Strange Hillbilly Vandalism

Sometimes it just gets strange in the hills. I was changing the oil on my car the other day when I noticed that someone had drawn an anarchy symbol on the bottom of my oil pan. WTF? I can understand breaking windows and cutting brake lines, but avoiding security cameras, risking a confrontation with an armed homeowner, and crawling underneath a car just to draw a gotcha on an oil pan? Curiouser and curiouser.

It Mine!!!!!

My new neighbors have a pet. A cute little hound dog. Well he would be cute if his ribs weren't showing and he wasn't covered with scabs. Taking care of your animals is not an Appalachian trait. Only collecting large quantities of them.

Of course the dog spends its days wandering the neighborhood and his nights chasing the cows of the farmer over the hill. I don't know why he hasn't been shot yet. He started off with a collar. For those of you not from Appalachia, that does not mean a license and rabies tag. A collar alone denotes ownership. Licenses and rabies shots are for foreigners (meaning anyone who lives outside of the county and in some cases anyone who lives off of the street). Of course he slipped his collar. This not being allowed, he next was put in a training harness and left to run free. It was kind of pathetic watching him get caught on things and struggling to get loose. He eventually got out of that and the neighbors freaked.

I was kind of amusing to watch the family drive up and down the street in an attempt to get the dog. They finally caught him and drove him home. Not wanting him to run off again, they stayed outside and watched him for a half hour. Then they got bored and went inside. It's hard to believe that anyone can be that stupid, but you can't ignore the evidence.

More Hillbilly Burning Rituals

Apparently, my neighbors decided to do a very thorough spring cleaning, which included doing more than barbequing their dogs. The next morning, they decided to burn more trash.

Yes, that is a Coleman cooler chest that Beavis is setting on fire. The fact that he was using a butane pocket torch, the kind you see on TV associated with meth pipes to light it makes me kind of curious about what kind of evidence he was trying to destroy. You can see the cooler burning in this picture.

You may also notice how close the fire is to the trailer. Not content with this, aerosol cans were next on the list. They seemed to find it most amusing.
At this point I called the law. Silly me, I called the State Police first, and when they suggested I call the fire department,  I informed them that the fire department here refused to respond to illegal burns, that being a state issue. They said they would handle it. When I latter called county dispatch they seemed very angry at me for some reason. Could it be that I called the state first? They demanded to know who it was that told me they wouldn't come out for illegal burns. When I gave them the name of the person in charge of the fire department, they seemed even more annoyed with me. I guess an apology for the wrong information being given to me would have been too professional of them.
Whatever the reason, the fire department arrived promptly and behaved in a professional manner.
The amusing part was, before the fire department arrived, I had Beavis strutting around and glaring at my house.

 

 

If you saw someone dressed like this, bouncing around in an uncoordinated fashion, using a lighter associated with the drug crowd to set a cooler on fire, what would you think? Amazingly, just before the fire department arrived, he ran inside and changed into something more presentable.

 



 

 

That's him in the red t-shirt. Of course he was also full of yes sir, no sir, I didn't know the law sir Appalachian politeness, even though the state had been out there multiple times for the same problem last spring. You just have to love police scanners. Law enforcement should probably stick to cell phones around here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More Appalachian Burning Rituals

In my last post, I wrote about the wonderful smell of burning that the residents of Appalachia are subjected to as a result of the mentally challenged using wood heat. It is now springtime and the wood stoves are going out. Regrettably, they are replaced by another form of burning. Everyone here will burn all the growth that has accumulated in their yards and all the trash that has accumulated in their houses while they were hibernating rat like around their stoves.

 

Of course, Kentucky only allows the burning of yard waste, but everyone knows yard waste gives off clouds of black smoke. Since the county refuses to enforce state laws outside the city limits, there's not much that can be done. Before I moved here, I didn't know that a county could refuse to enforce state laws. Then I moved to Clinton county and learned better. Here the law depends on who you know and who your kin are rather than anything so mundane as the law.

 

I would say that these people are just totally selfish and have no respect for their neighbors, but they tend to treat themselves just as badly.

 

 

What's scarier about this picture? The fact that your friendly neighborhood redneck seems intent on cooking his dogs, or the fact that there's an infant in the trailer and the person who started the fire took off and left the fire unattended?





Is San Francisco Right?

 

 

 

San Francisco. The Land of Fruits and Nuts. I generally dislike everything about their politics. A while back they created a stir when they outlawed fireplaces in new homes and wouldn't let people have wood fires. That seems totally un-American. Of course, living the country life where red meets neck causes one to have a different view on this new law from liberal land.

 

Imagine your neighbors fireplace looking like this. Now imagine 6 homes in a 1/4 mile radius heating with wood that look just the same. 

 

 

 

 The result is a period of time from October through March that looks like this on occasion. Very rustic. Rush hour in Manhattan has nothing on rural Kentucky.

