A Thousand Mile Journey To Buy A Coffee Cup

My studio assistant Megan kept coming in drinking her coffee out of a specific cup.  It was a good cup but nothing special except for the fact that every time I saw it my attitude seemed to improve, it sorta tuned my day back to fine.  I picked the cup up once or twice to get the feel of it, its balance and sense, which was sincere.  I knew the potter, had gone to school with him 30 or 40 years ago, then we ran in different circles, his more clay, mine more delinquent.  I had him do a workshop for us several years ago but didn’t get a pot for myself.  So here I was continuing to be whispered to by this cup, much like the Prophet who didn’t hear anything in the whirlwind or earthquake but did hear The Ancient of Days in the whisper.  This cup wasn’t loaded down with bells and whistles but just something ancient, something of my ancient days, something about earth and dirt and being gently aware of being. 

I went on-line and looked at the potter’s website.  Saw a few pots I liked but didn’t have the will to buy; cost was high for something I just had a vague feeling for, a pig in a poke I guess.  But Megan’s cup just kept showing up and kept whispering to me.  This was a country pot, like I am country, so deep that you try to hide it.  I regularly say ain’t and love gravy and have roots deep in the Appalachians, drunks, dogs and preachers litter my family tree, I’m clannish and family fierce and don’t want to ever find myself far from Tennessee—that kind of country, and this was a country pot.  I began to lay on a hike, something prophets, preachers and artists do when they want to clear their heart and hear a fresh whisper.  I would Ford hike over to North Carolina and see the potter, see his plot, measure his stuff, get a lay of his land.  Maybe then the whisper would be audible and I’d get the pot I now only saw when Megan was around. 

My wife and I had a road trip already on for Asheville and I had added Penland School for Crafts, as a side trip and the potter’s home lay just before.  I still hadn’t solidly planted my feet toward it; I am a loner—shy to a fault but “dropping in” is what country people do and what seemed natural to me.  A potter’s house seems like it would be like the home of the shade tree mechanic or the old man that would sharpen your saw, you just dropped in, sat a spell, and commerce would be done.

There is a side story that seems now to be actually a part of this cup tale.  Betty and I are church people.  We go to church but we also like to visit churches, visit when the church is empty, sit in the pews, kneel at the altar, pray and think and just be with God.  So before we left Asheville we found ourselves in the Basilica of Saint Lawrence, slow hiking.  It was quiet and dim, candles and radiators warming the sanctuary, all the Holy Water vessels full, and Holy objects adorning this old church.  We lit a candle and knelt and prayed for our new granddaughter Scout—and Betty wept.  We silently walked the aisles pausing at sacred stations, single flowers in glass and bronze wall hangers, statues of saints and Mary and ancient wood and ancient relics and an old artist and his lover being prepared for an ancient pot.  You could pause in reading now and think me silly, a wanderer, wondering around musing on about nothing—but you would be wrong.  God is in the details, the small fragments of our lives not yet laid claim to by the wail of popular culture, bells and whistles I call it.  Once those fragments are Occupied by Him, He keeps moving the boundary marker to claim more and more of you for Himself.  It only takes a spark but He can make a human out of a spark if it’s truly given to Him.  And so He had prepped and we were off deeper in northwestern North Carolina looking for something but not sure of what. 

You cannot imagine the hard-won trails we had to take to find this potter and pottery.  Deep in the Appalachians would be true but not adequate to the tale.  It was a path that finally had us on a trail just wide enough to hold our Ford but hardly able to hold itself to the side of the mountain.  A stream laid way below edged by an old railroad and every now and then an old bridge long abandoned.  And then a clearing and there it was, Kline Pottery, off the main road, up a gravel path, scratched into the side of the hill.  An old country bell set on a rough-hewn perch and hand-carved columns supported the front porch.  A hand-made table of old barn board hosted a litter of those ancient pots.  We found the potter and his apprentice out back unpacking a kiln.  The kiln yard also was scratched or more likely, clawed into the side of the hill anchored in by an old stone wall laid in by the potter.  An old wood kiln, catenary arch, sat beside the newer, square-brick, soda kiln…one marking the other as pretentious.  We renewed our introduction, he’s missing a finger off his dominant hand, seemingly appropriate to the life he’s made for himself, his wife and family and now a young gnarly apprentice.  A friendly, little, scratch dog with a big black dot welcomed us and immediately the host began to talk pots.  He pointed out his problems with EPK and told us the kilns’ histories, and pointed out where the clay was dug just beyond the chicken coop.  I picked up one piece after another, tested the lids, listening to the twang and tone of tuned pots.  We talked rock walls, old friends, old studios and old wounds taking their tolls on old artists.  He had old pots and new pots and old pictures and a wife’s shrine to Howard Finster, again appropriate.  I told him the story of Megan’s cup, which he enjoyed, and I said I had come to buy a cup.  As old potters are prone to do he immediately talked trade.  I talked cash dearly wanting to support his dream, dreamt now some 40 years ago and now more than a dream, a life, a daydream daily dreamed.  We did trade and I bought another.  We finally made it back to the front porch where country people say their goodbyes.  My lover took our picture.  We shook hands, his missing finger hand offered like a hand who had lived a thousand times better than most men with full hands.  A thousand mile journey to buy a cup is worth every inch when my attitude and my life have been improved.  

The cup keeping warm on our wood stove.

The Potter, Michael Kline.

The Basilica.

The Lover.