Return to Stupid

I went back to my house in Albany the other day to clear some junk out. I had meant to bring a truck load of garbage to the dump, but that was not to be.
Since I don't have a pickup truck, the plan was to rent a U-Haul van to move the old furniture and construction debris, but that was not to be.
I've rented U-Haul vans before. The procedure isn't too complex. That is until you get to the hills. You see the local nobility thinks they should just sit back while everyone else does the work and then gives them money for the privilege. Consequently, I arrived at a deserted group of storage buildings to pick up the truck. The rental company told me to call when I arrived there. Silly me. I thought that meant they lived next door, and when I arrived, they'd come over in 5 or 10 minutes to hand over the vehicle. No such thing. When I called, they told me the key was in the back of the truck. Well, there was only one U-Haul truck so it wasn't too hard to find. Of course it was backed against the wall of a storage unit and the freezing rain the previous night had frozen the door shut. It soon became obvious that the door wasn't going to budge without some serious work. Added to the fact that I would have had to do said work with about 1 foot of free space, it did not seem like a good idea. After a few minutes of telling the rental agent that the door was stuck and receiving the same response of "the keys in the back", I told them to forget it. They then told me that they could come out in 3 days to fix the problem and I could get the truck then. Yeah, right.
So far, typical hillbilly efficiency.
Of course by this time I has attracted the attention of a neighbor's dog, who decided that I didn't belong there.  Now I got to deal with a snapping, frothing at the mouth dog. Fortunately, I've dealt with such types before, so I managed to convince the dog that I was in charge, and we parted amicably with the dog wanting to play. Of course, I wasn't feeling too happy about hillbillies by this time.
Since I was in the area anyway and I had help coming, I figured that I should go to my house and at least put all the garbage in the barn.
As I approached my house, the neighbor from hell pulled into the left hand lane of the road to check his mail. Did he do it because he saw me coming, or was he just clueless? Who knows? Anyway, I came to a stop and waited for him to get his mail and drive on, but he refused to budge, so I had to drive around him. No big deal, but I was batting 1000 with the hillbillies this day. It was really annoying.
The spooky part came after I pulled into my driveway and was taking some tools out of my car. There was a lot of barking and when I looked up, there was the neighbor from hell driving slowly by and checking me out with another neighbor's dogs snapping at his tires.

Here's a picture of said neighbor watching me through binoculars. This happens to be a good day, but I've seen him stand outside and watch like this in the pouring rain for 45 minutes. Why 45 minutes? Because that was when I was done doing what I was doing, and staying there to see how long he'd stand there seemed pointless.
Why not call the law? You're looking at the law. Yes, Clinton County Kentucky made someone with a criminal record a deputy jailer. Not quite the same as a deputy sheriff to be sure, but still spooky in a small town when you have one behaving like this.
I was just lucky that I had someone over to help me move stuff or who knows what stories he would have made up. That's the lesson for today. Never go anywhere in Appalachia without a witness.
Those of you who get to move stuff out of your old house and take it to the dump. Can rent a truck to do so, and have a neighbor who is nice enough to help, count yourselves lucky. In other parts of the country, even throwing out old mattresses can get complicated.