C11 of The Great Disruption - Austrian Economist

Point One - If you believe that The Great Disruption will really happen and that a "one-degree war plan" is necessary then you should do something - should get started with the war.

Point Two - According to the Austrian economist Joesph Schumpeter, markets are engines of creative destruction - "a process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one."

Although Gilding compares The Market (my emphasis) to a rain forest he doesn't extend the metaphor to explicitly say that markets are instruments of economic natural selection. Therefore, making the analogy for him - companies, like living organisms, change in response to changes in the environments in which they function.

However...

In natural systems changes are due to random DNA mutations - which either provide advantage or disadvantage in constantly changing environments. If an advantage is forthcoming the organism survives to pass on its DNA; otherwise the organism fails and becomes an evolutionary dead end.

In economic systems changes are made more-or-less consciously by business people in response to changes in The Market - the business environment. When changes work, the business makes money - it prospers. When changes don't work, the business loses money - it fails.

Point Three - Given Point Two, the way to change business and fight the one-degree war is to change the environment in which business operates. Change The Market and at least some businesses will implement the changes necessary to make money. Businesses that adapt will prosper, those that don't will fail.

In the case of the one-degree war, the aspect of The Market most subject to change and control is the regulatory environment. Change that in ways that favor the war and business will follow; it has no choice - like any organism, living or otherwise, business has to play by the rules of the environment.

Of course the present national environment of which the business environment is a part is decidedly anti-government, anti-regulation. That will not change until The Great Disruption creates a wake-up Black Swan event.

(What if Rick Perry is President when the Black Swan event happens?)

C10 of The Great Disruption - The One-Degree War

Accepting the belief (the hope?) that a Pearl Harbor level ecological/economic event will cause The Great Awakening (without triggering disastrous climate feed-back loops), the next step is come up with an action plan. What should these newly agreeing parties do?

Gilding and his friend Professor Jorgen Randers, one of the authors of the Club of Rome's The Limits to Growth (and recently The Limits toGrowth: The 30 Year Update) propose an action plan for the next 100 years.

The first action - likely undertaken with or without a plan - will be to reduce greenhouse gases. Climate warming will probably be seen as the cause of the Pearl Harbor style ecological/economic event. Given that the definition of this event includes the capacity to rouse the old order to action it therefore follows that the old order will be roused and will act.

Since greenhouse gases are responsible for warming the question arises: how much warming can be allowed? What should be the goal? The current consensus is that two degrees centigrade rise over pre-industrial revolution levels can be allowed - not because it is "safe" but because it is the best we can do politically.

Gilding disagrees. Quoting Winston Churchill, Gilding says we must do "what is necessary" - not just what is politically expedient. A two degree rise is likely to produce great damage and disruption. A one degree cap is safer. Gilding thinks this will be politically feasible given the impact of The Great Awakening (that results from The Great Disruption).

Estimates are that the Great Awakening Event will occur sometime around 2018 (no one knows for sure - it could be next year in 2012 or it could be 2028 - although if the latter, even more damage will have been done). In any case, using a 2018 as an arbitrary starting time, Gilding says that the following actions need to occur in the time frames indicated...

Years 1 -5 (2018 - 2023) Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50%. Not only will this begin to clean up the atmosphere and start the cooling process it will shock our political and social systems into action. Following are some specific goals recommended for the first five year period:

• Cut deforestation and other logging by 50%
• Close 1,000 dirty coal power plants
• Retrofit 1,000 other coal power plants with carbon capture and storage
• Ration electricity and increase gas mileage
• Erect a wind turbine or solar plant in every town (if only for psychological boost)
• Create huge wind and solar farms in suitable location
• Ration use of dirty cars to cut transport emissions by 50%
• Strand half of world's aircraft
• Capture or burn methane
• Move away from climate unfriendly protein
• Bind one gigaton of CO2 in soil
• Launch a government and community-led "shop less live more" campaign (hard to imagine old order sanctioning this)

Years 5 - 20 (2023 - 2038) Move world to net zero climate emissions. Requires technological and social innovation

Years 20 - 100 (2038 - 2118) Achieve a stable climate and a sustainable economy. Reverse emission; remove CO2 from atmosphere.

