View from the Mountain

The World Is Yours, We Have Your Back

I consider myself very lucky.  My mother was a wise lady. 

She was also anything but a helicopter parent.  My first grade teacher was my mother's first cousin so there was no coming home and complaining about the teacher. 

Teachers had a special status in the fifties and it could best be summed up by saying they were nearly infallible.  That is not to say that all teachers were perfect.  However, part of going to school was surviving the teachers that you got and I learned that early.

Mother who had at a very early age learned to survive in the world seemed to know that the best way to thrive in the world is to get out and learn from it. She was always there to help but that sometimes meant she was going to push you right back out into the mess that you could not solve the first time.

Mother also believed that you had to learn how to fight your own battles.  I remember her telling me more than once that I should never start a fight, but if I ended up in one to make sure I fought to win.

I can remember a little help on my homework in the first and second grade, but a couple of years after that I was balancing the checkbook for mother's beauty shop. Mother was a huge fan of going places, but she never cared much for maps so I became the navigator at a very early age.  We would take off in her old 52 Ford and I would guide us to whatever destination struck her fancy.  I feel fortunate that I grew up with a love of the North Carolina coast because of the many summer vacations we enjoyed here.

I recently read a Washington Post article about helicopter parents moving beyond schools and becoming involved in job interviews and even complaining to bosses about performance reviews and salary increases.

I certainly helped my children with their first résumés but the idea of going to a job interview with them is well beyond what I consider appropriate for parental help. I remember giving my daughter some Hyatt reward points so she could go to her first interviews right out of college without spending a fortune.  I still remember my son who got his first layoff package as he graduated from college refusing to even utilize my contacts to get a job interview.  At least he was not so stubborn that he refused his sister's contacts or her offer of a place to stay.

We have always told our children that home is the place that you are always welcome no matter what.  While we might not be in a position to solve every challenge that they might confront in their adult life, we will pitch in and help them figure out what will work for them.

We already ask advice from them on many things and value their opinions.  They help us and we hope to continue helping them.  I like to think the title of the post says it all, "The World Is Yours, We Have Your Back." Like my mother, we are not going to fight their battles but we will be here to offer advice, support, and whatever they need if a particular turn of events does not go so well.

If you look closely in the post picture, you will see a helicopter.  Neither Glenda nor I will be piloting or riding in one of those.  However, if one of the children's kayaks gets stuck in the river on the way to paradise, I will help them get back to the dock so they can make another try at it.

 

Pop's, A Barbecue Treat in Downtown Cornelius

We all know that barbecue does not have to be fancy to be really good. It is a simple dish. If it is done right, the meat ends up very tasty. The other part of the equation is that the places where you eat the barbecue do not have to be especially fancy or in the heart of traveled areas to be successful.

Pop's is a surprise in that it happens to be right at the heart of Cornelius and just across the street from one of the biggest new housing developments that I have ever seen.  That says a lot since I have watched Cornelius and the Lake Norman area go from a rural spot to becoming exit one in the urban boom that has rapidly spread northward up Interstate 77 from Charlotte.

Somehow Pop's manages to a little oasis in the middle of the urban explosion that is Charlotte. It is a surprise to find barbecue is so tasty and obviously done right by hand in such a civilized place.  The barbecue is accompanied by perfectly cooked, hand-cut fries, and marinated cole slaw which I love. On top of it all, the inside of Pop's is bright, cute, and clean and the food is served by very friendly people.  It is a simple system walk up to a counter, place your order, take a seat and they will bring you your food. They even serve Pepsi products which I think are perfect alternate to tea.

The $9.99 price for my barbecue plate with two sides did not concern me given the prime location in Cornelius, the ease of parking, and the pleasant atmosphere.  There are plenty of deals on barbecue, but you usually have to drive out into the boondocks to find them.  Pop's is just a pleasant drive off of Interstate 77 through downtown Cornelius. I will pay a little extra to have something other than predictable chain restaurant food.

I found the barbecue to have just the right amount of smoky flavor to suit my taste buds.  I could have used some Eastern North Carolina vingear based sauce to top it off, but being a native North Carolinian, I love all barbecue.  I might bring a bottle of the good stuff the next time I come to town.

I can highly recommend Pop's.  It is a taste of old North Carolina at ground zero for the new North Carolina.  Often explosive development overwhelms these wonderful local places, so visit soon.  I hope Pop's hangs around long enough for me to thoroughly investigate the menu.  I noticed that they do ribs on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.  Pop's is closed on Monday or I might have been able to also out the chicken.

You can find some more reviews and pictures of Pop's to back mine up on Yelp.  Their address is 19901 S Main St, Cornelius, NC 28031.

 

 

Maritime Storm Memories

When a cold, raw day like December 9, 2014, keeps me inside, it often sets off some memories.  I spent sixteen years living in Canada and for twelve of those years I worked outside every day.  Much of what I remember has to do with cold weather.

There were some memorable cold days. One was the day I had the wrong end of the bale conveyor for a huge load of straw.  The wrong end of the conveyor is the barn end where you have to grab the bale and also stack it before the next one arrives.  That particular day it was minus 28F and the steam coming off of me frosted every hair on my head and my eyebrows.  I looked like the abominable snowman.  It was long ago and I had a lot more hair on my head.

I worked outside in weather as cold as minus 40F. You were very careful when you did that but on a farm with close to two hundred animals, you cannot take a day off so you just get used to it.

The worst cold was when you got wet from the inside and the outside.  One of the most miserable days each year was when we weaned the calves from their mothers and weighed them.  It was usually early November before the ground had frozen so most of the day was spent running around in mud.  A cold rain could add to the misery since you were likely already damp from the exertion of chasing 600 pound calves.  The positive memory from this revovles around easing myself into a hot tub at the end of the day after Glenda made me undress on the porch.

While those were days of personal discomfort, there were plenty of days that spread the misery across all the inhabitants of the Maritimes.  When I saw the warning issued for parts of New Brunswick for December 10, I could not help but remember a few of those icy times.

A developing low pressure system will continue to approach the area tonight. Snow heavy at times mixed with freezing rain will develop this evening and continue on Wednesday. Precipitation will change to freezing rain Wednesday morning and to heavy rain Wednesday afternoon. A total of 25 to 45 centimeters of snow, several hours of freezing rain, and up to 45 millimeters of rain are expected by Thursday morning.

Life will be even nastier than this warning since this storm will quickly pull some cold air into the area and the forty-eight hours of slightly above freezing weather (35F) will soon be followed by plunging temperatures.  It will be 24F Friday night, then 22F on Saturday night.  Then the temperature will stay below freezing until it bottoms out at minus 3F on Tuesday, December 16.  The forecast that I am looking at does not go far enough to know when the temperature will get above freezing next.

The net result of all this is lots of ice and sometimes it hangs around the rest of the winter.  It is especially tricky when you get snow on top of what will become rock hard ice.  One of my posts at my blog, The Canada I miss, deals with all that fun including how our children used to skate in our driveway while waiting for the bus.

I hope my Canadian friends do not get so much rain that they lose their snow.  As most folks who have lived in the north will tell you, snow drifts around your home make it warmer.  We used to cut spruce boughs and place them around our foundation to help catch the snow.

Winter is something that you take in stride if you live in Canada, but you will still remember some of the cold that you face. The icicles are ones that found me in 1971,  during my first winter in Nova Scotia when I saw plenty of snowstorms that turned to sleet then went to rain only to go back to snow.

The Canada I miss