Redneck Games: You might be a redneck … if you enjoy this column
July 18, 2002 — When I stepped out of my air-conditioned car, the heat hit me like a right hook. The sun was searing and inescapable. Everything, everyone seemed to be surrounded by an abstract haze, kind of like the watercolor paintings that rise from hot highways in the summertime.
I was standing in a crowded [...]
Clogging: A toe-tappin’ good time
April 25, 2002 — Keith Brady’s feet went off like firecrackers. His knees were loose hinges — swinging back and forth, up and around. Everything below was a blur.
Perhaps Brady was a marionette, I thought. Perhaps someone, or something, was pulling at the strings from up above.
He made the unnatural appear natural. He made music [...]
Mountain Dancing: Good music, good people, good fun
December 27, 2001 — Everything in the mountains is laid back. Even the dancing.
“You don’t have to know anything,” John Kelley said to the crowd in the basement of the old Dahlonega Baptist Church two Saturday nights ago. “You can’t make any mistakes.”
Advertised as “an evening of old-timey mountain dancing,” the monthly gathering had the [...]