WELL TO DO AND JUST GETTING BY
I read in the Washington Post and New York Times that Swannanoa has been devastated, wiped off the map. But I look out from the deck of my son’s house at the Asheville Country Club golf course and everything is peaceful and fine. We have no electricity but we have a generator, no water but we have enough in the tub and next door is a full swimming pool to wash and flush while for my house the Swannanoa river down below has plenty of water for flushing. Cellular is erratic and seems to barely work but I know everyone is fine and the election racket doesn’t reach me. Tom and Kathy brought plenty of food. Flooding is very uneven. Where it is rages people lose everything and where it doesn’t hit, everything is fine. As long as I can charge up my devices I am fine. The weather is pleasant so we don’t need air conditioning or heat, unlike in the summer or winter. If I put a trash can under the downspout I could collect whatever rainwater arrives. So I am getting along fine while the world is going to hell.
But the people living in trailers by the river where rent is cheap have had their homes washed away. The company houses in Swannanoa are gone and so are the jobs which these people depended on. This is a tourist area and every hotel was booked full for the brightly colored leaf season which starts this next week, but now with no water or electricity the hotels are empty and the restaurants closed and the biggest tourist attraction of all, the Biltmore House, is closed indefinitely while the Handicraft Fair of the Southern Highlands which draws huge crowds is cancelled. So there are no tourists and is no work for the people whose homes are gone.
I sit here on a warm fall day and listen to the crickets and the rescue helicopters flying overhead in a neighborhood where anyone who wants to can afford to leave town for a few weeks until the water comes back on but most are still here because everything is fine.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 