The city of Hickory

The Hickory Daily Record was recently drawn to my attention, an interesting variant on our own Epsom Guardian (the free, not the grauniad one) which is sometimes delivered to our door. All kinds of fascinating insights into one day in the life of a US citizen there. There was, for example, a body found at a vacant Harris Teeter in Newton yesterday. Had you ever heard of Harris Teeter or Newton before? Or at least this one? And then there was the family which said that the victim in Motel 6 death was in a bad relationship. Who or what is a 'Motel 6'? And last but not least, for the fit and faithful, there was the 'Faithful Steps Run for God', including tailor made bible study, just for you. Contact faithfulstepsic@yahoo.com.

Hickory is a town - maybe a city in US speak - in North Carolina, located just south of Granite Falls on the Catawba River which rises in the Blue Ridge mountains and falls some hundreds of miles later in the Atlantic, just north of Charleston, the town which invented the dance which sometimes appears with Jeeves & Wooster. The river looks to be quite a big deal local issue with lots of dams & lakes along its course and lots of water users & environmentalists locking horns. But I was unable to find any pictures of the falls at Granite Falls, despite the suggestion at http://www.ncwaterfalls.com/ that there were lots of them. The whole subject being one which has caught my eye ever since I came across a water wars book by one Marc Reisner in the charity shop in Whitecross Street (on 1st October 2011 in the other place. Or search for dam).

They may not do Wakehurst Place in the US, but they do have a lot of open space and they do do country club, with the place described at http://www.catawbacc.org/ looking pretty flashy and which 'provides high quality, value oriented facilities and services to meet the social and recreational needs of the families in the area'. At first blush it looks as if anyone can join, but I do wonder whether one has to be the right sort of person. Maybe not quite so exclusive as our RAC club at Epsom used to be (when the R in RAC really did stand for Royal), but maybe they like to see a confirmation certificate and a recent picture before they process your application. Some such places used to be quite fussy about such things.

They also do health insurance with an advertisement quickly putting me in touch with a world where I could live fearless, courtesy of Blue Cross. Lots of pictures of healthy looking outdoor types getting muddied up to encourage me. All of which made me very grateful that we do not yet do the American way of health, although if we leave Cameron and his Eton friends in place for much longer we may get there. They know lots of people who are keen to make lots of wedge out of the health insurance business. Got to meet all those fees at Eton. On the upside, OrthoCarolina Hickory looks a bit more flashy than the comparable facility on the Epsom Hospital site. But is it all flash and fresh flowers, never mind about the health, a charge sometimes levied at BUPA establishments?

All in all an entertaining read. To be found at http://www.hickoryrecord.com/. I wonder if we have anything like it here in the UK.