 

 

I know, wood heat really shouldn't look like this. This isn't the fault of wood heat. It's caused by the fact that the average hillbilly is too stupid to burn wood without making a nuisance of themselves, but that pretty much goes for everything they do. The question is, what do you do when people are this stupid? San Francisco might be on to something. Personally, I'd rather outlaw stupid, but judging by prime time TV, that's not going to happen anytime soon.

Police Fail

The sheriff of Clinton County, Jim Guffey, draws a lot of controversy. Those who are protected by the system tend to think of him as a moral good old boy, those who aren't tend to think of him as a corrupt son of a bitch who should be behind bars. What the truth is isn't clear, like many things in Appalachia.

I mentioned in  a previous post about how he sent a large number of drug dealers to jail as soon as he got into office, but none afterwards. It almost seemed like he was cleaning out the competition for his friends, but it might have just been coincidence. Of course, most people would be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, unless they had to live next to one of the sheriff's friends. When said people run around screaming and brandishing firearms, when they weave down roads on four wheelers with one adult and three children clinging to it, when you're the subject of vandalism and get to fill out a police report on a post it note, you begin to think there may be some corruption going on somewhere. That or a level of incompetence usually not seen in the Western World.

One of my neighbors had it even worse. She stupidly moved in with one of these friends who was a known druggie. Of course, the relationship went like all such go, so I got to hear second hand reports of drugs and threats of violence against multiple people. Amazingly, even when these threats were made publicly, in front of witnesses, the law enforcement response was still, "meh". It ended in the usual way, with the neighbor getting a broken nose and the druggie saying that, "Jim Guffey would never put him in jail". So she called a deputy who did. She's lucky it wasn't worse. Whether or not Jim Guffey is corrupt or not is unknown, but seriously, when violent druggies claim to be under your protection, that really should be a red flag to the rest of the law enforcement community. This is especially true since about 6 months previously while witnessing possible druggie activity and talking with the state police, I told them that I had either wandered into one of their sting operations or they had some corrupt cops around here. Of course, not being a fellow law officer, they totally ignored me. Of course they also told me that I had reasonable suspicion, not probable cause and to call them back when I did. Silly me, I thought building a court case with documentation was what my tax dollars were paying for, I guess I was wrong.

Now we get to the fail. One of the main problems here is prescription medicine abuse. Pills seem to be more popular here than meth. Of course, the official police response is to try to get unused pharmaceuticals disposed of properly. To this end they create collection points where these drugs can be turned in and stored until being disposed of properly. Guess who is in charge of prescription drug collection in Clinton county. You guessed it, Jim Guffey. So, there are known pill heads who claim his protection and no one in law enforcement sees a problem with him being in charge of pills?

Of course, Jim Guffey may be what he claims, a hard working public servant, or he may be as corrupt as a previous sheriff of McCreary county. No one knows. The problem is, no one seems to care.

What is a citizen to do when all the police appear to be either corrupt or riding the short bus?

Noisy Neighbors

Last night was Halloween. A time of pumpkins and ghosts. It's also a time when my windows shake with the excessive bass of my neighbor's music system. When your windows are shaking from a building almost 1/4 mile away, you have to wonder about the eardrums and the respect for others that the originators of such music enjoy. This particular music wasn't so bad. It came from the local church and only lasted a couple of hours and they don't do it often. You have to wonder about Christian Rock turned up to that volume, but this is also the church that moves street signs to suit themselves, the church whose deacon was under investigation for narcotics peddling, and the church who bought their rec center with lottery winnings. Such is the Baptist religion.

Despite the title this blog is not about the music the occasion for it. Fall Festival. Yes, Fall Festival. No one here is allowed to use the words Halloween. That would be sacrilegious. When Christians tell you they don't want a theocracy, bear that in mind.  Admittedly, the thought behind the church fall festival is good. Get the kids off the streets and give them something to do to keep them out of trouble. That's all well and good, and they are well intentioned. Unfortunately, that's where it all falls apart. They set up a church fair in their rec center and let anyone in free, feed them, and even give goody baskets to the kids.

My first year here, when I went with my kids it was a lot of fun, although I did have some explaining to do about the comic book that showed knights fighting dinosaurs, because everyone knows they existed at the same time. However, that's in the realm of amusing local tradition, not a problem. No the problem is that as Clinton county has become more and more a center for antisocial behavior, so to has the churches fall festival. It was bad enough when 18 year old jocks from the high school were sent through rides with 5 year old kids and no one seemed to care, but when the drug dealers stop off there to get fed and set up connections before the rest of their night, there's a problem. The amusing part is the place has cops there for security, and the druggies are operating in plain sight, but no one will say anything. I guess Christians don't like to judge. Or maybe they're involved in the trade. I really can't figure this place out.