i was conducting some business in gatlinburg saturday. many of the shops are small with room for a half dozen people or so. as i was waiting outside of my contacts shop, totally engrossed in the business at hand, two men walked up and said something which i did not understand. i looked up and one gent was an Oriental man and he repeated his comment. it finally dawned on me what he said. " It's good to see a kilt here" is all he said. and the other gent mentioned the Black Watch. well what through me for a loop was the Oriental man had a Scottish accent. very cool. and then they both said they were from Edinburgh. We shook hands. That just blew me away!

after business, the mrs. & i walked through a few shops. we went into one that was selling bronze statuettes and the girl behind the counter couldn't take her eyes off of me and smiled the whole time. ( ahh, the power .. )

we stopped into the Celtic Heritage shop which had a few folks browsing around. as soon as the shopkeep notice we were in, she blared out, "folks, now this is a man who knows how to dress" and they all gathered around. haha, i was slightly embarrassed by that kind of attention, but i survived. she was great and called her manager who was working upstairs to come down and visit .. and then while in the shop a lady walked by and turned to her husband and said, " my father wears a Black Watch like his" ....

on a less positive note .... the mrs wanted to find some new shoes, so we stopped into a ladies shoe store. .... [ Note To Self: Perhaps avoid womens apparel shops while kilting. ] i was inside the store just following the wife, as i normally do ;) . a few women were in doing their business and what i found amusing was all the husbands were outside looking in as if they would catch a disease if they came in with their wives. a couple of the men just kinda of stared at me and they would snicker to each other. i finally walked out the door up to them and said, "come on in boys and join the fracus!" .... hahaha, they harumphed and said they were just watching their wives .... and then i though, well maybe they were .... LOL

anyway, all in all, not a bad kilt day.


ambrose