Obviously all this seems impossible. Gilding says to look back the changes brought about WWII. (One struck me. Four days after Pearl Harbor the government ordered a halt to the production of private vehicles. )

C9 of The Great Disruption - When the Dam of Denial Breaks

In the last chapter Gilding moved from despair to hope by believing that we have the power to prevent The Great Disruption from becoming The Great Collapse.

He believes that in the near future, an ecological/economic Pearl Harbor will break us out of denial and despair, move us to the Great Awakening.

Note: Re-reading this and other chapters I see that it is I who predict an ecological/economic Pearl Harbor, not Gilding. The response by people and government that he believes must happen will result from a tipping point of awareness - when it becomes obvious (to intelligent people of good will?) that we are heading toward a cliff and something must be done. He thinks that after-the- fact this awareness might be attributed to an economic Pearl Harbor - a single black swan event - but probably not at the time. That will be magic.

The implication is that this black swan event must be bad enough to convince even anti-government conservatives that action is necessary. It will require death, destruction and economic disruption. But it must stop short of triggering ecological feed-back loops that result in total climate collapse.

In other words we will have to be lucky - if you can call a Pearl Harbor style event luck. That is what Gilding requires you to believe.

So, in this spirit of belief...

After the event occurs (maybe it will be a series of lesser events symbolized by one dramatic Pearl Harbor event) the "dam of denial" will break. We will move to a war-time footing.

Action will take place on two fronts. The old economy and systems will react first. Driven by a vested interest in maintaining established ways, yet aware now of the extent of the problem, this part of our society will fight the initial tactical battles. Spending great sums of money, expanding the power of government, the old order will attack the problem of greenhouse gas emission, or whatever it was that pushed us to the edge. Such actions might even create a period of financial growth.

Gilding believes that in this war-like atmosphere, almost anything can be accomplished - at least in the short term. However, he thinks that the old order will not willingly give up the idea of continued growth. The old order will accept that continued material consumption cannot go on, but will believe (as it believes now) that material growth itself can continue - maintained by new technologies and efficiencies. The old order will argue (as it argues now) that we are basically a greedy, competitive species and that this style of economy suits us best.

This is where the second front of the war comes in. Knowing, as Gilding knows, that the laws of physics do not allow unlimited material growth in a finite world, some people will coalesce around a new economy and style of living. This new order will fight the strategic long term battles - over a period of 40 or so years. It will move us past consumerism and stuff.

C8 of The Great Disruption - Are We Finished?

In this chapter Gilding turns a corner, moving from despair to hope. But it is not an easy move to make.

Our attitudes have to change. According to Gilding, we must...

• Accept that things are going to get really bad. People are going to suffer. (The "new normal" unemployment rate of 9% is just a start. So is $3.50 gas and $10 dinners.) People will die. We have to prepare ourselves - physically, economically, psychologically. It will be like a world war.
• Drop our old ideas about how change occurs - understand that change generally does not happen slowly, in a planned manner, but fast - in this case, as a series of really bad black swans.
• Evolve a new set of values, politics, personal expectations. We have to shed our ethic of consumerism. (See asides below for Homer-Dixon's views on values.)
• Accept the idea that we are not saving the planet, only ourselves - our species. Although we might wipe out 50% of present day biodiversity, in a 100 million years (a moment in the life of a planet) Earth will have long moved past us. It will get along just fine.

Gilding says that despair is a legitimate reaction to what is going on. He notes that some experts in this field - including James Lovelock author of The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning and Clive Hamilton who wrote Requiem for a Species - believe we are not smart enough to come back from the Fall, that it is too late.

Gilding does not agree. He believes that the despair and hopelessness evidenced by the writers above (and until 2008 by himself) is step two in a three step process...

