Smokey Mountain Breakdown

The day started out overcast and I was half afraid the Reunion was going to get rained out. But instead, it gave us a small respite from the oppressive heat that has been covering the mountain.

The large Hall family has their reunion every August on the third Sunday. It’s the largest family reunion in Cocke county. People come from all over the US to the old Bell Hill property to celebrate and catch up with long lost cousins. Today it looked like at least 500 had made the pilgrimage to Hall’s Top Mountain.


The reunion is held on the grounds of the old Bell Hill Church and Schoolhouse where so many Halls grew up and went to school. The current building is not the original. That one burned down some time ago. But they still have a bell to call the family in for the singing and that gave Bell Hill its name.

The food is laid out in a shed that must be 100 feet long. And still, there is hardly enough room for all of the dishes. I, of course, ate way too much.

The singing portion of the Hall Family Reunion is some of the best you will hear. Family Elder, Ransom Hall, led the family in some rousing gospel favorites. He is the son of “Singing” Sam Hall, who originally taught everyone to sing up on the mountain using the sacred harp method.

Food and Hall Family Members

And the young at heart...

At least in Cocke county they do.

This has just been pissing me off and I sort of have to get it out. Sorry. I just do.

A year or so ago, the Farm Service Agency instituted the Tobacco Buyout Program(TTPP). I won't bore you with the details, but essentially what that meant was that any land that had been used to raise tobacco under the tobacco allotment system would have those shares or allotments bought back by the government.

I was really delighted to find that my farm was worth about 10,000 dollars in payout, but somewhat confused that a gentleman farmer neighbor(GFN) was claiming a large part of my acreage as his own. I corrected the oversight there at the local FSA office. I even took my deed in to show them. I was really happy since this meant I could build a new barn, loafing sheds and improve my fencing.

A few days later, GFN, with whom I am friendly and like, calls me, furious. He says I have stolen his tobacco shares and he wants them back. I am shocked. I explain that legally the tobacco shares are attached to the land and since I own the land there is no way I could "steal" them. I know that I am 100% correct on this point. He is still very angry and tells me all the work he has put into those shares as if they are his. They are not. They are mine.

I think on this a few days. Then I go in and sign my rights to the 10,000 dollars over to GFN.
The FSA lets me do this even though they know GFN has no right to those shares.

I do this because Cocke county has a long tradition of dealing with troublemakers with arson. While GFN would never do such a thing, I cannot risk that one of his relatives...and they are many...would not torch my place. I have to live here. Preferably with a roof over my head. It was the smart thing to do.

I don't blame GFN. I blame the FSA for letting these old boys trade these shares like monopoly money for all these years. I blame the FSA for not standing firm on the TTPP program and making sure that the payouts went where they belonged. With the land.

And the people at the local FSA, were more than likely related to GFN, so they more than likely weren't going to stand up for me anyway.

So...I'm back at square one for my farm improvements. Foolishly, I think there might be some help from the FSA, since they are responsible for me losing my improvement funds in the first place.

So, I look up some of the FSA programs that I might qualify for. There are several that I find, but I have to get my premises ID and participate in the NAIS program. No problem, I fill out the paperwork and take it to the local FSA.

While I'm there, I ask about some of the programs I might qualify for. She tells me to contact the county extension agent.

I call the agent, who I will call "Cutie K" because he is the wet dream of every gay farmboy in three counties, and try to set up a farm visit. I met Cutie K at a local event and he seemed nice enough. Of course, I had an enormous white man at my side at the time. I figure he can come and give me some tips on what exactly I need to do and what sort of programs are available to women farmers like myself seeking to be more productive.

Cutie finally calls me and unleashes his hidden super power upon me...which is evidently a complete and utter ignorance of all things agriculture program related. It's an odd super power for a county farm agent to have. I would think it a liability in his field of work.

The more we talk, the more I realize that the FSA office is fronting any small, minority or women farmers over to him so that he may unleash his super power...total ignorance of all things agriculture program related upon them and hopefully confusing us back to our mud daubed hovels.

Evidently, despite all the big talk at the USDA following several class action lawsuits involving minority and women farmers, the message to me is pretty clear.

Be prepared to drop trou and defend your bubbliciousness if you want advice or help from the FSA.

Also, if you can't pass your bubbaliciousness test...hand over anything that is rightfully yours to the nearest bubba that we are related to and/or like.

Then maybe we won't burn your farm down.

I rarely rant but I really need to.

My internet tubes are so clogged, I think it's time to call Computer Router.

