Midnight in the Holler of Good and Evil

Though I stick with political topics for the most part here, as you've seen, every now and then I'm unable to control my enthusiasm and veer over to music. It is, after all, GratefulWeb. With what I call 'String Season', (the time of year when string festivals in Appalachia are as abundant as ticks on a deer), in full swing, it seemed like a good time to head to them hills and find something fascinating and somewhat less known than the festivals themselves to share with you.

So I set off yesterday for a place I'll call 'Crossroads Holler', (truly sitting a ways up said holler with my back to a crossroads right now), up off 'Big Ass Mountain', (elevation 2700+ a few feet), A banjo, guitar, whiskey and biker friend in tow, I'm going to see if I can't run into Dancing Outlaw Jesco White. He's over in Hatfield and McCoyville, (of course he is), about an hour away.

I meant to post this 'round midnight, but the reception up here is tempremental as hell.

So most of a bottle of whiskey, a lot of songs and 8 hours (aka enough time to sleep it off) later...let me see if I can describe this place well enough for it to be like you was here...(somewhere along the way I lost the adaptor to my camera, so you've just got to wait for the photos)

The house was built by my friend's grandfather and his wife's family, semi-enclosed moonshine spring and all. And that's impressive, especially considering the size, (sleeps about 13, not so surprising when you consider they had 9 children). I don't have all the details on the moonshinin' but the place where the still was is right up behind me, just above the crossroads.

Just like the Steve Earle song, when moonshine fell out of fashion, (guess that's one way to put it anyway), a descendant took some 'seeds from Columbia and Mexico' and planted 'em even further up the holler. That didn't work out too well for him. He ended up with the tri-state police giving him 2 black eyes and a trip to prison. (We might go visit him on the way out tomorrow.) Needless to say, just like the moonshine still, that's gone now too, though the schoolbus he converted and lived in still stands at the end of a near impassable, (except on foot), road far up Crossroads Holler.

So what's with all this illegal production up here? Well, truth be told, it's not entirely that people up here are oulaws by nature, (though they are). There are some pretty practical reasons for that. Main thing is, up here, there aren't many ways to make money. If you don't work in the mines, for the railroad or, further West the nuclear plant, good luck to you. It's that way on purpose too, (otherwise, who would work in the afore-mentioned, very dangerous places?). A case was won against WalMart not long ago, in fact, because someone had been working at a store in another state and was offerred substantially less for the exact same job at the WalMart here.

So, there aren't, and haven't ever been, a lot of options when it comes to feeding yourself, let alone a large family like most people had in the moonshinin' days. Doesn't make illegal enterprise the right thing to do, just saying for a lot of people it's been the only thing to do. With tourism growing rapidly between the parks & white water rafting and the re-surgance in popularity of String Season, the police started cracking down harder on the fairly common green fields.

And boy did they crack, I'll post the mug shot with the 2 black eyes. The guy didn't fight either, in case you're thinking that's why he got beaten up. Nope, thin wiry small guy, sitting drinking a beer when the cops came down. And they came down.

But I digress. None of this is giving you an idea of what it's like up here. Damn my tendancy to wander off on tangents.

Well, imagine this - I'll stick to the title even though it's more sunrise in the Holler of Good and Evil at this point, pitch dark, (there's nothing nearby to give a bit of light), save for an army of fireflies so thick they're like dots on dotted swiss. Every half hour or so you hear the rumbling echo of a coal train so close it sounds like it's going to land on the porch - an ominous, sad sound, appropriately. A Peabody still owns them too I believe, just like he did in the 'John Henry' song and in John Prine's 'Paradise' song. Mountain peaks green as the field that used to be up the holler, (he he he), loom to my right and I really have heard a lonesome whiporwill or three that sounds to blue to fly. And it's so cool I wish I had a sweater, quite a switch from the extreme heat and humidity in Richmond.

Outside of the whiskey drinkin' and guitar pickin' it's been pretty uneventful so far, unless you count the stop at a store called simply, 'Tobacco and Liquor' where some tedious idiocy was encountered among patrons, (not worth going into). In spite of the dramatic history of the place, right up to not too long ago, it's still and quiet but for the coal trains and what sounds like about 20 different kinds of birds. A trip up to a restaurant in the nearest town last night wasn't really so different than going to a similar place anywhere else in the country. Kitchen open till 10, diverse crowd at the bar and pretty diverse menu. It ain't all biscuits and moonshine.

But I've been up in these hills often enough to not let all that fool me.

To Be Continued...