Tuesday Report: Chasing 2000 Calendars

While I often tell people that I live in Asheville, in truth fifteen years ago I moved from north Asheville to an unincorporated “town” six miles away by the name of Fairview. In truth, Fairview consists of a small bank, a smaller post office, a grocery store, an elementary school and one stoplight.

What else could you need?

Actually, I live three miles from downtown Fairview, on top of a solitary wooded knoll with a twenty-mile, breath-taking view across the French Broad River valley toward Mt. Pisgah and the Blue Ridge Mountains.

But it came with a price:  one very steep, narrow asphalt driveway.

It only takes a little sleet or a few snow flakes to keep us home until it melts, which generally is about noon. In normal weather cars and delivery vans can handle our driveway without any problem, but as I once told a semi-truck driver, “You can make it up our driveway, but you’ll never get your truck back.”

I mention all of this only because our 2000 copies of the 2017-2018 Arts and Crafts calendar — which we distribute for free at the Arts and Crafts Conference this week — were scheduled to arrive yesterday, which was cutting it close, but Alex assured me they would make it today.

Which they did, but rather than hearing a typical UPS truck coming up our driveway, I suddenly heard the sound of a long, big tractor trailer truck down by our barn, revving up his engine, gearing up for making the grind up our curving, steeply banked driveway. Fortunately, the driver quickly realized he had no business coming up our driveway, but instead of waiting, he simply started to drive off.

Meanwhile, I’m up on top of the knoll, standing on the edge of our driveway looking down at him and yelling my head off like a fool, as he couldn’t see or hear me as he was slowly driving away with my calendars. I grabbed my keys, jumped in my pickup and started down the hill, praying no one was coming up, as I would have nailed them head-on — or drove off the embankment and into a stand of pine trees.

It took me about a mile, with my lights flashing and waving my arm at him out the window, before I could convince him I wanted more than just to pass him. He pulled into the next gas station and looked at me like I was a moron for living on top of a small mountain and expecting him to make a delivery to me.

But once he realized he wasn’t going to have to make a return trip, he lightened up and together we slid the pallet of calendars from his semi-truck into my pickup, which also provided some entertainment for the people at the nearby gas pumps.

But, hey, I gave up modesty a long time ago.

All I wanted were my calendars.

Until tomorrow,

Early Spring has come to Asheville.

Bruce