Inhuman Swill

What a weekend Laura and I just had! We arrived back late last night from three days in beautiful Aiken, South Carolina. We were invited by our dear friend Shana, who lives here in the city and was going home for the annual Aiken Steeplechase, an afternoon of horseracing that is one of the biggest events in town.

Shana's father is a successful entrepreneur and state senator. His private jet was dispatched to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey to pick us up Friday morning. There were nine passengers: Shana, her sister, her brother-in-law, their twin infants, Laura, me, Shana's fellow Aikenite-in-exile Joe, and Joe's friend Matt. The jet seated seven passengers, so we were at capacity.

Laura and I stayed for the weekend in an upstairs bedroom in the senator's home in Aiken. We were treated to all the hospitality for which the South is famous (this was my first excursion into the real South), with far more caring and far less pretentiousness than I perhaps had expected.

Saturday afternoon at the Steeplechase was quite an experience. Thousands of cars pulled into neat rows around both the interior and exterior rails of the track, with boisterous but not rowdy tailgate parties everywhere. Wandering from place to place, we ended up at a central tent where the governor of South Carolina, dressed down in chinos and a plaid shirt, was shaking hands and breaking hearts left and right.

Saturday night we stayed out late—very late—with Shana's crowd of friends at a succession of great bars in Aiken, culminating at Whiskey Junction, a dark and amiable cinderblock cavern that sits behind a gas station on Whiskey Road, feels like a combination roadhouse and disco, serves two-dollar beers, and gives the impression from its entrance area that it spent a previous life as a strip club. The house band Wax Bean played hits that ranged from the expected Janis Joplin and Lynyrd Skynyrd to Pearl Jam, Live, and No Doubt, and between sets the DJ spun current rap and hip-hop. We danced until I thought I'd drop dead from a heart attack.

Sunday afternoon, in an amazing episode arranged by Shana's mother, we were invited to call on the neighbors down the street—Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, authors of true-crime books like The Mormon Murders and the massive biography Jackson Pollock: An American Saga (basis for the Ed Harris film). We received a tour of the amazing rambling mansion they inhabit (the purchase and renovation of which was chronicled in their book On a Street Called Easy, in a Cottage Called Joye), a place where every room contained not just architectural wonders but magnificent works of art—much 19th century American statuary, but also paintings by contemporaries and influences of Winslow Homer and Vincent Van Gogh (on whom they're at work on a biography), 16th century Japanese prints, Buddhas from southeast Asia, bronze Rodin castings, and sketches and silkscreens by Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and Jackson Pollock. Despite all this, for me the most amazing sight in Joye Cottage was what looked like a humble diploma sitting on the mantle in one room. I stepped closer to read the citation.

It was the Pulitzer certificate for Steve and Greg's Jackson Pollock.

Still and all, the most vivid memory of our weekend in Aiken will always be Mike Hunt, whose campaign for Aiken County sheriff inspired a never-ending barrage of jokes all weekend long amongst the crowd we ran with. The eight of us seated together for dinner Friday night at a delightful restaurant called No. 10 Downing Street did little else but devise Mike Hunt cracks all through the meal, and there was not much let-up the rest of the weekend.

I'm not sure how this campaign sign found its way to Queens, but rest assured it will be displayed proudly at the first backyard barbecue of summer:


Thanks, Aiken. Mike Hunt makes for the sweetest of memories.