Character in Cassville: We may not have good pizza, but we know a good spark plug when we see one

I was paid the ultimate compliment this week. A friend of mine from Cassville sent a message to me on Facebook asking about how I enjoyed my legal career. After discusssing my daily duties, she replied, "I was shocked to know you became a lawyer. Not because it's hard, but because every lawyer I know is a whiny, whimpy, lying jerk, and none of those words describe you at all." Totally flattered, I thanked her. Sadly, I could not disagree with her indictment of my profession, as I see many lawyers every day that fit that bill. The chances of the average person running into a lawyer that is a "whiny, whimpy, lying jerk" increase every day, as law schools keep churning them out left and right to a world with limited jobs, where the premium shifts from service to the client over to "I gotta get mine." I've often asked myself, after meeting one of these types, "this guy passed the same Bar I did?" Yep, he sure as hell did. So, I see it as my duty to prove to the world that some of us still have decorum, still care about our fellow man, and understood our Oath to mean more than just a license to don silk stockings and ride the elevator of self-importance .

Frankly, every profession, every religion, race, and creed has extreme negative sides. Take this week for example. I had my first encounter with a Hare Krishna member. He started handing me trinkets and a card that said "Peace" with an illustration of Krishna, he blessed me over and over, telling me that he prayed for peace in my life, blah blah blah. I say "blah blah blah" because he immediately asked for a donation, and I replied that I only had a credit card, which was true. His smile disappeared, he jerked his trinkets out of my hand and darted away quickly, ready to con the next person. I tried to let it go, but I could not. In New York, I have learned that confrontation is warranted at a moment like this. You know why I was mad? I was listening to a live version of "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd, enjoying it immensely, when this little ripoff artist accosted me. I said, "Don't interrupt David Gilmour ever again." Like I said, some things just cannot be ignored. Plus, they wear Tennessee orange colored robes, so they automatically join my s**t list just by existing.

There are so many types of people here and I have become immune to the "different" folks that call New York home. A guy wearing an orange mohawk and a tattoo on his face? Not a second look. Yesterday, a woman was walking topless next to Grand Central wearing nothing but jeans and a cowboy hat. I paid her about as much attention as a pigeon pecking at the horse feed next to Central Park. She actually stopped next to a phone booth and adjusted her hat in her reflection off the glass. I guess if you are wearing half of a birthday suit, you want to look your best for your eventual jail visit. Two days ago, one block from my apartment, I watched a homeless man absolutely "dog cuss" (a great Southern term) the padlocked door on the UPS store. I actually stopped for this one, because he was using combinations of foul language that I had never heard in my life and I thought that maybe God actually could strike him dead. He would start walking away, then come back and rip into this padlocked door like it just stolen his Iphone. (Homeless people have Iphones here, no kidding) This procession continued for five minutes until he realized he had more pressing business uptown and walked off for good. As I walked by that door, I almost overheard it talking smack, I swear. You never know in this city.

Cassville has about 8.99 million less people than New York. If you wear an orange mohawk, people will probably stare at you. You will probably be accused of being an atheist, or worse, a Democrat. We have precisely five restaurants and only one that is not located in a truck stop. There are no cabs for hire riding around, you have to call them. Then they show up in a busted 1994 Ford Aerostar, looking half dead and telling you that they don't go past Fairmount. Pizza is not our thing and Papa John's refuses to go past Mac Johnson Road, cutting us off almost completely. Street vendors don't sell pashminas or knock off Louis Vuitton purses, they sell autographed Dale Earnhardt Jr. helmets out of their front yard. The closest version of Times Square? Exit 296 with its truck stops, three hotels (one condemned) and the adult book store. You can see the lights all the way from Adairsville. You want to run through our Central Park and get a taste of history? There's a patch of grass next to Cass Grocery that you could run around about 2,754 times, it has a monument to Lewis Cass for whom the town is named.

