Clem lived all his life in the mountains of southwestern Virginia, and he didn’t know what to make of all this talk about a Depression. He, his wife and kids got along very well, thank you, in their two-room cabin up in the holler. He planted a patch of tobacco that paid off the damn banker every year, raised a passel of pigs that made good eating every fall, and cooked up the best moonshine for miles around. His wife tended garden so they always had taters, maters and squash, not to mention corn needed for the moonshine. The kids helped their ma with the garden and took care of the chickens. A good person right with the Lord shouldn’t want more than that.
One day he was down at the country store talking around the cracker barrel when the preacher’s wife piped up that she didn’t know if she liked the idea of this brand new theater in downtown Abingdon.
“Dadburned movie pictures ain’t worth talking about.” Clem spat some tobacco juice in a corner, which was shiny and black from years of being spit in.
“Well, Clem, I ain’t talking about no movie picture show,” the preacher’s wife replied in a huff. “It’s like real-life people standing on a stage and spouting lines, prancing about, like they thought they was something fancy.”
“Oh, they’ve been doing that for years and years.” Clem spat again. “They’ve been doing that before there warn’t no motion picture shows. Don’t you know no better than that?”
“Of course, I do, Clem. But I don’t think it’s fitting for a man to stand in front of a bunch of women and children with sweat rolling off him, so close you can see it dripping off his nose. With all that pomade in his hair, glistening black.” The preacher’s wife fluttered her eyes and fanned herself. “Now what was it I was saying?”
“You was all upset by those men sweating on the stage.” Clem chuckled. “I don’t know why you’re getting so hot and bothered about it all. Nobody around here is fool enough to waste their money to go see it.”
“That’s just it, Clem,” the preacher’s wife said. “They ain’t charging no money at all. You bring in a chicken or a ham shank and you get in to see the show.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Clem spat a really big wad this time; in fact, he didn’t have any tobacco left in his mouth. He might as well go on home.
“But that’s the truth Clem,” the old storekeep Zeke interjected as he lumbered around the counter with his broom. “It’s these damnyankees from New York. They can’t get no work up there so they opened up this theater down here, and they do their playacting for food and might near everything else.”
“Is that so?” Clem took a snot rag out of his pocket and wiped his mouth. “They’re going to starve to death. Ain’t nobody with no common sense that’ll waste a perfectly good chicken on such foolishness.”
“They got a full house every night and two shows on Saturday and Sunday,” Zeke explained.
“Defaming the Lord’s day like that. Me and the ladies Bible league are planning to march with signs and scream Scripture at the sinners as they go in next Sunday,” the preacher’s wife announced.
“Maybe some menfolk should go on Friday night first so you ladies don’t make yourselves look silly,” Clem said, halfway to himself. “I got a leftover cured ham hanging in the barn.”
On Friday night, Clem showed up at the Barter Theater in downtown Abingdon with the cured ham tucked up under his arm. He didn’t think it would be right for the wife and kids be exposed to all this foohfrah until he saw it first. The theater people seemed right glad to see him and his ham and took him to a seat down front. They told him the name of the play was Hamlet. Now that might be right funny—a play about baby pigs.
When the curtain came up, Clem was disappointed. It wasn’t about no baby pigs at all. He could hardly make out what they were saying. It was English all right, but not decent English like they talked in the mountains, but that there fancy English spoke in England. The best he could make out it was about this here college boy who came home to find his daddy dead and his mama married his uncle, and he’s mad because they ate up all the food from the funeral at the wedding, and he didn’t get nothing to eat. Then this college boy sees his daddy’s ghost who tells him his uncle killed him so he could marry the mama.
By this time Clem was fidgeting in his chair something bad. He never had no use for college boys in the first place. If he wanted something to eat he should have gone out and shot a couple of squirrels and made himself a stew. Another thing this college boy did wrong was that he had this real pretty girl who wanted to marry him, but he went off and told her to become a nun. And that poor girl got so upset about being told to become a nun that she jumped in the creek and drowned herself.