And it's not my machines or internal phone lines. It's Bell Fucking South ...now AT & Fucking T...or whoever the hell it is and their failure to provide equal and adequate phone service to mountain residents. I don't mind being on dial-up. But the phone lines here only can handle 26.6K modems. They are the very same phone lines that they put in after the flood of '72.

I just really resent paying full price for substandard phone service and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it.

Last time this happened it was a DNS issue, so I switched to openDNS. FireFox is barely functional so I'm limping around on SeaMonkey.

So...if I haven't been commenting on your blog, it's because your comment page times out before I can get to it. I can read your blog...I just can't comment on most of them. It took me 45 minutes to get this posting field to come up . Yesterday's template redesign took me 12 hours. Not because I didn't know what I was doing...most of that time was loading up windows in the browser.

So, hopefully they will mosey on over and find whatever phone box is now home to a litter of possums or whatever has chewed a hole in the phone connection between here and Big Creek Market soon.

Secret Agent Hot Dog Man

On another note. I was in town evaluating a cocker spaniel at the shelter and meeting the new director and stopped off to get a hot dog at the new A&W joint in Newport. It's roughly where Hot Dog Man used to set up. I hadn't thought about Hot Dog Man for a while.

When the hot dog man showed up in Newport, I was partly thrilled and partly dismayed. Thrilled because most people here wouldn't recognize the superiority of a Nathan's Skinless Frank. I like Hebrew Nationals, too, but they are a bit salty for my taste. Folks here like the sort of wieners that come 40 to a bag and are bright red. So Hot Dog Man had a little Nathan's cart just like in New York. So that was why I was thrilled. Real Nathan's Hot dogs in lil' ole Newport!

I was dismayed since it was pretty obviously an incursion from the outside world that I fled from. I nervously wondered if a Starbucks couldn't be far behind.

Anyway, Hot Dog Man showed up during the FBI investigations. These had actually been going on for a long, long time. As far as I know, they are still going on. But at that time, they were still investigating the cock fighting. And the Sheriff's Office....well, just about any sort of government office is investigated in Cocke county. We still have that old-timey corruption thing going for us. Boss Hawg and all that. I like it. It's charming.

A rumor started circulated around that Hot Dog Man was an FBI informant. Hell, by the time it got around town, he became an undercover operative for the FBI.

'Cause, you know cockfighters love a good hot dog. Everyone does. I used to order the chili-cheese with extra onions. He never asked me any probing questions.

Well, they busted the biggest illegal cockfighting arena in the United States here back in 2005. We made CNN. And Hot Dog Man mysteriously disappeared. I thought I saw him over in Cosby once. The rumors got so pervasive about his involvement in the raid, that the local paper, The Newport Plain Talk, ran an article where Hot Dog Man denied any involvement with the FBI.

"I'm just selling hot dogs."

The Plain Talk is one of those papers that you say, "The Newport Plain Talk...Bless their hearts!" They just are very gullible. They seem unusually trusting for journalists...even of the community variety. Yes. I subscribe to it. Bless their hearts.

I guess what brought it to mind was that Scott mentioned recently that Hot Dog Man had testified recently in one of the many court cases from all of the FBI's investigations in Cocke county.

So damn. He was an informant.

Secret Agent Man...Hot Dog Man.

I wonder how bad you have to screw up at the FBI to get sent undercover in Cocke county, TN pushing a hot dog cart?

I wake up this morning to a crisply, cold mountain morning. The quality of the light is just a wee bit hazy, but the sky is that amazing robin's egg blue that offsets the starkness of the winter landscape here.

I wonder if there is any snow up on Snowbird? Usually, when the temps drop this dramatically at my elevation, the high reaches are all craggy and snowy. The winds sweep down from Le Conte and Snowbird to chill us. If I'm this cold on my aerie, I know it must be really cold down in the holler.

I just read Catherine Marshall's Christy. I'd been putting off reading it since I knew that I was going to be writing about this place and it already had one well-known work written about it. Of course, I'm writing first hand and almost a hundred years later than Marshall. I'm also not fictionalizing. I think what struck me the most was how little the physical environs of the place had changed in a hundred years. There are definitely improvements...the typhoid and other serious illnesses aren't a problem thanks to modern well digging. I've walked back to the old springs that used to supply water here. They are pretty scary. Few are still being used. There is still the off person who has no indoor plumbing or running water. One of my close neighbors is one of them. After reading about the connection to typhoid and the springs, I now worry about Hammer. He's been digging a spring out near his house so he does not have to drive down the road to the artesian spring at the little church on Hall's Top to get water.