However, what we lack in nightlife and activity, we make up for with character. For example:

1) We know what WD-40 can do, it's value is second only to duct tape. How many door hinges, engine parts and bicycle chains did I grease back home? Countless. Plus, you can make an awesome flamethrower with it. God help any fire ants that built a nest in the parking lot at Cass Grocery. We are talking Hiroshima-like conditions for these poor insects while my brother and I danced around them like fools. Why burn just one with a magnifying glass? That's inefficient. People here probably think it's something you file with your taxes.

2) We know Briggs & Stratton, Smith & Wesson, and Allis-Chalmers. We know Dean Durham, Shaw Grigsby and Denny Brauer. People here probably think these are all law firms. I cannot count how many Briggs & Stratton spark plugs I sold at the store and I would run back to the TV because Bill Dance was coming on and I did not want to miss the bloopers.

3) We can talk about pouring concrete, installing drywall, working on a car or hanging shingles for hours. In fact, we can make it into a dramatization. Forget Broadway. Imagine one man in front of Cass Grocery talking to 6 other men drinking coffee.

"So, there's Lamar, he's got the manifold in his hand. He tells Bobby to put the air filter back in, but Bobby can't find it. They get to fightin.." ("get to fightin" is a great Southern term)

The group all looks at each other with an understanding glance, fighting over an air filter....totally worth it. Some of them grumble about the price of air filters, there's a sidebar discussion of Advance Auto, Autozone, and Cass Grocery prices. They all decide they would rather buy from us because they like us, take a sip of coffee and the story continues.

"So, Bobby goes to lookin. He can't find the air filter nowhere. Y'all know how dumb he is. All over the shop, he tears up everything, lookin for this air filter. Sure enough, the damn dog took it and it was tore up all over the yard. Lamar had to go all the way back to Cartersville (4 miles) to get another one."

During this riveting exchange, nobody takes their eyes off the storyteller. They laugh uncontrollably at Lamar's expense, then somebody tells a story about sheetrock falling off the wall at a job. Like old man river, it never stops. (side note: having to go to Cartersville for anything is equivalent to going to Spain. If you have to go outside the county, it might as well be Antartica.)

4) We don't have a homeless problem. Everybody lives somewhere, by God. Since we all claim 5th and 6th cousins and are all 1/32 Cherokee, it's like one big happy family...we just pile into a single wide on Cedar Creek Road, stick a mailbox in the dirt and call it home. I knew one family on Mostellar's Mill Road, on the Cassville/Adairsville/Folsom border, that must have had 56 people living in their house. How do I know? They all wrote me bad checks and had the same address.

5) We don't have a pile of newspapers influencing our political decisions in Cassville. In New York, there's the Daily News, The Times, The Post, The Wall Street Journal, and the AM Metro (and that's just off the top of my head). The Upper West Side is an undesignated area with no real boundaries, yet it has its own weekly newspaper. For you Bartow natives, that's like Rydal having a newspaper. Nobody knows how or when you get to Rydal, you just sort of materialize there. The only magazines that anyone ever asked for at Cass Gorcery were the latest Auto Trader or Georgia Outdoor News. I guess we cared more about the biggest buck taken in Early County and what it scored on the Pope & Young (also not a law firm) rather than what some politician felt about the latest SPLOST proposal.

So there you have it, the 30123 may not have the bright lights, it may not have any restaurants that can get higher than a 73 on the Health Inspection, and we may not be able to get pizza other than DiGiorno from Ingles, but we definitely have a way of life unique to us. I've told New Yorkers, who are in disbelief at the size and quiet nature of my hometown, that we were never bored. Seriously, who would not be entertained by a story about fence staples? Who would not want to watch me burn a cockroach with a WD-40 fueled flamethrower? Who does not want to see a picture of the biggest bream caught in Polk County? As for the homeless guy cussing the padlocked door, if he did that in Cassville, he would be dealt with as nonchalantly as he was on the streets of New York. I could hear them at the store now:

"I bet that sumbitch is from Fairmount."