1. The first step is denial which itself has two substeps. Initially we don't believe what is happening. Then, we enter what Gilding calls "denial breakdown". We more or less believe the science, acknowledge that it makes sense but do not believe the full implications. Or, we accept the implications but do not yet feel the impact - do not move from intellectual understanding to emotional understanding. (Gilding says climate deniers and antiscience skeptics can be ignored; they will be overcome by events.)
2. The second step is despair. We begin to sense what is really going on. We see the species lost - the animals starving, dying - children starving, dying. We see a generation of underemployed, drifting young people (our children, grandchildren?) every one a potential Mad Max - and us the wandering guy in Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
3. The final step is acceptance,what Gilding calls the Great Awakening (a term coined by Professor Jorgen Randers). This happens when we move past grief - when we start to do something - when we understand that many of the drifting young people mentioned above can be productively engaged in saving our species. Stuck as we are between denial and despair there is nothing practically we can do to prevent The Great Disruption. But we can change what happens on the other side - whether we collapse, as described in Jared Diamond's Collapse, or whether we transcend.

Gilding says that the trick to moving past grief into acceptance and action is the belief that we can actually solve our problem (again, not prevent the Disruption but manage what follows). Although it might seem that we are doomed, Gilding points to our history of waiting until last moment to act in the face of imminent disaster.

He uses WWII as an example. Although there were clear indications in 1933 that Hilter was a threat to world survival, people in the US and Britain remained in denial and despair until the last minute. The crisis was well underway before leaders like depressed Winston Churchill, grandiose Franklin Roosevelt, and monstrous Joesph Stalin finally rallied their people into action unimaginable before the war. We did not prevent the war but we did save civilization from Hitler. Gilding sees that same level of action in response to The Great Disruption. We can't stop the war but we can win it. (The recent last minute resolution of the debt crisis could be viewed as another example of a last-minute save.)

Gilding says that a single event might be viewed (at least in retrospect) as the ecological/economic Pearl Harbor that calls us to action (an ad hoc black swan).

ASIDES

Military people already warn about the risks of collapse...

• Retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni said, "The 2007 report concluded that climate change would act as a threat multiplier by exacerbating conflict over resources, especially because of declining food production, border and mass migration tensions, and so on - increasing political instability and creating failed states - if no action was taken to reduce impacts."
• Thirty three retired generals and admirals wrote in April 2010 report to the Senate, "climate change is threatening American security... it exacerbates existing problems by decreasing stability, increasing conflict, and incubating the socioeconomic conditions that foster terrorist recruitment. The State Department, the National Intelligence Council, and the CIA all agree, and are planning for future climate-based threats."
• A secret 2004 Pentagon report noted, "Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life... once again, warfare would define human life."

Paraphrasing Hunter-Thompson on values in The Upside of Down...

• We need to move beyond strictly utilitarian values which only express our likes, dislikes. This gives rise to our consumer oriented culture. Consumed by consumerism, we become less resilient, more vulnerable to unexpected non-linear events.
• We also need to move beyond the unthinking, politically oriented notions of fairness, right and wrong which often passes for spiritual belief. This too leaves us rigid, vulnerable to non-linear events.
• We need to move into the realm of spiritual and existential values that are “compatible with the exigencies of the natural world”.
• According to Homer-Dixon, such values recognize that

1. Energy and the laws of thermodynamics play a key role in our survival.
2. Certain kinds of connectivity are dangerous.
3. Many natural systems (including all adaptive systems) behave in a non-linear manner. In the words of Nassim Taleb we live in Extremistan.

• We need to move from a growth imperative to a resilience imperative.

Signs and portents seen late at night on CNN

• Drought is killing people in the Horn of Africa. Thousands of people are on the move. Last night I had to turn away from a picture of starving child held by its mother. The mother was dressed in a dirty robe that had once been colorful. The child was a skeleton covered in skin, a delicate little drum, its ribs a marimba. Although it certainly doesn't matter to the mother and child if the drought is the result of climate change, maybe it is. Maybe an obscene black swan waddles among the corpses.
• Big Oil is digging oil sand in the Canadian wilderness. Tremendous amounts of energy are needed to extract the oil from the sand. Tremendous quantities of greenhouse polluting gases are being released. The landscape looks like the surface of the moon. Maybe Hunter-Dixon is right. Maybe Peak Oil has happened and we are now forced to the bizarre and extreme in our search for energy.
• Jabbering crowds throw bodies off a bridge in Syria - the bloody corpses whirling gaily through the air to flop in the water beside their dead companions. The Arab Spring moves into late Summer. I once read or heard somebody say that rising food prices had something to do with this.

