An ad out of Southern Living it’s not

Editor's Note: Commedienne Pam Stone writes her column for The Tryon Daily Bulletin twice each month from her office in the "Unabomber Shack" on her Gowensville farm.

With little effort, one can wax poetic about the bucolic tranquility of our countryside. To see it between the ears of a horse, as an Arab proverb states, is the most beautiful sight to man. But all is not A.E. Houseman, Robert Frost and "My Friend Flicka," here in "Camperbeller."

To explain, I simply must tell you what I found in my bra. Well, obviously those. I am a woman, after all, at least that's what the lab tests concluded.

Unlike many who now call the Tryon area home, I knew what to expect when I moved back south after 15 years in California.

Being born and raised in north Georgia and having had horses all my life, I'm used to working and living in the country. Psst, it's not an ad out of "Southern Living:" sof
t-focused shots of women in crisp, linen suits, hair caught up in a clip, carrying a trug beneath one, slender, arm and nipping irises from a weed-free cutting garden with Smith and Hawken secaturs.

And neither is it the fantasy of potential horse owners: riding sleek-coated thoroughbreds that never stride out of their immaculate stable with a manure stain smeared across their cheek or rump. We gals that were brought up doing our own grooming and cleaning know the real scoop.

So this leads me back to the bra situation and what I learned:

When clipping a horse with the stable fans on, it is advisable not to smear one's arms, face and neck with sun-block beforehand.

As I disrobed to shower afterwards, I found that only a pressure washer would be successful at removing the 14,000 tiny horse hairs that had glued themselves to my entire body.
Now, Barney Bishop is a personal friend of mine, but I think it would be crossing that vague friend/business line to ask him to hose me down. Besides, he'd have to use an extension ladder and I just know he would charge an extra hundred for that. But I digress...

So, as you can see, it was rather surprising to find horse hair even inside my bra. But that's not the weird part. How half a grasshopper got in there, I will never know. Call it another unsolved mystery of the area, like, why does one sign read "Gowensville" as you enter our neighborhood and read "Gowansville" as you exit? And, no, I don't know where the other half is.

The First Column

Well, I guess I've gotten to "that age." You know, where you refer to anyone under thirty as a "hooligan" and, as you peruse your mailbox, yell at passing cars to remind them that, "Dammit, there's kids on this street, SLOW DOWN!"

If there's one thing I have tried to refrain from doing in what is vulgarly entitled, "middle age," it is to condemn the younger generation's music or fashion. First of all, it's simply not fair to compare the crap that's being played today to Zepplin's "Houses of The Holy"- one might as well compare Kafka to Kitty Kelly. However, as a child of the late 60s and 70s, how can I cast a disparaging eye over what "the kids are wearing today" when our own style was ripped and patched bell-bottomed bluejeans, usually sporting a marijuana-leaf logo on the back pocket. Hair was lank, worn loose,hmmmm... pretty much like you see today, come to think of it. There was one, massive, difference, however.

I'm pretty sure our clothes fit back then. Obesity simply wasn't seen in those decades. Most people my age remember there was one "fat kid" in school. I felt sorry for the one I knew, until I learned that, after graduation, she lost all the weight and ended up runner-up Miss Cobb County in Georgia. It was exasperating to see her blossom while I remained built like a book
mark.

Seriously, my knees were the biggest part of my leg- like strings with knots tied in them. But I could camaflouge my body by wearing slightly looser pants and heavy kids could do the same. Nowadays, there's no option! The popular look for the last three years for all women- not just teenagers- are these "low-rise" numbers. Speaking soley for myself, I don't particularly want to look like the Whore of Babylon when I go to the IGA. And what kills me is that all these teenage girls,shopping as lemmings in the mall, are wearing these Britney cast-offs, regardless of their shapes and size. Let's be honest, here. There's maybe seven women on the planet that can wear low-rise jeans and look terrific. These women also haven't eaten since 1982. The rest of us? Well, it ain't pretty, but the rest of us in those things look like someone busted open a can of biscuits.

Have a good day.

Editor's Note: Commedienne Pam Stone writes her column for The Tryon Daily Bulletin twice each month from her office in the "Unabomber Shack" on her Gowensville farm.