Scenes From The Road Side Part One: Ted goes to Forest City, discovers the meaning of "hill folk."

Hop in, fair readers, and be sure to buckle up tight as I whip through many facts about Forest City I discovered while staying there for a wedding. All of this took place in less than fifteen hours between checking in and checking out of the hotel:

*Apparently the hotel's air conditioning system has scented air flow in two settings: weed and crystal meth.

*If you gladly pay the Indian hotel desk clerk in cash, he will give you a two percent discount....so long as you're a guy.

*Wondering where the scented air originated from like we were? Look no further than the next door neighbor with the nappy rat tail of a mullet who was dipping his blistered feet into the dirty pool as we were getting ready to go to the wedding. How dirty was it? It looked like the pool was filled with rancid milk instead of water. As we left, this same dirty homeless looking guy was in the room next to us on the bed with the door propped open. His room mate, who looked like a much rougher version of Jesse Pinkman, was outside the room on his cell phone but as soon as we walked out he hurried back into his room.

*Like most of the other people attending, we got our directions from the wedding site's webpage which specifically said "use our directions, do not mapquest/google them." Who would have guessed they'd give us directions to the wrong part of the property? Imagine our surprise to be going downhill on a one lane gravel road which wound deeper and deeper into the woods. We kept listening for two things: chainsaws and Dueling Banjos.

*Eventually, a friend of ours who had made the same mistake found the site and led us there by cell phone call. Unfortunately, we have now missed the wedding but are just in time for the reception. Luckily, our friends promise us that the wedding stenographer will send us the complete transcript in a few days.

*After the first dance and such, we say our goodbyes and make our way back to the hotel. Our friends, the hillbilly meth heads crack the curtains to see if we're their dealer/the cops. Obviously, we are neither one...we just want out of our monkey suits.

*After sitting around talking in the room for a bit, we all collectively agree that we want some fucking milkshakes. The decision is made to hit the Wendy's we passed on the way to the hotel. We are in the car and down the road in a flash only to discover this must be the only Wendy's on the face of the earth that doesn't have an all night drive thru. Fuck it, Mcdonald's is nearby and they have better milkshake choices anyway.

* "Yeah, could I get a large fry and three Mcflurries please?" "Naw, suga'....our shake machine is down cuz somebody dun went and poured buttermilk into it."

*We laugh, then decide fuck it we'll just go in and get regular food because we are kind of hungry. After much deliberation with the inbred monstrosity behind the counter with the cock eyes and the adult braces on due to the fact that almost every machine seems to be down or else they're out of this or that, we back up and talk amongst ourselves. Ralph asks if he can get a Mcgangbang primarily to fuck with the girl (?) working, and the look on her face is just priceless as she goes "wuuuuuut?!" I think she may have shit her pants a little bit as she said that, scrunching her face and furrowing her unibrow in an attempt to think.

*As we are talking out whether or not to just go to a third place, a cop walks in and promptly goes behind the counter. As if that weren't odd enough, he walks over to a fryer and takes down a thing of mcnuggets and drops it into it and begins cooking them up himself. A few minutes go by and he brings them up, drops them into one of those boxes they come in and says thanks and walks from behind the counter to a table and starts eating. We bullshit our way through an order immediately, look at each other and say "Let's get the fuck out of here," then we do exactly that.

*Once back in the room, we all slowly but surely discover that we are fairly certain our food wasn't even cooked....all rock hard fries and cold chicken. If only we had asked the cop to handle it, we may be better off right now.

*The hotel claims we get HBO, but we discover so few channels once we cut on the TV that we are just amazed we get PBS. Cheap Trick are on Austin City Limits, awesome.

*A knock comes at the door at around one in the morning, and it is here that we discover the peephole is jammed with dirt so you have to squint to see. We are terrified it's the meth head neighbors, but upon squinting we see it's just our friend, Mike. Our hearts don't stop beating in our throats for an hour.

*Despite the lights working being plugged into the outlets which I remove to charge my phone, I don't discover one that will work for it for something like thirty minutes in the room.

*In the morning, I discover that while the website said each room came with complimentary coffee and a machine what they should have said was "complimentary CUP of coffee" as it is one of those single serving machines.

*Denny's is only moderately busy when we get there for breakfast, but it still takes them forty five minutes to bring us our order.

*At one point I step out to smoke while we're still waiting for our food and I discover that the lame claw machine just outside the door with only five prizes in it contains a copy of National Lampoon's Vegas Vacation....that is the most spot on movie review I've seen in some time.

*Across the street from the Denny's is a sporting good's store ran out of what looks like a bunch of connected single wides called Bubba's.

*We opt to take back roads into Morganton for a more scenic drive before we get to the interstate. This leads to my witnessing this oxymoron somewhere in Linville: a church called Independent Fundamentalist Church.

*At Linville Gorge, where it clearly states next to a little wooden fence to not go passed this point out onto the rocks, we watch as beer gut and peach fuzz mustachioed man steps over said fence to walk out onto the rocks right in front of his visibly upset son. Way to go, dad.

*While there, I notice two different blind people being brought down the trail to the overlook....I guess to LISTEN to the gorge and waterfalls?

*Going into Morganton becomes an impromptu tour of every mom and pop gas station we see as I suddenly have to piss really bad. I suspect it can be blamed squarely on that shitty complimentary cup of coffee in the hotel. Every last one either doesn't have a bathroom, is closed, or the bathroom is out of order. In this time, I come to notice that Morganton apparently LOVES pot because every single gas station has copies of High Times, Skunk and Weed World. As a matter of fact, the last gas station in this tour (that winds up having a bathroom that actual works) not only has this magazines out on the rack where anyone can get them...it also has every porno magazine you can think of on the BOTTOM shelf at eye level with any child. God bless America.

Join me again for our next Scenes From The Roadside in a week from now as I venture out to Raleigh for the Hopscotch Music Festival.

Who writes this shit?!

These two passages are ripped word for word (except for the case of names, out of respect for the deceased) from two actual obituaries featured in the local paper in the last three months:

"Bobby wanted nothing more in life than to be a pilot, and had logged plenty of flight hours in his thirteen years. He had never flown solo until the day he completed a non stop flight to Heaven."


"Julie completed her victorious battle with cancer on August 19th."