C7 of The Great Disruption - The Road Ahead

Although details of the future can't be predicted, Gilding thinks the outline is clear. Our complex, growth-addicted culture cannot survive as is. The end might have begun in 2008 or it might not happen until next year in 2012. But it will happen. Growth will stutter to a stop. After that civilization will either...

• Stabilize and evolve to a higher plane (Gilding's belief).
• Or become much much simpler (e.g., it will collapse like the cultures described in Jared Diamond's book Collapse).

The fall of a system (ecological/economic) resembles the end of a human life. Gilding's friend Dr. John Collee describes it this way...

"Every patient with an incurable illness will ask how long they have to live. The answer goes something like this: 'No one can say how long you may live, because every individual is different, but focus on the changes you can observe and be guided by those. When things start changing for the worse, expect those changes to accelerate. So the changes that have occurred over a year may advance by the same degree in a few months, then in weeks. And that is how you can judge when the end is coming.' "

"Planet Earth, being a web of complex self-regulating systems, operates very much like a human body. Terminal illness gives us the template for most forms of ecological collapse. One set of changes initiates another, and so on in a downward cascade of negative feedback until the whole system falls apart."

Like the terminal patient we must look for certain signs. Gilding says to look for an accelerating cascade of...

• Ecological, social and economic shocks driven by climate change.
• Increases in food prices due to demand and lower output.
• Diminished water supplies, fisheries, agriculture resulting from damaged ecosystem - further increasing prices.
• Increased oil costs as peak oil happens (if it has not already happened).
• Falling stock markets driven by fear and uncertainty.

Does all this mean the world is coming to an end? Gilding says not necessarily - but it does mean we (or the children and grandchildren of those of us approaching senility) are in for a ride.

Weathers asides

A theme in Gilding's book and in other recent books read by the semi-sober Thinking Men's book club and social organization is the nonlinearity. In the real world events are not neat. They start slowly and end fast - stuttering to a stop. This was the theme of Nassim Taleb's Black Swan book, which I obsessed over in...

http://bookreportz.blogspot.com/2009/05/black-swan-impact-of-highly-improbable.html

A less obvious theme but one that seems obvious to me is complexity. In the process of getting where we are we have become complex. According to Thomas Homer-Dixon in his book The Upside of Down, complexity has left us rigid. In another fit of obsession I wrote this...

(Regarding us - Homer-Dixon says human societies adapt to resource scarcity by becoming more and more complex, more connected and interdependent. We squeeze every last bit of efficiency out of our systems, until there is nothing left to squeeze. In the process we loose resiliency, become fragile, subject to disruption. )

in this...

http://bookreportz.blogspot.com/2011/04/upside-of-down.html

C6 of The Great Disruption - The Year That Growth Stopped

In this chapter Gilding argues that 2008 was the year that The Great Disruption started - that these two "crash" indicators occurred...

• Resource limitations forced prices up
• Ecosystem hit tripping points

He also recounts reactions to his arguments.

Ecosystem tripping points

• Melting of northern icecaps accelerates, exposing dark blue ocean which heats faster which accelerates ice melting.
• Melting of frozen tundra accelerates the release of large quantities of methane which is a greenhouse gas which traps heat which accelerates release of methane.
• Ocean acidification increases which reduces the ocean's ability to absorb CO2 which prevents shellfish from forming shells and coral reefs from growing and heats the atmosphere.

Prices Going Up

• Oil becomes increasing difficult to extract - easily accessible oil has all been found, is being used - meaning "peak oil" has or soon will happen. Oil price goes up. (The "new normal" for gas is well over $3 gallon.)
• Global food prices go up (the "new normal" for a meal in a decent dinner is now $10) - because...
there are more people demanding more
there is less arable land (due to development, overpumped aquifers, falling water tables, overallocated rivers, diminishing crop yields, expanding deserts, etc.)
rich people (us) eat more and better food,
corn is diverted to biofuel instead of food.

