John B. Marek

I saw a sign along the highway driving from my office to the homestead today, “Eclipse 8/21 Prepare for Traffic Delays.” Say what? How could an eclipse possibly affect traffic? The North Carolina Piedmont where I live and work is close to but not directly in the path of totality. My office in Wadesboro, where I’ll be that day, will experience 97% of the eclipse. It’s not the loss of sunlight that will impact traffic, though. It’s the millions of people who will be making the two hour drive south to Columbia and Greenville to witness the full eclipse. Honestly, I’m a little surprised by the hype the eclipse is generating nationally. Sure, a total eclipse is a twice-ish in a lifetime event, but as Lovey Howell famously said, “December 14th only comes once a year so we like to celebrate it.” Of course, as a modern, sophisticated society (certain recent events notwithstanding) we understand that the eclipse is just a matter of interplanetary physics and the odd coincidence that our u...

There are no shortage of blog posts dedicated to the fads of the 60's and 70's; tie-dye, pet rocks, mood rings, etc. But in order to be a "fad" those items had to be widely popular, even if just for a short period of time. I decided instead to write about things I remember from the late 60's and early 70's that most people will have no recollection of; obscure products that never gained enough traction to be widely or fondly remembered. Cap'n Crunch's Ship Shake This product resides so far back in my memory that when I started researching this article, I wasn't entirely sure it was a real thing. But, sure enough, Cap'n Crunch's Ship Shake was a powdered "liquid cereal" drink made from oat flour... If that's hard to get your arms around, just imagine a Slim-Fast shake with lots and lots of added sugar. It was on grocers' shelves for just a couple of years in the late 60's and came in three flavors: Chocolate, Choco...

Around this time each year, there is a noticeable shift in the mainstream, and everyone from Walmart to the media to sports talk radio wants you to believe summer is over. Swimsuits and lawn chairs are on the deep discount aisle, magazine ads tout the new Fall fashions and the NFL is back in training camp. But you know what? Summer isn't over, not by a long shot. Sure, it's only a couple of weeks until the kids are back in school, but is that really even the end? When I was a kid, school didn't start back until summer was over; after Labor Day. My senior year in high school was the first year our school reported back before Labor Day, and it seemed like we got cheated out of those last couple of precious summer days. So, here we are, a full 38 days from Labor Day. Are we just going to give in and slog our way toward flannel shirts and pumpkin spice lattes? Not me, brother. My Second Summer starts today! Hang Out With The Boys Of Summer Half the teams in the Nat...

Unless you've been living on an island in the far Pacific with Amelia Earhart for the past six months, you've probably happened across something called a fidget spinner. The first time I saw one was in a convenience store I frequent near the homestead. I made note of the trilobed plastic gadgets stacked at the register, but didn't really think too much about them, since that particular store has been known to sell everything from hair extensions to Carolina Panthers tiki dolls. A few days later, I saw something on the local news about therapeutic devices for dealing with anxiety and ADD. I didn't really make the connection until I saw a YouTube video touting the "healing powers" of what amounts to a rather boring toy. I'll say this for kids today, they know how to position a product. Back in my day, we never thought to promote our fad toys - knockers, whizzers, mood rings and spinners - as some sort of medical breakthrough. In fairness though, we did h...

At any given time, there are a half-dozen or more vintage tackle boxes for sale on EBay. The majority of these come from estate sales or from families cleaning out basements and attics, and most of them are chock-full of tackle, left as-it-was the last time the owner went fishing. In some cases, that may have been years or even decades ago. There's an entire subculture of tackle collectors who scour these listings looking for valuable vintage lures, and you can tell when they find one because the price of the auction jumps dramatically. That's all well and good, but for me the fun in these old tackle boxes isn't so much finding a rare popper I can add to my collection or sell for hundreds of dollars, it's getting a glimpse into one man's fishing life; unwrapping the mystery of how he ended up with the tackle he did, how he used it and what it meant to him. In some sense, the tackle box is like a snapshot of the fisherman. While there are certainly vintage plasti...

If you've ever wondered what it would be like if C.J. Box novels were set in Maine, Paul Doiron is an author you need to check out. As much as I love Box's writing, there are aspects of his books --, the sweeping Western vistas, the ranch mentality -- that I sometimes have difficulty relating to. While I am certainly no more a native of Maine than I am of Wyoming, the ecosystems described in Doiron's book seem a lot more familiar to me. The Poacher's Son is the first in a series of novels featuring Maine game warden Mike Bowditch. As the story begins, Mike is a 20-something warden just barely removed from training and working in a small coastal town. He lives alone, having recently split with his girlfriend over his choice of occupation and her desire to live a more "urban" existence. Late one summer night, he gets a phone message from his estranged father. Events unfold and he finds himself defending his fugitive dad from murder charges, perhaps at the ex...

Last spring, I attended the Mother Earth News Fair in Asheville, primarily to take in a series of seminars on beekeeping. In between sessions, I wandered into a presentation on soil blocking, which I had heard of, but hadn't really given much thought. As these things so often turn out, I decided that beekeeping is not something I am ready to take on right now, but soil blocking is something I definitely want to give a try. Soil blocking is a method of seed starting that is popular in Europe and among small commercial growers in the United States. The basic idea is that seeds are started in blocks of a compressed soil mix without the need for a pot. This offers three key advantages: There is no need to purchase pots, ultimately saving money. Transplanting is easier, with less risk of shock. More plants can typically be started in a smaller space.  Each of these advantages, however, comes with a caveat, which is why the concept has been slow to gain acceptance among casu...