On the Fourth of July, we take pause in our day to day activities and remember a very special birthday – Neil Simon’s. The famous playwright penned such classics as The Odd Couple and Biloxi Blues, and he’s fortunate enough to have shared his birthday with other celebrities, like screen actress Eva Marie Saint, who starred alongside Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, and the United States of America, which starred with Great Britain in The Revolutionary War. Of all the above mentioned celebrities, the United States seems to have reached some of the most unprecedented success on the world stage and screen, but still no Oscar. But this nation has heart, determination and more than enough skills to defeat Transformers in the box office, as its history indicates. Your Mountain Times staff likes history and this nation, so here are some of our favorite moments in its history:.


Scott Nicholson: Freedom Fries with a Side of Liberty

Thanks to Freedom Fries, Mr. Potato Head is now a certified freedom-lover. In other words, he loves our freedom.

Nothing in American history has so stirred the coals of my patriotic fervor as much as the rallying cry of “Freedom Fries!” We need to protect our precious cholesterol-clogging liberty from the infidels who mass at our borders and question our right to steep tubers in vats of boiling oil.

The very grids of our wire baskets could crumble if we deigned lend an ear to the subversive questioning of our solemn, sovereign duty to deep fry. ’Tis our manifest destiny as the most enlightened, democratic nation in the world to flex our spudly might and unfurl our banner that flaps high and proud in the breeze, much like the julienne (excuse me, but isn’t that word French, too? If so, I propose a Constitutional amendment to forever let it be ordained “crinkle-cut”) style chopping of starchy roots. If we can’t defeat the enemy at the gate, how we can we long stand strong when the target shifts to that most sacred pinnacle of civilization, the tater tot?




Bill Greene: I Believe in Miracles

An American mircale... on ice!

The year was 1980, and I was a scruffy 15 year old boy who meandered around the golf course we lived near, selling unwitting Floridians golf balls they had hit into the woods on the previous turn around the course. I was young enough to embrace the novelty of a life with little or no responsibility, but old enough to look around and see the pain that most “adults” were feeling.

America had 52 of its own in the custody of Iranian students, which turned into a 444 day debacle, and helped to define what most of us remember as the father of the failed presidency. Interest rates were out of control, and the only “legal” satisfaction available to most was an opportunity to give the now dying disco craze a passing kick in the teeth. But the year wore on and as the winter Olympics approached Americans learned of a hockey coach named Herb Brooks, who had hand picked college players to represent the country.

Few gave us a chance at all, and even the most ambitious of dreamers dared not expect a victory against the mighty Ruskies (the Soviet Union team). After the exhibition game where the Russian team cleaned our collective clock, most Americans stuffed their hands back into their pockets and returned their heads to the lowered level.

Still, we couldn’t help but to tune in to what was at the time, the only glimmer of hope for a return to glory for the ol’ red, white, and blue. As the team rallied around Coach Brooks, we saw them win their way to the finals, and even though it wasn’t the final game, the meeting with the dreaded Russian team caused much hand-wringing and nail-biting.

In one of the wildest competitions in Olympic history, the world watched as the true spirit of the U.S.A. provided the fuel for an unlikely vehicle to destiny, one in which the whole country had now hitched a ride, and with those now famous words uttered in the final seconds of the game, “Do you believe in miracles?” the collective we know as America was suddenly awash in the much belated afterglow that comes with the restoration of that thing we were missing most: Pride.

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Melanie Davis: Henry Hatfield is the Real McCoy

Melanie’s favorite politician, Henry Hatfield, governor of West Virginia, 1912-1917. He also had a keen taste in hats.

I usually read several books at a time, both because of my short attention span and the migratory patterns of my day. I don’t think of summer as “reading season,” since that’s probably for people who read one piece of bestseller oatmeal a year, something they can consume while doing something else like scoping out people on the beach. Right now, I am reading ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King, in which vampires infest a sleepy New England village. King is one of America’s best writers in any genre.

I recently finished the witty crime tale “The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart” by Lawrence Block, though that was on videotape from the library so I’m not sure that counts as a “read.” I’m also reading my friend Deborah Leblanc’s novel Morbid Curiosity, which is an evil-twin chiller set in the Louisiana bayou. Almost each day I dip into “365 Tao” to get an inspirational message, and I am always browsing the too-many books in my house or reading inane banter on the Internet. But mostly I read the Mountain Times and enjoy being a well-informed and well-employed member of the community.


Caroline Monday: Women’s Suffrage

Suffragettes Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton would likely tell Caroline, “You’re quite welcome.”

As the election draws near, an appropriate moment in American history to be thankful for is when women won the right to vote. Though many states granted women the vote previously, the right was not official on a national level until 1920.

The year 1920 – that was a mere 88 years ago. There are people who are still around who were alive when this decision was passed. Within a single lifetime the right to vote has gone from something that was denied women to something many take for granted.

To all my fellow women out there, think about this for a moment. Think about how easy it is for us to walk up to the polls and cast our ballot. One hundred years ago, a woman trying to do the same thing would probably have been arrested.

If you start with the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, it took activists more than 70 years to win this right for women. It took them 70 years to convince enough people that voting was a responsibility women could handle and of which they were worthy.

It’s inconceivable today to think that women would be so blatantly denied what we consider an inalienable right, but it wasn’t so long ago that we were. Thanks Susan B. Anthony.