Clem would have just gotten up and stormed out of that there theater, but they had set him down in the front row, and he didn’t think it was proper for him to stand up and keep everybody else from seeing the show. It didn’t make no sense at all. At the girl’s funeral, the college boy’s mama says “Sweets to the sweet.” That college boy jumped down in the grave thinking he was gonna get to eat the candy he thought his mama had thrown on the casket, but it turned out she threw in flowers instead. Clem decided the boy wouldn’t have been so moody if his mama just fed him proper.
The end of the show didn’t make any better sense. The college boy and the girl’s brother started a fight right there in front of everybody, and his mama got so upset they’re going to get blood on the good rug that she poisoned herself. When she dropped dead, the college boy decided to take it out on his uncle and ran him through with his sword. Then he dropped dead, probably because he never did get a decent meal through the whole play.
As he was walking out, Clem decided he was going to make a stink over this theater thing.
“Where’s my ham?” he bellowed out.
An older fellow came out of a little office and grabbed Clem by the elbow and took him through another door. Clem decided he got seen to real fast because this man didn’t want the other people to get the idea of asking for their stuff back too. Pretty soon Clem found himself behind the stage where they kept all the people who had put on the play.
“That was the worst dang thing I ever done see,” Clem announced. “I want my ham back.”
Those people looked awful worried, and they stepped away from this table with all the vittles that had been brought in that night. There Clem saw the college boy with a big chunk of his ham hanging out of his mouth.
“Oh forget it,” Clem said as he turned for the door. “He needs it more than I do.”

He sat in the corner of the restaurant sipping on his glass of white wine, his eyes transfixed on the blonde in the sleeveless white dress, and considered his options.
For several weeks, he traded e-mails with her. They found each other on a website for connoisseurs of fine living. They both liked clothing made of silk, Egyptian cotton and cashmere. The textures were caressing and soothing. She, in particular, liked fur, no matter what others might think. He agreed he preferred lambskin and suede leather. Each expressed a disdain for beer, preferring a good wine or blended whiskey. The best beef was Kobe, and the best seafood was lobster, although those foods should be enjoyed in moderation. They wanted their tailored clothing to drape properly. And they both loved old, classic movies.
What a coincidence it was when they discovered they both lived in the same quaint little town on the outskirts of a major metropolitan center. Where would be a better place to live? Lovely old homes with endless restoration possibilities, an art community, antique shops and intimate cafes. And an international airport an hour’s drive away which could spirit them to Europe at a moment’s notice. Finally, they agreed to meet for each thought the other must be as fascinating in person as in e-mail.
“I know,” she wrote, “let’s meet at 512 South for lunch on Thursday. It’s my favorite bistro.”
“How will I know you?” he replied.
“Well, I’m blonde and have blue eyes. I’ll be wearing my white sleeveless Vera Wang and ermine stole. How will I know you?”
After a brief hesitation he wrote, “I look like a movie star of a few years ago.”
“How exciting! Who?”
“I’ll be the only familiar face in the place. Trust me.”
Arriving early, he ordered a glass of Reisling and finished reading his newspaper. When she entered the café, he knew immediately it was her—white dress, fur wrap and the face of an angel. Sitting up he smiled, anticipating her recognition. She looked around the room until she stopped to stare. Walking up to a table, she leaned over and smiled.
“Well, hello there,” she said in a purr.
A thin young man in a T-shirt and torn blue jeans looked up.
“When you said you looked like a movie star from a few years ago, you were right. Except it was more than a few years ago. You look just like James Dean.”
He watched the young man’s face. A glimmer of a shadow crossed it, before he smiled broadly.
“Sure, babe. James Dean. I get that all the time.”
She slid into the chair next to him, cupped her chin into her slender palm, and stared at the young man who grinned back.
The man with the Reisling considered walking to the table and telling her he was the man she was looking for, but discretion warned against it. He should have been more specific, he told himself. He should have said the movie star he looked like was Gene Wilder. Back in his day Gene Wilder was somewhat romantic, in a funny, poignant sort of way.
“Hey, babe, I’m waiting on my burger plate. You want one too?”
“Sounds yummy.”
“Want a beer too?”
“More yummy.”
