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Harry Anderson’s Life Among the Lesbians

I spent the day yesterday at an unusual event and had a brush with celebrity.  I attended the Southeastern Association of Magicians Convention here in Atlanta with my friends Rick and Sydney, who were in town for the gathering.  The best known of the professional magicians in attendance was Harry Anderson, best known for his role as Judge Harry T. Stone on the television series Night Court, the Emmy Award-winning series that ran from 1985 to 1992.  He has also made numerous appearances on Saturday Night Live, Cheers, and more recently, Real Time with Bill Mahar.  Anderson, an accomplished magician, rarely attends conventions, but came down from Asheville to present a lecture for the attendees in support of friends who are active with S.E.A.M.

I do not normally travel in magician’s circles.  (Actually they call their groups “rings.”) But I wanted to attend Anderson’s lecture, because he has recently moved to Asheville, a wonderful North Carolina town known for its unusual concentration of culture in the midst of Appalachian backwater communities.  Asheville is also has a reputation as home to a significant New Age population of pagans, herbalists and the like.  It is also a little oasis for lesbians (and gays) in a valley surrounded by the conservative, heterosexual South.  I love it there, for all of the above reasons.  Anderson moved from New Orleans to Asheville in the aftermath of Katrina.

I was amused by Harry Anderson’s story about the small city he now calls home.  His first Asheville experience was actually years ago, long before his successful career had taken off.  As a performer for Ripley’s Believe It or Not, he had been transfered to the Gatlinburg, Tennessee location to work his magic there.  He met a group of girls there who were going to hike the 40 or so miles through the mountains to Asheville.  He decided to join them, he said, because he was sure that if he could show them he could walk 40 miles, he was sure to get laid.  But, alas, arriving in Asheville, he found himself surrounded by one of the largest populations of lesbians in the South.  The girls he had hiked with promptly ditched him. Anderson’s hopes of getting lucky were dashed.

Yours truly with Harry Anderson

Now a full-time Asheville resident, Anderson and his wife seem content to live among the dykes.  In an appearance with Bill Mahar in 2006, not long after Anderson’s move, he said of Asheville, “I’m sure there’s a heterosexual subculture, but I haven’t found it yet.” At this weekend’s convention, he joked that many locals refer to the town as “A She-ville.”  Chatting with Anderson after his lecture, I told him of my fascination with Asheville and asked him how things were going there.  He told me that the area is great, but needs to shake out a little.  “We could use a few less Thai restaurants and a real hardware store,” he told me.

I couldn’t help but think that was odd, really.  An unusually large population of lesbians and no good hardware store?  I guess the Asheville dykes are roughing it up there in the mountains.