Legalized Theft

Kentucky is not the place to be if you want common decency or common sense. Today, I want to talk about the laws of adverse possession. Basically, this means someone taking land that belongs to you and getting a court to say that you don't own it anymore.
Now, I understand the need for such laws. After all, if the last deed to the property had references like the old oak tree, and Uncle Bille's outhouse, I can understand how the property lines would get a bit confused. And, if after a generation or two of working the same piece of land, it's found that one party has been using the same couple of acres as their own, then it only seems right to adjust the property lines accordingly.
Then we have Kentucky. Kentucky not only lets you claim the land after 15 years, but requires that you had knowledge that the land wasn't yours. That's right, under Kentucky law, you must show intent to deprive the other party of their land for 15 years before the state will give it to you. A simple mistake of the property line means no land for you.But, show intent to steal someone else's land, and Kentucky will give you title to it. Of course, all state, county, and city lands are exempt from this. I wonder why?

Cave People

A lot of the people in Appalachia live in trailers. With the warm weather, you'll notice an interesting thing about a lot of these trailers. They keep their doors open. I understand being poor and not having air conditioning, but in that case wouldn't you open a window, or put in a window fan? No, the windows stay firmly shut with the curtains drawn. The only source of air into the house is the open doorway, which for some reason is never used with a screen. When it gets really hot, the occupants of said dwelling will wander out onto the porch, and it's a common sight in the summer months to see the locals sunning themselves on the porch.

It reminds me of a nature show with the animals sunning themselves in front of their cave. Than or a caveman movie. You have to wonder whether these people are just so crime conscious that they are uncomfortable with windows that open (closer inspection would reveal a lot of them nailed shut), or whether they really can't handle more than one opening in a dwelling and they are trying to recreate a cave. It just seems so primitive.

Hillbilly Law

I like that title. Hillbilly Law. There should be a reality show with that name. It would probably be a huge success.

Apparently, Clinton county, Kentucky, has a new deputy sheriff. Sheriff Jim Guffey took his 10 year old son with him to serve an arrest warrant. I can understand taking your 10 year old son on a ride along. Clinton county isn't that dangerous. Dressing him up like a deputy and taking him to serve an arrest warrant on drug charges seems to be crossing the line of common sense. Letting him sign the prisoner into the local jail seems to imply a lack of any brain activity whatsoever.  I really don't know why the jailer deputy who let the paperwork get signed and the sheriff aren't out of work, but this is Kentucky and no one cares. Then they wonder why all the drug dealers move to Clinton county. I keep imagining officer Cartman on his Big Wheel.

Respect my Authoritah!!!

The news story can be accessed here:

http://www.wkyt.com/content/news/Clinton-sheriff-took-his-10-year-old-son-to-work-let-him-sign-jail-paperwork-377491201.html

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?