A Cary Hash: Tiny Tank's Tick Tour

Author’s Note: The Hash House Harriers arrived in North Carolina in the early 1980s with the formation of the Tar Heel Hash in Durham. Other hashing groups have formed over the years, including the Sir Walter Hash House Harriers of Wake County. Hashers get together on a regular basis to choose one of their kind to be a “hare.” This hare will lay an intermittent trail marked with dollops of flour, and the remaining hashers — or “hounds” — will attempt to follow this trail while running, shouting misdirections at each other (it usually sounds like “on-on”) and losing focus at the occasional mandatory pauses at strategically placed “beer checks.” At the end of the hash there is always food and drink — the famous hash après. Hashers are known by their quirky yet somehow appropriate hash nicknames, names they earn after proving what they are made of over the course of several hashes. It was a steamy hot July afternoon. I parked in front of the Tiny Tank abode in one of the many new subdivisions that have sprung up in Cary — that fabled bedroom community that sprawls over the Piedmont just west of Raleigh. The Tar Heel Hash House Harriers usually chase flour marked trails in Durham and Chapel Hill and leave the Wake County dollops of flour for the Sir Walter Hash House Harriers. But this hash would not be of the hide-bound type. At this hash, Tar Heel and Sir Walter hashers would commingle. The Tar Heel Hashers, consisting of me, Grumpy, 3Pints, Lickety Spit, Greg C., Micro, DooVarnay and the Bigfoot family, were present but severely outnumbered and outnamed by the Sir Walter contingent: Chickenman, Mrs. Chickenman (if a Tar Heel Hasher she might well be known as “Chickenwoman” but too bad for her she was a Sir Walter Hasher and so she was christened “Pullet”), Iceman, DuracElvis, Dicken’s Cider (huh? is someone gonna explain that one to me?), Falsies, Southern Comfort, Pita, and Bigfoot’s fleetfooted offspring whose hash name is the sound that Roy Orbison makes in the song “Pretty Woman” — yeah, that’s right, the growling like sound indicating … well … appreciation. Henceforth we will indicate this hash name with the glyph ”&.” Sort of like Prince, or that is, the singer formerly known as Prince. So anyway, the hare, Tiny Tank (a high ranking officer in the Sir Walter Hash Harrier hierarchy, mind you) explained the Tar Heel Hashing rules to the Sir Walter crowd, warned us to beware the tick gauntlet he would run us through, supplied us with his home brewed tick-be-gone juice, and then took off with a bag of flour asking for a ten minute lead. Indolent hashers that we are, we gave him fifteen minutes and then shuffled off in pursuit — in no real hurry to confront the hungry denizens of Cary’s tickworld. The streets we ran on in Cary had not been there long. Only a few years ago, this hash course would have been entirely in field and forest. Maybe that is why the ticks we met were numerous and surly, as Cary’s expansion had crowded and concentrated them into the few remaining stretches of jungle TT had discovered for us to run through. There really was a surfeit of ticks — ready to adhere to our legs and then head north, despite the tick-be-gone juice smeared on our legs (which later turned out to be just sugar water anyway — very funny, Mr. Tiny Tank). And have you ever noticed that once you pick one tick off your leg, you keep feeling them all over your body even when they are not there? And all crawling north at that. Creepy. Well, we almost made it to Lake Crabtree Park but the Tanker instead diverted us through a series of construction sites of various Cary works-in-progress. We ran on huge bulldozer scraped fields, new roads with only the curbing in place, and some more forest trails. We had several Sir Walter style “hash halts” (not a bad idea, actually), a beer break (actually a great idea on this hot day in particular), and several opportunities for talk of ticks and tickchecks. At each stop Iceman attempted to groom various slow-reacting distaff hashers while continuously mumbling to himself about ticks and where they might be headed. When Iceman reached &, he found her not slow-reacting, and & soon rallied the troops, pried us away from the beer break and on to the home stretch and on-in. Someone said if we could beat & to the finish we’d get a beer. But we figured we’d get one anyway so we let & disappear in the distance and dogged it on home. The Tiny Tanker’s après was quite nice despite the absence of that white grape beverage that we usually associate with Cary soirees — no brie either. The Tanker is still primarily a Sir Walter Hasher,

after all — but he did have quite a selection of uncommon brewskis that he offered up to the thirsty, tick-covered horde. Iceman and DuracElvis complained that there was only one bag of Cheese Poofs (unlike the usual multi-bag Sir Walter après) but the naive Tar Heel Hashers were quite impressed with the spread. So we sat around on Tank’s back porch, drinking his uncommon beer, scratching where the tick roamed, and speculating about the demise of Tank’s running career after he becomes a family man in a few months time. About thirty minutes into the après, a sweaty tick-vehicle swept around the corner of the house and into our view. It was Rod & Staff, a Sir Walter hasher who had shown up, as is typical for the Sir Walter group, a half hour late and had run the hash course by himself. He was disappointed to have missed the tickchecks but amiable enough otherwise. Maybe these Sir Walter guys aren’t so bad, I thought. So we sat. We talked. We drank more uncommon beer. One by one, all the Tar Heel Hashers left except me. Hey, these Sir Walter guys really aren’t so bad — they got funnier. Tank got us some more uncommon beer. I got funnier. I started feeling kindly toward Cary and even its endless new subdivisions. I no longer perceived any problem with the Sir Walter Hash’s Tank haring a Tar Heel Hash. I scratched my ankle and pulled a tick off my leg. I smiled kindly looking down at him. “Run free, little fella,” I thought to myself and I flicked the little arachnid toward Iceman and DuracElvis. They looked up at me from the bag of Cheese Poofs. I smiled and saluted them with my beer bottle. They nodded back, with their own smiles. Ahhhh. The hashing life. Ya gotta love it! On-on! For more information on hashing see: • Tar Heel Hash House Harrier web page: http://pages.zdnet.com/commentateur/tarheelhashers • Sir Walter Hash House Harrier web page: http://www.swh3.com/