Smokey Mountain Breakdown

I would have liked to have not learned the editing tricks I picked up. I would have liked to have kept plunking away at stories without thought to form. The thing is, I'm just obsessive-compulsive enough to get carried away with it. When I worked in the corporate environment I used to enjoy making forms. I like boring things. I find them relaxing. So now I'm editing. Lots.

DAMN YOU, ENGLISH LANGUAGE!!!

I picked up a couple of new story fragments yesterday.

Story Fragment #1: There is a ghost story from around here that involves a headless wagon driver. No one seems to know how he lost his head. I will need to consult with Pastor Jimmy about this. If anyone knows the rest of the story it will be him. I know there are a few Grassy Fork ex-pats who read the blog, so if you remember this hant story from childhood, we would all like to know the rest of the story.

Story Fragment #2: True story. Long ago, a woman gated her four year old child up in a cave. She went by each day and gave it a piece of candy. The child eventually starved to death in the cave. The law found out and the woman went to prison. I need to find this story on my next research trip to the library. Hopefully there will be something in the Plain Talk archives.

Of course, it's a dreadful story. But I need to know why? Even crazy people have reasons for doing such things. Crazy reasons, but I feel I really need to know the crazy reason. And what's up with the candy? This sounds like the premise of an excellent story to me. And I'm already churning things around for it. But first, I need to know what drove this mother to do this. Four years is a bit late for post-partum depression, isn't it?

I spent all of today in Newport doing research. Very productive day.

I met for about three hours at the feed and seed with the gamefowl enthusiasts and learned more about cockfighting and raising gamefowl than I ever imagined. I knew I was pretty ignorant about it, but there is just so much to know. And, not surprisingly, so much is misunderstood about what they do and why they do it. Most of this was research for the “Jo-Jo and the Chicken Boy” short story, but I picked up a bunch of stuff for the article I’m doing on the History of Cockfighting in the Appalachians that I’ve promised Dave Tabler for his Appalachian History site. My sources have been really helpful and very charming and are going to get more material for me.

I’d, of course, love to attend a match, but given the current crackdowns nationwide on the cockers, that’s not likely to be possible. But, I did get a bit of the feeling from their passion for it what it must be like. They like the story so far and I think they are going to be my best readers and editors to keep the story in the realm of reality.

I went to the library afterwards to see if I could find anything from the post-WWII period, particularly about a legendary pit match that occurred during that time…the first 1000 dollar derby. Nothing from 1946 to 1947, but I did learn that foxhunting, which is practically non-existent in this area now, was hugely popular. I took notes on some fairly gruesome local murders and events from that time period. And learned of a cave just outside of town that is like 200 feet deep. There are also caves along the river that some of the local homeless folks live in. I really want to check those out. The library director suggested I contact someone from the sheriff’s department about those.

So, I have lots of good material to start my cozy mystery series I’ve been planning to write. I’ve been bouncing it around for about a year now so it’s probably matured enough in my brain to actually start writing it. The great thing about setting one of those in Cocke county is that there actually is a history of odd and violent murders here. Most of the cozy series' that I love…you know I have really low taste in my personal reading habits…is that they are set in these sweet little towns where it’s hard to imagine awful things happening. Awful things do happen here, but it’s still a very charming place with many charming people.

I've got some stuff to do tonight so I'm not going to bore you with much here. Just picking up some odds and ends before I forget.

There were some research items about Lizie and Martha that I didn't use in Cat Fur Jelly.

Martha and Lizie were what we call down in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, "root women." They knew all of the traditional remedies that could be made from the wild-gathered materials on hand here.

Medical care up here was spotty at best. A friend is fond of telling "birthing" stories...the gorier the better. She's told me a gang of them and they always seemed to include a doctor, so I thought maybe the situation wasn't as bad as I'd been lead to believe. Until she let it slip that many of the "doctors" were actually veterinarians and who is to say they weren't just untrained horse doctors. There was a tinker who used to come through here and pull teeth.

So, Lizie and Martha's skills would have been much in demand.

One of their recipes involved making a tea from oak, alder and wild cherry bark. This was supposed to be used as a mouthwash to draw infection from teeth and gums. Henberry was used as a soporific and for kidney ailments. "Kidney ailments" appears to be a euphemism for cystitis or any sort of burning pain in the nether areas. The roots of Queen of the Meadow were also dug for "kidney ailments". Ground up mountain laurel leaves were mixed with laying mash to worm chickens. Kerosene was given for lots of things. The ginseng that grows up here was used much as it is in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)...as a stimulant, tonic and for boy stuff. Tetch me Not was used for snakebite(probably not a very efficacious use) and for skin problems including poison ivy(actually this works).

I continue to collect remedies that were used here.

A few notes left over from I'll Fly Away.

There were two schools that I know of thus far that were near here. There was the Bell Hill School, a one room schoolhouse teaching grades 1 - 8, that stood where the current Hall Family Reunion is held each year on Hall's Top. The other was a two room schoolhouse called The Raven's Branch School. This would have been up Raven's Branch way somewhere. It taught grades 1 - 5 in one room and grades 5 - 8 in the other. Most people here 50 years of age and older only have an eighth grade education since the closest high school was in Newport.

I'm working on a very difficult, dark story right now. It's called "The Dark Hole". It's going to be the closest I've come to emulating the school of the Southern Grotesque as practiced by my influence Flannery O'Connor. I so love her, but I'm having a really hard time locating the subtle nuances of humor in this very dark, racially charged story. Also, I love these people up here so much, that I tend to turn a blind eye to the obviously grotesque in them. I know it's there...it's just really hard for me to look at.