Tommy Yon and his tiny peanut shack, a retro fixture on US Route 74 in North Carolina. You want to meet a dying breed of country entrepreneurs and folk philosophers? Stop here.
Boiled peanuts? You’ve got to be kidding. Unless you’re south of the Mason Dixon line, chances are this sounds, well…nuts.
“Pull over!” she shouts. Born in Atlanta, she’d been obsessed with finding a bag of boiled peanuts, a childhood treat, since we drove north from the Atlanta International Airport. Being a Yankee, the only peanuts I ever knew about were the roasted ones you bought at the circus and the ballpark. Who the heck would boil them?
If we hadn’t taken a detour to drive through the Smoky Mountain National Forest, we would have never seen this little peanut outpost.
Driving on the winding two-lane road in the deep recesses of the park’s Nantahala Gorge, the tree canopy is so thick that sunlight pierces the forest in pencil like slivers. The Cherokee called this valley “The Land of the Noonday Sun.” The only moments the sun might pierce the canopy is when it’s directly overhead.
The Nantahala River roars alongside. No way a road could be constructed anywhere else in the rocky canyon with hills steeper than your average roller coaster ride. The Nantahala River is a magnet for kayakers and about a dozen rafting companies that rent rafts and offer raft rides down the rapids. It’s rated as Class II and III rapids, suitable for families. Its gnarly sections are challenging enough for the US Olympic Team to use for training.
Heading northeast to Asheville, North Carolina, on US 19/74, the road and the river part ways. I blink in the sunlight as the road climbs up to a four-lane highway. Miles and miles of forest perch on the shoulders of steep mountains like a bunch of Appalachian brothers standing side by side for a big family portrait.
But there in the middle of an uninhabited stretch of mountain highway was the sign in black and white hand painted letters. BOILED PNUTS.
Set in a clearing at the foot of a steep wooded hillside is an open-ended tumbledown shack surrounded by a few jalopies, trucks, a yellow kayak, and a small air-stream trailer. Old license plates, faded photographs and items that may have been useful once are tacked onto plywood walls. Two blackened stainless steel pots sit atop an old cast iron wood fired stove. All of it, including two ramshackle low-slung houses behind the shack, has seen better days. The whole scene could double as a movie set for Appalachia.
A minute after we entered, a friendly man, slight build, gray moustache, sporting a “Team Chevy” T shirt and baseball cap, makes his way inside from a shack behind the stand.
A few pleasantries are exchanged, money changes hands, a quart of boiled peanuts are purchased. The whole transaction could have taken five minutes, A few questions later it turned into an amazing story of American entrepreneurship.
Boiled peanuts are the treat but owner Tommy Yon is the show. Tommy has realized that he’s a brand, the kind of scrappy old time entrepreneur connected to mountain culture. He recognizes that tourists are intrigued with the lure of boiled peanuts, want to know how it’s done, something about the man who does it and he dishes it out. Before you know it, a conversation begins to boil like those peanuts he cooks up every day.
“Tommy Yon, Dutch and Irish,” he says. “How old do you think I am?”
“Sixty six,” says I.
“See this cash register? It was made in 1942, same year I was born,” he says with a twinkle in his eyes. “I’ve been boiling and selling peanuts for 34 years.”
Tommy is a bit of an institution.” I’ve made friends with people from all over the world, I get letters from them. Some of them find their way back here when they return.” No surprise. If he feels you’re interested, he connects with easy charm.
When he was a kid in the Florida Panhandle his uncle grew peanuts and Tommy helped him with deliveries. When he was nine, Tommy's uncle said take some peanuts into town and try to sell them. Between that and shining shoes, the kid got the feel for making enough money to make a living. Gives you an idea of how he would make his way through the world on his own terms for the rest of his life. He drove a big rig through these mountains for years.
When he hit 35, he had a yearning to go back to his roots, legumes, actually, and made a go of selling boiled peanuts. He set up shop at a friend’s rafting company in the Nantalaha Gorge. Twenty-seven years later, he moved his business to the state highway a few miles north of the park. This is his last stop.
Tommy was married twice, has one son with his first wife (17 years) and two with his present wife (34 years). Tommy is one of those people who, between asking you questions, tells you little bits of his own history. "My wife likes to collect knick-knacks to sell here but my philosophy is if you can't eat it I won't sell it.” A small selection of jams, jellies, and honey, covered with fine dust from cars and trucks passing by, sit atop makeshift shelves.
"I'm worried about my wife," Tommy says, " She has colon cancer." I got some of my own problems, he says, feels like there is needles in my feet when I stand too long.”
