, and our task might be much smaller (and not even political), but–there’s always the right thing to do, waiting for us to do it.

Will we?

Happy Independence Eve,

Josh

Send Tom Paine quotes and postcards to P.O. Box 783, Rustburg, VA 24588 or on X @RealJoshUrban

Bonus points if you deliver them on a horse at midnight.