Deep In The Hills Of Appalachia

If you were to imagine the deeper recesses of the eastern Appalachians of North Carolina, would you think of ...

... this?





Perhaps.

A real "squeal-like-a-pig" kind of image.

Of course, there is the paradox of Old Glory and the Confederate battle flag that almost -- almost -- casts a patriotic glare over the far more "compelling" details of this place.

But click on the photo for a closer look -- beyond the odd, contradictory juxtaposition of allegiances.

See the two patio chairs with armrests pulled from what looks like a minivan? The smashed newspaper box saved for some future use? The collection of hazardous waste containers? The plyboarded window? The grill with antennae sticking out? The ... animal thing ... climbing up the porch post?

This is 53 12 Bodangit Gorge Hwy., where smoke can blow no other way but furiously out of the chimney. It's about 7 or 8 klicks outside Chimney Rock and Lake Lure and a little more than a bear's farthing from wherever Eric Rudolph was busted whilst dumpster-diving behind a Sav-A-Lot (heard tell they mounted his melon on the police station hallway wall and stuck some antlers on it).

People here have isolated themselves for a reason. You simply do not screw with them.

Would you screw with ...

this guy?









Of course.

Put this truck with its "The Emperor Has No Clue" and "What Would Jesus Bomb?" bumper stickers just about anywhere else in this fine land we call America and it is only a passing fancy.

But the context here -- where wood-paneled lodges leave Bibles open to the Book of John and suggest to their guests a good Baptist church to get religified in in the morning -- makes this stranger in a strange land deliciously compelling.

The rebel flag and the grill with the antennae somehow fit the culture here in an exotic way.

But this?

The "God Rules" sticker and the infinity Jesus-fish metal thingy on the tailgate thicken the plot.

Going into the ice cream shop next door, we ask who's F0x "NEWS" LIES signs that is (hoping beyond hope it's the guy behind the counter about to fix us a sundae and cut off a slice of fudge). He says, begrudgingly, prefaced with an inaudible sigh, "That's the neighbor's."

We take out the camera and get a shot of the sign.

... and the elaborate explanation scrawled manically in magic marker on posted paper telling the FedEx guy how to get to the door bell (with a diagram breaking down where the bell is and that it's exactly 7 feet high).

... and the upside down American flag sticker on the front windshield with "In Distress" plastered below. And the "If You Voted Bush, You Are To Blame" sticker on the side window.

It's either by fortuituous coincidence or by design that this fellow has what looks like a noose hanging from the back of the truck-bed cover.

It's time to meet him, whether we're ready to or not.

"I think he's coming out," my wife says as we warm up the truck. "Yes ... yes, he is. Eric, he's looking at you."

A big, intense, extremely white dude. We must have tripped his alarm (his "motion detector" he later tells us).

He approaches the car.

"Well, I'll talk to him," I say as I roll down my window.

"Did you need me for something?" he asks.

"I like your signs."

What followed was a full-on anti-Bush diatribe. A quite impressive one. This man knew how to hit his points with precision: war, Bush, social security, Bush, the death penalty, Bush, Bush, corporate nepotism, Bush, outsourcing to China, Bush.

He explained he had two children in the military, one of whom is still serving in Afghanistan, completing what he endorsed as the duty his son signed up for. He explained how they were told to pick up enemy guns and use them. How he had to send them food and thought soon he would have to send them bullets.

He talked about how, during the campaign season, 8 or 10 or so Kerry/Edwards signs were ripped from his building (which used to be some kind of store of some sort, where hoodlums also tried to break in and steal his ATM machine but he hunted them through the paved mountain passways toward Asheville as they threw tire irons out the window at him).

From the start, he dropped the sublime "Jesus was a liberal" line.

Mmmmm ... the sweet paradox. Tastes 10 times better than the sundae.

This, here, where any who choose to partake in the devil's spirits are corralled into one, easily surveiled establishment, Margaritaville or Pinacolotaburg or Rumandcokeaboro or whatever it's called.

Bible thumpin' and Bush hatin', all with a calm, resolute, intelligent, fatherly demeanor. This is a man who wants to talk in a land where few ever want to listen.

He inspires us.

So we sojourn from the village, deeper into the hills, to 53 12 on the main mountain drag -- in fact, the only drag -- on a mission to illustrate the diverse nature of isolationism.

As we pass by, two men wearing hunting gear and loading wood into a pick-up truck stand outside the home. They don't live there, but they could.

The door is closed, unlike the night before where a raging fire could be seen through the doorway beyond the "Beware Of Dog" sign.

A photo seems sketchy. Something about the rebel flag framing such a scene is spooky even for those of us who have lived in the South from birth.

I imagine, though, what I would tell the man if he approached me and asked me why I would take a picture of his house.

I would tell him, "I like your house."

And I do.

Just as I'm captivated by the man who would flip his metaphorical middle finger at everything he loathes, I'm intrigued by the man who would appear to be the flip side of the same coin.

An American who feels compelled to rebel against ... whatever.

And he retreats into the deep shadows of the mountains to do it.

It's a passive rebellion.

Against what? We can't really know if he's stirred to the same curiousity we indulge in.

His door is closed. And it never opens.

The antennae obviously aren't doing their job.