Reactions

• When he first started presenting his story to social and business leaders Gilding was regarded as "intellectual entertainment" - written off as an "extremist and merchant of doom". Gilding's theory is that these are good people who have invested their professional and personal lives in the notion of growth. It had become a given, a fact of life not to be challenged.
• After the crash of 2008 was well under way, Gilding got different reactions. The same leaders mentioned above felt that something was going - some change had happened. Many agreed in principle with Gilding - in the direction that things were heading, but were more optimistic that something could be done to forestall the ultimate collapse.
• Gilding quotes Thomas Friedman (Flat Earth guy)... "What if the crisis of 2008 represents something more fundamental than a deep recession. What if it's telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall - when Mother Nature and the market both said, 'No more.' "

Personal aside

I wonder if the current debt ceiling crisis is not a semi-unconscious reaction to the start of The Great Disruption. Both sides still talk about maintaining growth. Liberals say that we can spend our way back to 2.5% GDP growth and 8% unemployment. The semi-crazy tea party people claim that halting the growth of government will foster economic growth - maybe even a return to a pre-modern utopia where Billy Grahm and The Beaver reign supreme. However I get a sense that the craziest tea party people, the ones with the wildest eyes, those willing to go to the wall know in their non-sentient souls that more going on.

Related books

The smart systems at Amazon tried to sell me these books...

• Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet by Tim Jackson
• Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update by Donella Meadows
• Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development by Herman Daly

C3 of The Great Disruption

In Chapter Three of The Great Disruption, Paul Guiding notes that people have trouble understanding dire forecasts of global ecosystem studies because for the most part things look pretty good - at least in the developed part of the world. We are biologically programmed to respond to immediate threats. We don't naturally have the mental equipment to understand anything not happening in front of our noses; such insight has to be acquired. Guiding concludes the chapter by nothing that if we don't accept the science (which is about as unanimous as science gets) and wait for evidence that we can see it will be too late. The great disruption/collapse whatever will be on us. I think he will say in Chapter four that it almost is.

C4 of The Great Disruption

Changing economic/environmental practices has always been framed as a choice. If we change this thing we will avoid that thing - cause something else to happen. We always had a choice. Gilding's point is that the time of choice has passed. We didn't choose and now the results are on us. The changes required at this time are too great - the inertia of systems against change cannot be practically overcome. He says, "This means any hope that we can mobilize the massive intervention required to avert the crisis is a false hope. In combination the evidence all points to one conclusion. We cannot now avoid the the crisis of the Great Disruption."

C5 of The Great Disruption - Addicted to Growth

Gilding quotes a professor named Tim Jackson....

"The global economy is almost five times the size it was half a century ago. If it continues to grow at the same rate the economy will be 80 times that size by the year 2100."

(Yesterday, Bruce the leader of The Thinking Men - our semi-sober book club - and the voracious reader who suggested The Great Disruption sent around one of those email lists comparing things then and now. No air conditioning then, one or two lights per room, one car, no clothes dryer, manual push mowers, one small TV, etc. That's how it was a half century ago.)

Gilding's point is that such expansion cannot continue. It will hit the wall - several walls - the walls of finite reality. (In the last chapter Gilding cited a study which says that we are presently consuming resources at the rate of 1.4 planets.) The underlying issues are the loss of global biodiversity and changes to the global ecosystem. But the one that will grab us (by throat or crotch - pick your sensitivity) is the end of growth.

We are wedded to growth and its paired drivers, consumerism and stuff. Stuff, in quantity and quality, defines us. It is how we judge ourselves and other people - the cars we drive, the clothes we wear, where we eat, where we shop (Harris Teeter -vs- WalMart!). Growth is key to economic policy. An economy that does not grow at least two percent a year is a failed economy. Business is predicated on ever-increasing demand. Expanding populations require growth to create new jobs for new entrants into the workforce. But the demands of efficiency push automation which reduces the available jobs.

It is like a giant, system-wide Ponzi scheme that is about to collapse. It will probably go down in a non-linear fashion (maybe precipitated by a "Black Swan" event - maybe what is going on right now in Washington is that event) because that's how the curve goes - slow on the way up and fast on the way down with random stutter at the end - not a neat bell shape at all.

The other point Gilding makes is that none of this will be easy. He says that we are essentially addicted to growth and that like any addict will not willingly give up our drug. We will lie, fight, deny the reality in front of our noses. We will have to hit the walls of finite reality several times, really mess ourselves up before the truth penetrates our bloody, battered, dim-witted heads.

