Month: August 2019

The Ring

I had only been on the Appalachian Trail for 28 days, attempting to hike from Georgia to Maine, when I decided to go home and see a doctor.  

I thought I had a hernia.  Turns out, I was right.

Dr. Christopher Kenney, a surgeon, told me I had two choices: undergo an operation the following week and delay my hike a total of seven weeks or put on a girdle and go to Maine.  I put on a girdle, a six-inch wide elastic band around my gut, and returned to the trail on March 21, 2015, seven days behind.

That's me with the Hiking Vikings on June 11, 2019
That’s me with the Hiking Vikings on June 11, 2015, near New Hanover, N.H.

Friends I had been hiking with, including the Hiking Vikings, were long gone, more than 100 miles ahead of me.  But Viking got shin splints and he and his hiking partner, Sharon McCray, had to slow down. From entries they made in trail journals at various shelters I could see that I was reeling them in — I gained four days in the first two weeks.

And then Nate got well and I was barely able to keep up.  I was still two and a half days behind when I got a text from Sharon, on April 12, asking for a favor. Nate had left it hanging on a nail at Pickle Branch Shelter. She asked me to check when I passed by and get the ring if it was still there.  I said I would and, much to my surprise, it was.

Meantime, Nate had asked Sharon to marry him, and she had said Yes! They sent me a video of that moment, made at McAfee Knob, the most iconic overlook on entire A.T.

I texted Sharon and asked if the ring I had found was “a ring” or “the ring.” She replied that it was “a ring” but, she said, it had a story.

I was still two days behind when the trail entered the Shenandoah National Park, in northern Virginia.  The Shenandoah is easy trail compared to the rest of the A.T. so I laid my ears back and went all out to catch them. In four days I hiked 106 miles and, after dark on a cold, rainy, Saturday night,  April 25, five weeks after I returned to the trail, I caught them at Tom Floyd Shelter.

I returned the ring, and Nate told me the story.

He said he believed in asking a woman’s father for his blessing before asking his daughter for her hand in marriage. But Sharon’s father was dead. So, Nate said, he talked to Sharon’s father in his thoughts, and asked for his blessing.

The Vikings were married on a hill top 10 days after they completed their hike.
The Hiking Vikings were married  10 days after they completed their hike.

That’s when he found the ring, almost completely covered in dirt, barely visible. It was, to him, her father’s answer: “Yes.”

Postscript: Nate and Sharon completed their hike of the A.T. on July 12, 2015, and were married 10 days later.  The Ring is Nate’s wedding band.   They now have three boys.

I completed my hike on July 14, 2015, and underwent surgery on Aug. 10.

Coming Monday: The Unlucky Forger

A Taste of Poor

When Dad went broke mining coal in Altoona, AL, in 1953, he did not declare bankruptcy.  Instead, he moved to Charlotte and sent money back to Alabama for years, slowly paying off debts.

Not declaring bankruptcy enabled him to hang on to Dixie Dew Syrup, the financial life raft that saved our family.  I was 11 years old when he moved my second mother; my brother, Dave; and me, to Charlotte and began making syrup full time.

In the mid-1950’s Dad drew a salary of $100 a week —  about $50,000 a year in 2019 dollars — but a part of his salary, how much I was never told, went toward paying off coal mining debts.

 In a letter Dad wrote Brother Dave about  1959, he said: “Now bear in mind that when we came up to Charlotte some six or seven years ago we owed money to every living soul that would credit us. Your mother sold Tupperware, gave lectures [on flower arranging, she was a flower judge] and sewed for her neighbors to help pay off these obligations.”  

There was no money to pay a dentist, that’s for sure. In 1956, when I was 14 and in the ninth grade, I had a cavity between my two front teeth visible for miles, I thought, that went unrepaired for more than a year.

I delivered the afternoon paper, The Charlotte News, when I was 12 and 13 years old and the morning paper, The Charlotte Observer, when I was in high school.  When I was 13 or 14 I started working summers for Dad for 50 cents an hour [$4.65 an hour in 2019 dollars], making Dixie Dew and, later, clothes hangers.  But I didn’t make enough in junior high school to get my teeth fixed.

So in my early teens  I got a taste of poor.  I didn’t like it very much.

***I had one pair of good jeans. I would wear them for two or three days, wash them out at night, get up early the next morning, iron them dry, and wear them to school again.

***In the eighth grade I played football  at the Optimist Club, a club run by Charlotte policemen to keep boys from North Charlotte off the streets and out of trouble.  As a reward, Sgt. Black took four of us who had participated in a speaking contest on an overnight trip to Winston-Salem.  I carried a suitcase because, for the first time, I was going to stay in a hotel but I was careful not to let the others see the clothes in my suitcase —   one pair of socks, one pair of underwear and a t-shirt.

***Mother gave me money to buy lunch at school, Hawthorne Junior High, but there was no money for haircuts.  So I would skip lunch and save up my lunch money until I had enough to pay for a haircut.

In some ways, it didn’t matter. Hawthorne drew most of its students from North Charlotte and Belmont, poor white sections. A lot of other kids were in pretty much the same boat.

NOTE: Not counting trips to visit kinfolk, my family went on one vacation when I was growing up —  a weekend at the beach.  That was not entirely due to a lack of money, however. My father had no hobbies.  He did not play golf or tennis. Or collect anything. He did not hike or camp. He did not swim, or fish, or go on picnics.  He did not take us out to the ballgame.  He worked.

Coming Friday: The Ring