HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. — The Orange County Sheriff’s Department has broken up
what is believed to be central North Carolina’s largest doggerel ring, an operation that
officials believe may have been operating undetected in Hillsborough’s literary
underground for decades.
Orange County Sheriff Lindy Pendergrass said that the department’s big break in the
case came when one of the Hillsborough ring’s seasoned professionals, Elon G. “Jerry”
Eidenier, ” got a little careless” when he allowed his tennis and poetry circles to
become conflated.
The sheriff’s department first became aware of the illicit organization when the ring’s
ringleader “slipped up” and gave a public poetry reading for his tennis team. Several
members of the team with humanity degrees from liberal arts universities recognized
that the literary product that they had been exposed to was a subpedestrian form of
poetry commonly known as doggerel.
The leak came through William “Bill” (aka “Loose Lips”) McCaskill, Eidenier’s sometime
tennis partner, who is said to have told “some of the guys” that Eidenier had written a
“team poem.” This report sent up an immediate flag when received by sheriff’s
department detectives.
Initially implicated as a principal in the operation was G. Douglas Gaddy, a local
“writer” most well-known for his transparently faux “news” stories and slightly more
than slightly out-of-kilter opinion pieces. Pendergrass said Gaddy was taken in briefly
for questioning and then released on his own recognizance.
Eidenier, according to Pendergrass, runs a front-operation as an “actual poet,” writing
what the area’s literary community holds to be “actual poetry.” Said Pendergrass,
“This gives Eidenier a cover for carrying around tiny notebooks where he is always
scribblin’ little sayin’s and stuff without nobody suspectin’ nothin’,” he said. “I can’t tell
no difference myself,” said Pendergrass, “except maybe the doggerel rhymes better.”
The primary foci of the doggerel ring are wagering events known as Poetry
Smackdowns, which pit one poet against another in mano-a-mano competitions.
The sheriff said he was a “little at a loss” as to why the reportedly boisterous and
sometimes bloody affairs had never drawn one disturbing-the-peace report, but
thought perhaps it was because they were usually held in the subterranean basements
of large estate homes, “typically near the wine cellars.”
According to criminologist I.C. Hunter, who heads NC State University’s Criminology
Curriculum in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, each community is
susceptible to different criminal vices according to its character, or characters, as the
case may be.
“For example, Charlotte tends toward financial crimes such as embezzlement and wire
fraud, while Chapel Hill gravitates toward intellectual property theft,” said Hunter. “I
wouldn’t leave even a half-baked idea laying around unguarded on Franklin Street. It
would last about as long as an untethered laptop in Davis Library,” he added.
Prof. Hunter said that Hillsborough, as a “literary village,” is prone to language-based
crime such as “criminal uttering, con artistry of various sorts and, of course, doggerel
rings.”
“While poetry ring has a quaint sound to it, in the modern era literary rings are not of
the innocuous sort that you might imagine with tea, crumpets and lace doilies. When it
comes to the acrimony among these poetry rings, they act more like Crips and
Bloods,” said Hunter.
“If you don’t think this is so, just mention Doug Marlette, or Allan Gurganus, in the
wrong Hillsborough literary circle, as I did once, and see if you escape with your
eyebrows unsinged,” said Hunter. “Somebody may still think it’s sticks and stones that
break your bones, but not me. I’d rather face a stone-hurling mob than face that
gauntlet of flame throwers with their withering verbal fire,” he added.
Eidenier, on the advice of his attorney, said he would decline comment on the charges
against him but could not resist making one. “I rhyme all the time,” said Eidenier. “Is
that a crime?” he asked.
A court hearing set for October 12, Dr. Hunter mused, may answer that question.
Gary D. Gaddy, who is a lyricist, not a poet, lives in the periphery of Orange County.
A version of this story was published in the Chapel Hill Herald on Friday September 18,
2009.
Copyright 2009 Gary D. Gaddy
garygaddy.com 