Originally Posted by defcon
The Wrong Holler
Alright, this is a true story about where I go to school. It's a very rural area in the middle of the mountains, with poverty, drugs, and sickness abound.
I had just moved into my new apartment for my first year of graduate school. The family had left for New York, so I grew bored rather quickly. I grabbed my keys and headed out for a ride. Fifteen minutes to Kentucky, fifteen to West Virginia, I keep saying to myself. I made a left, and it was one hell of a wrong turn. A few miles up the road, I'm seeing no houses, nothing but trees with surreptitious little shacks dotting the hillside in an extremely precarious fashion, as if they could tumble down the hill at a moment's notice. The road has narrowed to one lane by now and I'm creeping along, taking in the scenery but getting totally weird vibes all the while.
The road curbs sharply and continues into a gorge, descending sharply with no shoulder. One momentary lapse of concentration and your car is dropping probably 50 feet off the precipice. I put my jalopy in first gear, the lonliest gear. The transmission seems to love the unusual labor conscripted upon it, easily throttling the car back and checking its progress with minimal brakeage necessary on my part. I get to the bottom, and there is what appears to be a country store - with a white, cracking facade, reminiscent of 1950s Americana...complete with the coke logo, and all the trimmings. I pull into the parking lot, which is occupied by a truck apparantly of the same era...beaten and nearly broken, the truck has farm tags and mud covering nearly its entirety. As I step out of my car, I'm greeted from behind by a very massive gentleman.
Without exaggeration this guy was well over 6 and a half feet tall and probably 350 pounds...and wouldn't you know it, bad dental work (or none at all!) and a tough, mean, bulldog like face. He wore a flannel shirt with a pair of Carhartt suspender overalls and massive combat boots. A massive scar, apparantly from a knife or razor, marked the side of his neck just under his ear. A strange tattoo on his chest hidden behind a forest of matty black hair. "Whatchu doin'?" he inquires, a hint of gruffness in his tone. "Yessir, I was just wonderin' how to get to the nearest large town..." He pauses, spitting out a massive wad of tobacco that splattered onto my brand new Doc Martens. Now normally, I'd be pissed as shit - but with this dude, I decide it's best not to fuck with it. "Well, thar's Charleston, that's 'bout...3 howerys, then you got Ahia, somethin' along thar, five howerys. Where'd u come from, son?" I glance back at him as he eyes my tags and starts to literally lick his lips. "Ummmm....a couple of towns down over the other side of the mountain. I'm a student there, but I'm originally from New York." I'm trying my best to be conversational and hide the fact that I'm getting massively horrible vibes at this point.
"Shiiiiit, boy, you done come down the wrong holler," he states with conviction, letting his words sink in. Thinking much quicker than he is remotely capable of doing, I ask, "I'm sorry, sir, is this private property? I'll leave immediately." He shakes his head, and then stops, as if pondering the meaning of life, his eyes far agaze, affixed on a distant point. "No, don't reckon it is. Used to be the post office right chur...but they done closed that down round about the time the last mine closed down..." He starts to ramble, and for the first time I'm feeling friendly vibes from him. I decide to get it out on the table, "Sir, if you don't mind my asking, why did I come down the wrong holler?"
He says, "Ain't nothing left here boy but cancer, death, de-presion, pov'ty, and the devil. Now you hear me, son....you turn around and go back where you came...head back Virginia way...and don't you go telling nobody what you seen down here." I get back in my car, start the engine, and say my farewells, not daring to shake his hand or make further eye contact with him. I let out a very loud Joey Lawrence from Blossom, "Woah!" as I back the car up and head back to the road. I want to ask, I want to ask...I really do. What in the hell was it that I've seen other than an apparantly eccentric man and a hillbilly haven? I stop my car, and step out, a full twenty feet seperating us now makes me braver. "What was it that I wasn't supposed to see, sir?" He cocks his head up in the air, and I follow his gaze. I turn around, and on the rock outcrop behind me about a quarter mile in the distance there's a flag of yesteryear and a strange logo...I put two and two together and reach the conclusion - I'm deep in ku klux klan territory, or at least what used to be.
I have never simultaneously hopped into my car and accelerated from 0 to 60 incredibly quickly, with the door still half opened, but I did it this time. After I had put some distance between what I had just seen, I slowed my speed, constantly checking my rear view. I made it back to the top of the gorge, pulled my car over, and lit a cigarette, gazing down into the abyss from which I had emerged. I sat on my hood and looked out into the expanse. That's when I heard it. At first it sounded like fireworks, and then a gunfight. Yet, the shots had a cadence to them, with pauses in between for a few seconds - from my experience in the woods I knew it was target practice. I'm hearing these shots, and thinking, this is some heavily artillery - machine guns and other crap. I decide that it would be best to continue getting my ass the hell out of this place.
I cross back over the state line a few minutes later and stop at the first gas station I see for an ice cold bottled water. All that had made my throat totally dry. I had an affinity with one of the clerks and started to shoot the shit with him. I told him about my foray. He smirked, and proceeded to tell me the history of the area. Evidently, some confederate civil war vets and their families settled in the area and weren't willing to give up on the whole war thing. Some of them even joined the Klan. They lived there for several generations, and throughout the years four or five people had mysteriously disappeared on excursions into the gorge, including rock climbers from New Hampshire, never to be seen again. The last incident was back in the early 70s. Since then, the later generations of the families had largely moved on, renounced the ways of their ancestors, and left the area. But Cyrus the Biggun, the monaker given to the big hillbilly as I would later learn, was the last rebel, and I had just driven into the last vestige of the confederacy (in his mind).
In summation, it was just an awkward event - I felt like I had went back into a time machine. I will always tell my kids this story - and I hope there aren't that many of these type of places left. I don't think Cyrus would have harmed me, but I wasn't ready to stick around and find out for myself.
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