The State You're In

The worst thing somebody can put on a biscuit..

I’m at the age where somebody saying “they got good meat” is enough to get me excited about a grocery store.

Suffs to do round you, this weekend in North Carolian's

I got a new old mug.

Found it at the flea market for a dollar, covered in dirt.

I reckon that tells you about what the world thinks it’s worth right now.

But I believe we’re headed toward a time when things like this matter more, not less.

The more this world gets filled with artificial intelligence, machines making things, computers making words and pictures, the more valuable something touched by an actual human hand is gonna become.

I’ve always been drawn to old things anyway. The wear. The imperfections. The stories they carry without saying a word.

Especially clay.

Earth dug up, worked by hand, shaped into something useful, then hardened by fire.

Fill it with coffee grown from somebody else’s patch of dirt halfway around the world and there ain’t much between you and the ground but two sets of hands.

Maybe that’s what we're really drawn to.

The evidence of a human being.

Somebody stood somewhere and put their hands in this earth. They shaped it, left little imperfections in it, and made something they hoped another person might use.

Years later, whoever made this is gone.

But the earth they shaped is still being passed on.

We can only hope that all this so called progress will finally teach us the worth of what we were so eager to leave behind.

📷 nc pottery coffee mug, potter unknown

This menu needs a table of contents

I can’t look at this picture without smelling apple pie and sunshine. Without remembering what it felt like to walk into an old country store with farmers sitting out front, talking about rain and crops and who was kin to who. Without thinking about the way sunlight dances through the pine trees when you cruise a North Carolina backroad at just the right speed.

It’s just an old tractor and an American flag.

But things like this built this place.

Before the subdivisions and bypasses and folks moving here by the thousands, somebody had to turn that red clay into something. They cleared it, planted it, worked it, prayed over it when the rain wouldn’t come and cussed it when the rain wouldn’t quit. They raised to***co and corn and cotton and children on it. Made a living where there wasn’t one before.

Those little farms became communities. The communities became towns. The towns became a state folks from everywhere else would eventually look toward and say, reckon I could make a life there.

And now millions have.

North Carolina didn’t start with skylines and interstates.

It started in the dirt.

And we have the farmers to thank.

Beautiful weather for Chillin & Grillin with The Bunn Brothers at the Junction in Nashville, NC 🌞

Just gone be real with y'all, we ont go to Parkahs for BBQ anymore, we aint in a long time.
We go for Fried Chicken & Sweet Tea that flows like honey.

I don’t need a menu with a QR code. Hand me something laminated with 20 years of sweet tea rings on it.