Well, she misrepresented herself, too, he thought, as he finished his wine and motioned to the waiter to deliver his check. He smiled as he watched her giggle and scoot her chair closer to the young man with the intriguing smile and T-shirt. The next time he went to the website for fine living he would be more forthright about which movie star he resembled.
Another time. Perhaps another website.

There I was under my tent canopy telling stories at the farm as visitors went through the five-acre sunflower maze. A group of young adults came up and sat down.
They were in that delightful age between twenty and early thirties when no one could accurately tell how old they were. All of them were about the same height, had straight brown hair and wide friendly brown eyes. Their faces were a pleasant olive color with no blemishes. They could have been of Hispanic background, Italian or from the Middle East. They had pleasant smiles and impeccably clean white shirts and pants.
One young man, who acted as the leader, took out his smart phone.
“Do you tell your own stories or something else?” he asked, revealing perfectly straight white teeth.
“I tell stories I make up and sometimes I steal stories from people who have been dead for a long time. Right now I’m telling Native American legends.”
“I like to ask questions,” the leader said, holding up his phone, ready to punch the record button.
“Oh sure.” I was hoping they would notice I had a basket with a sign “Storytelling Fund.”
“How old are you?” he asked in an even, very respectful tone.
“I’m sixty-nine years old. I’ll be seventy in October.” I didn’t mind telling my age. I was proud to have made it to be an old man. Besides, if I were agreeable enough, maybe they’ll leave a dollar tip. I remembered when a dollar was still a lot of money.
“Where did you grow up?”
“In Gainesville, Texas, north of Dallas and Fort Worth. It was a small town.”
“What was it like growing up?”
For some reason, I decided to talk about legal discrimination in the South of the 1950s and 1960s. I described segregated schools, whites-only restrooms and colored water fountains.
“I was so young I thought black people were getting free Kool-Aid and we weren’t.”
All the lovely young people gently laughed. This was odd because when I had told that joke before, people acted like they didn’t get it or if they did get it they didn’t think it was funny.
I told them I was called a N-word lover because I didn’t understand why black kids had to go to separate schools.
The lovely ladies in the group wrinkled their brows and murmured in sympathy.
At that point I said I didn’t know why I decided to talk about the cultural situation back at that time. I usually tried not to say anything that could be interpreted as being political. If I upset anyone, they wouldn’t leave a tip and I needed the gas money to get home.
“That’s all right.” The leader nodded and smiled. “We like to learn things.”
I became aware of an awkward pause in the conversation. Since they enjoyed asking me questions, I thought I’d ask them a few things. “So, are you visiting from another country?”
“No, we live here,” he replied.
“Then you must be from Tampa Bay?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “Orlando.”
Okay, I told myself. Nobody from Orlando, which was in the middle of the state of Florida, would ever think of themselves as being a part of Tampa Bay any more than they would say they were from Cape Canaveral. It was at this time I officially became uncomfortable.
“Are you doing a college research project or something?”
“No, we just like to ask questions.”
“How nice.” I smiled, thinking of the many Twilight Zone episodes where strange new people in town just liked to ask questions.
How the hell do I get rid of these weirdos?”
Maybe there was something wrong with me instead of them. Maybe I’ve watched too many Twilight Zone reruns. In either case, I felt it best to go into my usual spiel to prod visitors politely to move on.
“Thank you very much for dropping by and visiting with me. I hope you’ve enjoyed your day at Sweetfields Farm. Be sure to ride our tractor tricycles, shoot the potato cannon, play the water pump game and watch the pig races. You might also want to come back next October when we have the cornfield maze and pumpkin patch. I’ll be telling a new batch of stories then.”
The leader put away his cell phone. They stood and shook hands with me. Nice, firm, friendly handshakes from attractive young people with nice friendly smiles. They each put a dollar in my tip basket.
That night I told my son about my close encounter of the third kind as he was dressing for his night shift job. I asked him if I awoke in the middle of the night and found these young people dressed in white standing in an iridescent glow in the middle of my bedroom should I go with them to their spaceship.
“Sure,” he replied, “why not? But leave your credit card with me.”