A few months ago my parents temporarily lost their sanity and decided to purchase property at the top of a mountain in Waynesville, North Carolina. This weekend, we drove up there to meet with builders about putting a house on that land. After 11 hours in the car with my parents, I found myself in a place that makes Stuart, FL look like New York City.

First of all, let me say that all the stereotypes you've heard about people who live in rural areas of the south are completely true. People really do wear overalls and John Deere hats, and they really do speak a language that is unintelligible to everyone who did not grow up in the south. Waynesville, for example, is referred to as "Winesvull" in Southern. My old roommate Bryan, who doesn't have much room to talk since he's from New Jersey (aka The Garbage State), used to say that you could have a PhD in neuroscience but if you talk in a heavy southern drawl you sound like you never got through 3rd grade.

Our property is on Wolfpen Mountain, so named because wolves lived on it before rich city folk came, built winding roads that are inaccessible in the winter, and erected monstrous 4-bedroom eyesores on it. Apparently some other wildlife still live there because there is a huge sign at the entrance to our neighborhood that say "No Hunting". This sign is necessary because Waynesville is the type of place where, upon spotting a deer, the average resident would pull out his rifle and shoot it as a reflexive action. In fact, the one-page sports section of the local newspaper on Friday featured ATV racing as its lead story and hunting as every other story.

The one-page length of the sports section is especially amusing when you consider that the religion section gets two or three pages. I quickly discovered that religion was a big deal in Waynesville when I attempted to find a sports bar to watch the Patriots game on Sunday. Surprisingly I did find one, but like every single other place of business in the entire city, it was closed on Sunday. There is ONE restaurant that is open on Sundays, and because of the lack of competition it was absolutely mobbed. Then there was the storefront that had the phrase "how do you see Jesus?" painted on it next to an image of Our Lord and Savior depicted in used car paint. Like the kind that you use to advertise that your 1986 Pontiac Sunbird has low mileage and AC with neon windshield paint. And the store that featured this fine work of art was a drugstore. Classy.

Second only to religion in the hearts of Waynesville residents is NASCAR. 90% of the people I saw were wearing some sort of auto racing article of clothing featuring the name or number of their favorite driver. Then there was Waynesville's Auto Racing Mecca: a barbecue restaurant called Fat Buddies. Every free square inch of wall space was plastered with some piece of NASCAR memorabilia including, but not limited to, actual hoods of racing cars, race-used tires as picture frames for photos famous drivers, a Dale Earnhardt memorial wall with magazine clippings about his death, actual front bumpers of racing cars, and light fixtures made of wheel rims.

Finally, a few other items spotted around town:

-a bumper sticker (on a pickup truck of course, the vehicle-of-choice in Waynesville) that read "So many cats, so few recipes".

-a store that sold only confederate flags, including one with the word "Redneck" emblazoned on it in giant letters.

-numerous "antique" (read: junk) stores, including one that was selling a giant (at least 6 feet tall) purple elephant and a giant yellow gorilla. I have compiled the following list of businesses that could use these items: miniature golf course.

But thankfully, after four days of "yonder" and "reckon", I have escaped Waynesville and returned to the big city of Stuart, FL: "If You Can Read This, You're Not Old Enough to Live Here".