The Big Mud Hole was finally paved over last year when they started black topping The Old 15th. When I first moved here a few years ago...that wet spring was still causing problems. I've been up to the site of the Christy mission. I'm always a bit surprised by how small the footprints of the old structures are. So many people living in such small places. Easier to heat.

One thing that struck me about the book was that Marshall didn't shy away from the negative aspects of the people here. I realized that I've been doing that. I suppose I'm just so madly in love with the mountains and the mountain people that it's easier for me to turn a blind eye to that which is less beautiful than I'd like it to be. In a way, my first hand experience here keeps me from looking too closely and that is something I need to work on.

The terrible diseases here have been replaced, unfortunately. The three main scourges here are clinical depression, prescription drug addiction with methamphetamine addiction running a close third. My feeling is that the latter two are efforts to self-medicate the first. I have no science to back this up, but my feeling is that depression is something that is "bred in the bone" to these folk. A modern day Dr. MacNeill would no doubt be researching genetic markers for depression in the people up here.

They have a truly profound fascination with death and dying. The passages in Christy where Fairlight Spencer is watching the shadows overtake the mountain ranges, I see as being a metaphor for this obsession. I know exactly what that looks like. It's really very beautiful as seen from my high perch. The shadow is like a great hand reaching out to snuff out the twilighted candles of the mountains. It really is a perfect metaphor for the approach of death.

The local churches seem to feed this fascination. The stress is upon the afterlife rather than Christ-like behavior. Their beliefs are both narrowly defined and unambitious. One's entrance to paradise is guaranteed by mere belief. I feel strongly that one's actions, deportment and honor toward others (and Christ is as good an example to follow as any but the concept exists in all world religions) is key in being spiritually healthy. After all, if there is no one, or no reason for one to keep living...why bother? We need to be needed.

I talked with a friend about this concept. She smiled and said, "My husband liked to say that 'your faith should have legs'." Exactly. That's exactly what I mean. But, being the dunderhead that I am, I couldn't say it in five simple words.

People like to think the worst of people here. I'm not sure exactly how to describe it but it's almost titillating. There is a sort of gleeful glint in their eye when gossiping about someone who has committed a mortal sin in their eyes.

"Bless their heart. They are going to burn in hell."

As I mentioned in my "Picking out my Handbasket" post...this doesn't mean that they won't be your good friend, even if you are, after all, going to be doomed to hellfire.

Unfortunately, because of the prescription painkiller problem up here, many pain patients go without much needed pain meds. We have a cancer patient or two blow their brains out or commit suicide by some other means each year. Suicide seems to be a generally well accepted method of pain management here...but...

"Bless their heart. They are going to burn in hell."

I have a buddy who is facing an identity crisis right now. He was raised elsewhere but shares the same genes as the rest of the folk here. He's got a double shot of the depression gene and I honestly can't think of a worse place to try to discover one's identity than Grassy Fork. It's a great place to come to if you already have a firm grasp on who and what you are. I dealt with these issues 15 years ago and the pain of doing so is still quite vivid in my memory. His faith is quite strong and is of the ilk of these mountains. I think he is half worried about the burning in hell thing. I suggested he go to MCC or some other more tolerant faith...at least for the time being. But he enjoys the fire and brimstone.

I vividly remember Old Red down at the dump asking me if I thought "boys or girls were 'purtier' ". His sly mountain way of questioning my sexual preference when I first moved here. I honestly wasn't expecting that degree of frank inquiry. My coming here by myself was very suspect to the mountain folk. My easy reply was, "Well, Red. I think all of God's creatures are 'purty" in their own special way." And I do believe that. And with me...purty has nothing at all to do with it. Purty is as purty does, I always say.

Bless my heart. I'm going to burn in hell.

This is place to retreat from the world...not to find your place in it. The world here is nothing like the world out there. This place is very Brigadoonish in that respect. I was ready to leave the world when I came here, and this makes my isolation not merely bearable, but welcome. Many come here to seek peace and I think you have to have that within yourself to truly be happy here.

Of course I would love to have someone to share this with. That's possibly my one regret in this life...my seeming inability for form a life bond outside of friendship with another person. I console myself by knowing that platonic bonds are classically considered the highest form of love. And I consider romantic love to be a form of mental illness anyway. Still.

But I'm at peace that evidently, that isn't what the Big Picture has in mind for me.

And at 45, I've completely squandered whatever "Purty" I may have had at one time.

I think it was Terry Pratchett who said, "There is a reason why religions start in deserts or in high places. The stars are so close at night and make you feel so insignificant that you just have to put something in the way."

Come here and drink the night sky...or stay and go mad from the sheer weight of it.