Multiple studies have shown that after basic needs are met (about $15K Per capita) increased wealth does not buy happiness.

A British study indicates that the "loneliness index" goes up with increased wealth.

Founders of economics did not propose continual growth. John Stuart Mill said that a "stationary state of capital and wealth... implies no stationary state of human improvement". John Maynard Keynes thought that the "economic problem" would be solved and that society would then "prefer to devote further energies to non-economic purposes".

And some quotes from Homer-Dixon's Upside of Down (another book read by the semi-sober Thinking Men - a much more elegant book in my estimation - the language of which makes you wonder where Gilding got the idea for The Great Disruption):

"Despite the fact that our lives are saturated with stuff, that we've already reached a level of material abundance unimaginable to previous generations, and that more money and possessions add little to our happiness, we must be made (by business) to feel chronically discontented with our lot."

"Our economic role in this culture of consumerism is to be little more than walking appetites that serve the function of maintaining our economy's throughput."

"Our psychological state is comparable to that of drug addicts needing a fix: buying things doesn't really make us happy except perhaps for the moment after the purchase. But we do it over and over anyway."

"Why? There are many reasons. But the central and often overlooked one, I think, is that consumerism helps anesthetize us to the dread of empty lives - lives that modern capitalism and consumerism have themselves helped empty of meaning."

old women

I see old women...

One running

a lawn mower

at 7:30 AM

to beat the

encroaching heat

stringy arms

tossing the machine

here and there

waving gaily

as I walk by

Another

bent down

arranging mulch

in her

already

immaculate yard

Two more

striding

side by side

arms swinging

short hair

sprayed into neat submission

cute

after all these years

greeting me

with wary smiles

Another

giddy

gone wild

with incipient dementia

tending two small dogs

straining into a bush;

she says in a wondering voice,

"They just have to smell everything."

To which

I reply,

"It is a grand adventure"

I only see

one other

old man

Where are the rest?

Do they sit inside

watching TV

eating entropy

getting fat on death?

Stuff

48 x 12


48 x 32


63 x 84








21 x 16


28 x 18 (approx 300 lb)


18 x 18


38 x 36


36 x 30

44 x 17

Dream

No attempt to make sense of this - more of a documentary effort, capturing images, impressions.

I was in a northern country, maybe Sweden. An indifferent intelligent place. I might have been with criminals, people who didn't belong here, who were up to no good.I might have one of them.

I met a girl in a public place, maybe a gallery that featured sparse bloodless art. She was thin and blond - pretty - not exactly friendly or inviting. She seemed bothered by something and suspicious of me. But she came with me anyway - as if I offered unlikely hope.

We were in a room and I noticed the ocean beyond the window. The water was covered in snow and ice but people played in it, swimming in paths they cleared through the snow and ice. They seemed to have fun, not to notice the cold.

I was asleep and she was nearby. I became aware that it was the most restful sleep in a long time. I savored that, at peace. Then I peered in the half light at the girl lying beside me. I saw her cat eyes looking back at me, amused but sympathetic.

Evan Birthday Pics - 2011

Thanksgiving, 2010

Other Worlds

We talked about other worlds.

(Bob was told by a close relative who once worked in a criminal law office that two inches below the surface there is another world the rest of us don’t know anything about.)

I still think about it.

 

The place where they sold roasting hogs was another world.

Crossing the mountains into Burke’s Garden was like entering another world. In places the mist was so thick you could barely see the road, just hear the gravel crunch and feel the ruts, knowing that on one side the mountain loomed, unseen but felt, and on the other side the edge crumbled off into nothing. The road could have forked, gone somewhere else, and we would have not known it.

It was another world on the Appalachian Trial where I walked out to pee (knowing that I would write “I pee in the mist on the Appalachian Trial”). After a few hundred feet I could not see Bob or Big Boy (the Land Cruiser). There was just the sound of my own water splashing on the already wet ground and the whisper of wind in the trees, like the sound of old hymns. I could have gotten turned around and gone the wrong way into the wilderness.

The Burke’s Garden Café and General Store was another world.

