No mention of Bob and Judy Grove, sounds like a food old time, though!

NY Times (excerpted)


BRASSTOWN, N.C., Dec. 30 - The lights are strung, the stage is set and Baby
New Year is waiting in a cage, hissing.

Brasstown, once again, is ready for the Possum Drop.

Yes, the annual New Year's Eve Possum Drop, the one and only, inspired by
the dropping of a certain illuminated ball 670 miles away.

On Thursday, at the stroke of midnight, at the exact moment that hundreds of
thousands of people holler in the New Year at Times Square, with millions
more tipping back champagne flutes and watching it on TV, a few hundred
people will huddle at a Citgo station in this little Appalachian town,
wearing hunting jackets and hats with dangling ear flaps, to cheer the
descent of one confused marsupial.

Talk about parallel universes.

It started 13 years ago, when someone said to Clay Logan, owner of
Brasstown's only gas station and vendor of kitschy possum products, "If New
York City can drop a ball, why can't we drop a possum?"

Mr. Logan could think of no reason why not.

At midnight, as he lets a rope slip between his fingers, lowering a possum
in a plexiglass cage from the roof of his gas station, Mr. Logan will call
out, as he has every New Year's Eve since 1990, "5, 4, 3, 2, 1!"

And then, as the crowd starts going bananas, "The possum has landed!" The
possum is alive, of course, and will be released at the end of the night
unharmed, if a little shaken.

The show is more than just the spectacle of suspending in the air a
fuzzy-headed, pink-pawed animal that looks as if someone stuck it together
with spare parts. There are fireworks, the firing of muskets, country food
like peach cobbler and bear stew and the Miss Possum contest, a
cross-dressing affair in which bearded truck drivers wear eye shadow and
strut across the stage with hands like oven mitts swinging at the sides of
bursting lace dresses.

There will also be bluegrass music, including a crowd-pleaser that includes
the line, "Down in the darkness, much to my delight, there's five pounds of
possum in my headlights tonight."

Life, Mr. Logan says, is full of possum-bilities. Over the years he has
worked to promote Brasstown as the "Possum Capital of the World," not
because it has an unusually large possum population but because Brasstown
"desperately needed something."

The town, tucked in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains about two and
a half hours north of Atlanta, survives on cattle farming, a few small
tobacco plots and industrial jobs where people can find them. Brasstown
became famous for 15 minutes a few years ago when townspeople were said to
be sheltering Eric Rudolph, the abortion-clinic bombing suspect who was
captured in May after five years on the run.

Mr. Rudolph grew up around here, not far from the Citgo gas station near
Greasy Creek Road where Mr. Logan does a brisk trade in stuffed possum toys,
cat-food-size tins of "possum roadkill" (actually filled with dirt), and
T-shirts that proclaim possum to be "the Other, Other White Meat."

As it says on his Web site, "One man's roadkill is another man's icon."

"We love possums around here," said Mr. Logan, 57, as he spat an oyster of
tobacco juice and wiped his gray beard. "They're an animal everybody says is
the dumbest animal in the world, and they probably are. But they'll save
your life. If you're out in the woods and you get lost, just follow a possum
track and it'll take you right to the road."

On Tuesday, Mr. Logan pumped gas and squeegeed windshields as his friends
prepared the stage in front of his gas station, Clay's Corner. Electronics
included a computer system and a 10-foot-tall TV screen known as the
Possumtron. Mr. Logan is expecting up to 1,000 people, a lot for a town with
240 residents.

In the afternoon, Mr. Logan and his buddies drove out to inspect this year's
star, curled up in a wire cage on a breezy hilltop in an undisclosed
location. Each year, several Brasstown hunters trap a cast of possums for
Mr. Logan to chose from.

"Ain't it pretty?" Mr. Logan asked as he scooped the male possum out of its
cage and dangled it by its long, pink tail. His friend, Paul Crisp, nodded
and said, "Now, that's a town possum."

"Yep," Mr. Logan said. "Pretty face, nice slick fur."

The possum thing is tongue-in-cheek, Mr. Logan explained. He is a firm
believer of the rule that there is nothing funnier than laughing at
yourself.

"We're kind of poking fun at all the stereotypes of rednecks and
hillbillies," he said.

Mr. Crisp, who drives an enormous pickup and speaks knowledgeably about
gigabytes and microprocessors, said, "We're high-tech rednecks."



Craig, WPE1HNS
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