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ASHEVILLE, N.C. – We have all experienced emergencies in which adrenaline takes over; we max out the credit cards, do what has to be done in the moment and worry about the consequences later.
In western North Carolina, four months after the horrible devastation of Hurricane Helene, later is now.
Tucked into the shadow of the aptly named Smoky Mountains, this city of 95,000 is postcard pretty, yet physical scars and working crews seem to lurk around every corner of red bricks and cozy cafés.
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The good news is that most places, at least in downtown, are open. At the Jack in the Woods restaurant and pub on Friday evening, a sizable crowd was gathered, some from out of town, there to see a performance by the Kill Tony comedy show, another sign of returning normalcy.
I was told that the restaurant was closed for two months, then managed to get a water pump and opened with a limited menu until the water was finally turned back on.
But when I asked the bartender, one of a classic kind who seems to know everyone and everything about the town, if things felt normal, she looked at me almost shocked
“No, absolutely not,” she said.
I asked her and a few other locals, including a man in his forties who works for a local school district, how much time each day they still spend either doing something hurricane-related or thinking about the hurricane. Four months later, both gave just about the same answer: “Almost all day.”
In a stunning admission, the bartender told me that the day she got her electricity back was bittersweet.
“It was better obviously,” she said. “But we had all been coming together in this amazing way and once I could watch TV, I just wanted to stay home.”
As bad as the damage is in Asheville, in the surrounding rural areas it is much worse, which is why Mark Luckinbill and a few friends who live in Raleigh discovered a unique way to help: Installing mailboxes. Desperate to assist local communities in Avery County, Mark was told by a pastor’s wife there that they really needed heavy equipment.
“All I had was a friend, my hands and a couple of shovels,” Mark told me.
Then something happened. The pastor’s wife remembered an elderly woman with no cell phone, who was terrified because her mailbox was gone. She depended on it for getting her Social Security checks and bills.
This might not make sense to urban dwellers, but in rural America your mailbox can be half a mile down a dirt road from home. The mail carriers can’t just leave parcels by the side of the road.
So they built the woman a mailbox.
Mark and his friend have now been to Avery County to install mailboxes 10 times, because it was a thing that needed to be done that they had the power and ability to do. They even have a website now.
The selflessness of neighbors helping neighbors is clear here, as is the spirit of putting others first.
One local musician I spoke to was typical. When I asked if he had been hit hard, he said, “No, we mostly were fine. I mean we didn’t have power for two months and my car and my girlfriend’s car were totaled, but nothing drastic.”
In Ashville, that qualifies for “we were mostly fine.” He thinks himself lucky.
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I asked if insurance had allowed them to replace the cars. He said they were lucky (again) to get one to share.
“Insurance paid,” he said, “but there’s just no cars, I can’t find anything decent under $10,000.”
Not long after, his girlfriend arrived, they exchanged the keys, and he said if work went too late, he’d get an Uber.
More than 138,000 vehicles were destroyed by Hurricane Helene, a good chunk of them in western North Carolina. Walking around town, even the cars that survived show water damage on their lower half, and the state Attorney General’s office has warned of scams involving the sale of badly water-damaged cars.
Compared to the loss of a life or the destruction of a home, access to a car or a mailbox might seem like small potatoes, but they add up fast, and they are a low priority for a state and federal government still swamped by the devastation.
With President Trump’s visit on Friday, and promise of more aid, there is room for more optimism in North Carolina. But the real strength here, what is ultimately going to get the good people in and around Asheville through this, is themselves, and how they care for each other.
There is very little that is more beautiful than that, and possibly nothing that is more American.
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