We had crossed the last mountain and were in the valley, driving down a narrow paved road past well-kept farms. The mist had lifted but the sky was still overcast. At first the building seemed abandoned. There were no vehicles visible. But going past, lights shone from behind chintz curtains on the front windows. There was a sign. And in the parking lot on the other side, we saw an old Mercedes diesel sedan with a sooty rear bumper and a faded red Subaru Outback.

Note 9/27/2012 - Got this picture wrong. Here from the trip with Karen is where Bob and I ate. By 2012 the place was closed. The Subaru is Piggy.

 

I said, “Let’s stop here and eat lunch.”

 

Bob said, “Sure” and turned around.

 

We parked beside the Subaru (it had a Vermont tag; the Mercedes was from Virginia) and walked around to the front. I pulled back an unpainted screen door. Hinges creaked. Inside the place seemed bigger than outside. That might have been because the rear was filled with cases and shelves illuminated by a few dim lights. I could not see the back wall, just those individual pools of clarity.

 

But it was cheery up front, six tables on one side and a counter and small grill on the other side. A couple sat at one of the tables, heads inclined toward each other talking in low voices. They seemed middle aged. He was balding. She had short blond hair, suggesting a recent bout with chemotherapy. They were dressed in clothes that might have come from LL Bean, but not this year.

 

A tall woman wearing jeans and a baggy blue sweater stood at the grill, facing away from us. Her black hair was fluffy and streaked with gray. There were holes in the elbows of her sweater. Her jeans were snug but not tight. The left back pocket was frayed. When the screen shut she spoke over her shoulder, “Sit anywhere you like. I’ll be over in a minute.” She had high cheekbones like an Indian or a Russian. Her eyes were green. She wiped her face with the back of her hand.

Bob and I took the other table by the front window. Down the road to the left was an old white frame church. A rock wall bordered a large graveyard. Tombstones gathered on the hill like curious children.

Bob nodded toward the people at the adjoining table. “Good morning folks.”

The man glanced up; his lean face breaking into smile. “Morning.”

 

The woman nodded and smiled but didn’t say anything. Her thin face was pretty; her skin was translucent.

I said, “Interesting place. Unexpected.”

The man looked around as if he was just now aware of his surroundings, “Yes it is interesting.”

The woman spoke. Her voice had a fragile bell like quality. “But not unexpected.”

The brunette woman came out from the behind the counter. She placed plates in front of the couple and leaned over and patted the thin woman on the shoulder, her hand lingering like a caress. Then, walking over to our table, she pointed to a chalk board on the wall. “Gentlemen, my name is Grace. That’s what we have for lunch today. Drinks are tea, homemade cider, lemonade, coffee. Do you need a minute?”

We glanced at the board.

I said, “I see something. Let me try the scrapple sandwich. And I’ll have tea.”

The woman laughed, a throaty, rich sound. “Do you know what scrapple is?”

“Like North Carolina livermush, right?”

“You do know. Ours is home grown, put up right here in the valley. In the sandwich it’s fried with a slice of onion, cheese, mayonnaise and mustard. The bread is homemade, sliced thick.”

Bob snorted. “Thank you Grace. I’ll stick to the BLT. And I’ll have tea.”

The couple at the next table resumed their low conversation. Occasionally there was the sound of a fork striking a plate. They did not seem hungry. At one point the man reached across the table and touched the woman’s hand. I imagined that it must be like silk or parchment. She patted his hand on top of her hand.

Paws. That’s what Brenda and I called hands.

Bob and I talked about this and that. About the ghost town of Thurmond where we would go this afternoon. About Beckley where we had reservations tonight in a Hampton Inn and where tomorrow we would visit a coal mine.

In 10 minutes or so Grace brought our food. I was right. Scrapple was like livermush, but not quite as rich. Bob said his BLT was good.

Leaving our table Grace disappeared into the back of the store. She walked like a ballet dancer or an Indian. The couple stared into the shadows. In a few minutes Grace came back out. Looking at the thin woman, but speaking to both of them, she said, “Would you like to look around?”

Before the man could say anything the thin woman said, “Yes.”

They all walked to the back. The thin woman moved carefully, as if she might break. I heard voices then it was quiet.

Grace returned. Stopping at our table, she said, “Would you like a fried apple pie? The church ladies made them last night.”