"What brings you out this way?" he asks.
When we tell them we are heading for a wedding in Asheville and hope to listen to some music and do some dancing, Tommy says, “I used to play guitar and fiddle, got pretty good at it as a session musician, played some with Buck Owens and Marty Robbins. My name don't appear on the records as a session player but I was there." He holds out his weather-beaten hands, "I got carpal tunnel so I can't play no more."
A faded photo of Marty Robbins is pinned to the wall. And the photo of the man in the kayak? Tommy's son who won a silver medal winner by training on the Nantahala River.
"I put two boys through college selling these peanuts," he says with quiet pride. So much for stereotyping people around here. By now, my jaw is resting on my chest.
Tommy grows his own peanuts somewhere North Carolina but for the most part he buys raw peanuts in 50 pound bags, a few of which are piled next to two big blackened cast-iron pots over a black wood stove in back of the shack.
"I buy land as investment," he says. “One of my sons is living on some of that land now. Another one helps me out here. I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to keep this up myself.” I can’t picture this man sitting in a rocking chair watching the traffic whiz by but that day will come.
Everything about Tommy is low-key. If President Obama had stopped at his little shack last week, Tommy might get around to telling you sooner or later with the same tone of voice in which he might talk about the weather.
When it comes to boiling peanuts, though, he's damn fervent about how it needs to be done. “You got to keep watch over them as they boil, add just enough salt to give them some tang and cook them in small batches,” he says. “No telling how long they've been around when you buy them in town,” he says, “and they won't taste so good.”
As we turn to leave, Tommy presses two CDs in my traveling companion’s hand. “You’ve been kind to me, and I’d like to give you these. I played some with Rob Mashburn. My name’s not on the list but I played guitar and fiddle with him sometimes. I think you’ll like them.”
I may forget the taste of those boiled peanuts but will never forget the feeling that we’d just been given a gift that Tommy wanted to pass on, a piece of the Carolina culture that courses through his veins.
Tommy is a perfect example of what happens when you make assumptions. All I expected was a five-minute stop to purchase a signature snack favored by people of South Carolina, Georgia, northern Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and to a lesser extent, North Carolina and Virginia. What I got was a chance to meet a man who has leveraged his self-reliance, resilience, and country wisdom into a life of amazing breadth and quiet success... a one-of-a-kind ambassador.
By the time I drove away, I started thinking of reasons to come back some day…soon.
++++++++++++++
The owner of this roadside stand, his philosophy, stories, pride in product, ability to connect with all sorts of visitors, makes it a memorable stop and a worthwhile destination if you're within range.
Tommy has some roasted and spicy peanuts but the ones you need to pop in your mouth are a freshly boiled quart of peanuts like the ones below.
Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
Doctors and Empathy: An Uneven Balance
Can empathy be taught?
I’ll bet every one of you has walked out of a doctor’s office and wondered whether you connected with your doctor, especially if he/she’s a surgeon.
With way too many surgeons, I’ve felt that they’re busy devising a plan of action while I’m talking to them rather than listening through the answers I give to their questions. They show interest in a solution but not necessarily in me. I registered with them as a problem to be solved. The doctors I feel connected to offer me options.
We’ve all had experience with the ones who actually listen and the ones who register what we say while we’re saying it, devise a plan of action then send us on our way. We leave with hope but not satisfaction.
My kind of doctor might lean toward me, keep eye contact, repeat something I’ve said, ask more questions and use what I say to develop a plan. My PCP usually ends our appointments with, “We’re here for you. Call us if you need to.” That doesn’t guarantee how things are going to work out but it sure makes me feel better.
There are some very qualified doctors that I just won’t revisit because they seem to be arrogant answer-givers and deal with me as a case, not a person.
The idea of showing empathy to demonstrate to patients that their doctor is connecting with them at a human transactional level seems like a no brainer. At most hospitals, it ain’t.
Psychologist Dr. Helen Reiss directs Mass General Hospitals Empathy and Relational Science Program. The program is based on several years of research and data from measured micro-perspiration of the skin, heart rate, and skin temperature of both doctor and patient during appointments.
As a psychologist, she knows that empathy doesn’t come naturally to all of us but has empirical evidence that it can be taught. In 2013, she developed Empathetics, an online, interactive course that trains health care professionals worldwide. Being a people person is not a requisite for being a good surgeon or PCP but it damn well helps.
Empathy comes naturally to many of us. You know when you’re in the presence of anyone who seems to “get you”. Whether it can be taught is an open question. The fact that it’s on the radar screen opens the window to the brave new world for some doctors.
September 16, 2015 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)