April is (Fill in the Blank) Month!

April is my all time favoritest month of the year. Not only does it (hopefully) signal the end of wintry weather in the High Country, but it is also the month of my birthday, the month when my alma mater won its last three NCAA Basketball Championships (in ’82, ’93 and, now, ’05), the month when the Hickory Crawdads return to the diamond at L.P. Frans Stadium, and the month when Merle Watson Music Festival rolls around.

Any gardening, biking, hiking or camping attempted before the first of April is foolhardy and could result in the loss of toes due to frostbite. But now that April (Avril, en Francaise) is here, the outdoor possibilities seem endless.

April is also the most popular month for being designated the “official month of” a seemingly endless list of random things.

For example, did you know that April is National Irritable Bowel Syndrome Awareness Month? That, in my opinion, is an odd way of wording it. If you’re not “aware” of your I.B.S. for an entire month, you probably don’t have much to worry about.

April is also National Daffodil Month, National Poetry (both rhyming and that other inferior style preferred by college English majors) Month, National Autism Month, National Fitness Month, National Hans Christian Andersen Month, National Kite Flying Month (apparently stolen from March), National Straw Hat Month, National Southern Belle Month, and National Soft Pretzel Month, among very many other things.

I swear I’m not making this up. I’m not sure why soft pretzels, their vendors and avid fans seem to need an entire month to celebrate their existence, but apparently they do. And why does our country have a National Hans Christian Andersen month? A native of Denmark, Andersen died in 1875 without so much as visiting the United States. I doubt that the Danish have a month celebrating Bruce Springsteen. (To tell you the truth, I know very little about Danish people. I assume they invented the pastry known as the Danish, but I could be wrong.)

I think we should do something positive with the month and make April “National Tip Your Waitress Better Month.” For an entire month we should pay homage to these women who keep the coffee coming and the biscuit basket full by leaving them twenty-percent-or-better on the table when depart.

Why not? What is usually the first occupation that little girls take notice of? Waitressing. Countless professional parents have been appalled to learn that their little fast-tracking seven-year-old has decided to be a waitress when she grows up. I think it is the snappy aprons and the lure of quick tax-free dough that entices them. Just putting these yuppie parents’ brains into a tailspin and making them envision their kid skipping college for a chance to sling omelets at a roadside diner is worth giving waitresses their own month.

Waitresses have been immortalized in songs by Tom Waits and Warren Zevon and were the subject of a contentious debate in Quentin Tarrantino’s classic film Reservoir Dogs. How cool is that?

Here in the South waitresses sometimes call you “Hon” or “Shug,” as in “You want some cider vinegar with those collard greens, Shug?” Up North, I’m afraid to report, they don’t even serve pre-sweetened iced tea, let alone give you unlimited free refills. Perhaps scientists will someday find out why iced tea sweetened at the table with little packets of sugar doesn’t taste nearly as good as the pre-sweetened kind. Until then I’ll just have to live in the South.

So remember to tip your waitress handsomely this April. Don’t be surprised if they pay you back with extra biscuits and a flirty wink guaranteed to make your day.

April News

April 2005 will most likely be remembered for the death of Pope John Paul II and for North Carolina finally approving a state lottery.

There’s a lot of people out there talking about what the Pope’s lasting legacy will or will not be. Some are praising him for driving communism out of Eastern Europe while others are criticizing him for not doing enough to promote women in the Catholic Church.

I think he will be remembered most for having visited followers in 128 different countries—that’s more than all the previous popes combined! Before JP2, Popes were these mysterious—albeit nattily dressed figures—holding sway beyond the well-fortified walls of the Vatican. After JP2 you would be honored yet not surprised if he came to the High Country and had lunch at Boone Drug.

And he never sold out the Catholic Church for political reasons. He met with George W. Bush but made it clear he was against the war in Iraq. He met with Fidel Castro but made it clear the Cuban people were overdue for some basic political and religious freedoms. In a world where leaders of all stripes gauge what they will say by measuring the prevailing popular opinion, he was a model of consistency and human dignity. RIP JP2.

Last week the North Carolina House voted 61-59 to approve a lottery bill in our state (Our local representatives, John Garwood and Gene Wilson, voted against it). There is talk that it might be approved in the Senate by an even wider margin.

In a way it makes sense to introduce a state lottery because all four of our border states now have some kind of lottery. Estimates are that annual proceeds from a state lottery will be in the neighborhood of $4 million. The current plan is for 50% of the proceeds to be used for new school construction, 25% for Need-based scholarships, and 25% for the General Assembly “to further the goal of providing enhanced educational opportunities.”

Whatever happens, North Carolina needs to keep a close eye on the business of actually running a lottery. The resulting lottery bureaucracy has in many states become much larger more expensive than anticipated and has taken a larger slice of the “proceeds pie” than initially expected. It is, after all, a form of gambling and we shouldn’t be too surprised if it attracts the more unsavory elements of the government workforce. Isn’t Meg Scott Phipps looking for a post-prison job?

If the state is officially going into the gambling business, I would like some of my tax money used to build a horseracing track somewhere in the middle of the state. I think horseracing would attract tourists and the type of gambler who can afford losses more than your average lottery player can. Maybe movies like Seabiscuit have given me a romanticized vision of horseracing, but I’d like to think our state could give us better gambling options than simply the billion-to-one lottery and video poker in Cherokee.