Be Saved, Smoke, and Shoot Thy Gun
Virginia is a larger state than one might imagine, and the drive from the DC area to the Knoxville-Chattanooga corridor can take a long time; long enough to generate a sense of confusion as one tries to sort out the sordid from the sorghum.
Cigarettes are big part of life between Roanoke and Bristol along 81, as is Jesus, his legions, and their guns.
Dickey referred to those in North Georgia and parts of eastern Tennessee and western NC as being from the land of nine fingered people. But I think he had it wrong in some material way; derisive and observant, such descriptives fail to see a deeper, richer hue.
It’s not the land of nine-fingered so much as it is the place where dogs aren’t on leashes, where dogs are bred and fought, where dogs are loose on country roads, where dogs are strayed on highways but not spayed at the vet, where dogs are shot when no longer convenient.
It takes a special kind of person to have a dog but not care for it. Such people surely live special kinds of days.
I imagine they get up and reach for a cigarette. Then they head over to the the bait and tackle to get ammo for their guns, pausing to genuflect at their own calvary. They take a breather between sermons to raise pups they’ll let wander the dirt roads, then drive their oversized F350s past a handful of a few more dogs on the side of the road.
Yet they are courteous people, and genuinely so. Deeply so. Careful drivers. Their farms are family farms at a family scale. In parts of Maryland where its more sophisticated, the farms reek of manure ponds and industrial scale. South of Knoxville n a country road last Sunday at 6 am the farms smell good, healthy. Even in the heat of the afternoon it smells like a farm, the way it should. When lost I found supportive, kind people offering direction and coffee, if not a ride to Sunday services.
There are always multiple truths.
As Daniel Quinn wrote, the world is divided between leavers and takers. It’s not blue and red as I used to believe. It’s those who think and those who don’t.
My farmer friend from near Hiawassee said to me overlooking the Tennessee River at sunset contemplating the Trail of Tears, “you can’t teach stupid.” And in some way I suppose he was right. But stupid is often courteous. Sophisticated is often selfish.
It’s grace I am looking for, in whatever color, along whatever road.
The image you bring to mind here is of my great-uncle Howard from Idaho, tall and lanky, broken and crooked from bull-riding. He was always covered in sawdust and sweat, stretched out in a gutted chair on the porch of his trailer on the farm, he’d roll Drum tobacco in rolling papers between his fingers while little bits fell out the sides and rolled away.
He and my great-aunt Barbara had 3 dogs who’d run the length of the fence, barking at passing cars and knew not to leave the property, though the fence was always open. We’d visit when my mom was tired and in need of the crappy Folgers coffee that filled old glass pyrex cups. In the evenings, I’d help uncle Howard with the ‘chores’ – feeding and watering horses, cows, sheep, dogs, rolling back the sprinklers and salting slugs. The dogs were working animals as any other, respected by my uncle for what they did and respected as pieces of the whole. When Amy dog’s hips gave out, it was time; and a gun was not a source of power, but a tool. Amy was not shot because her owner lacked compassion. They did not attend the Presbyterian church because they wanted to assert themselves as Christians upon the world. Uncle Howard didn’t smoke cigarettes because he wanted to be a sonofabitch, and he certainly didn’t own a gun for power or a truck for anything else but for hauling hay.
Though this is not Virginia, or Tennessee. And this should be no measure of the whole. And I get what you mean. There are always multiple truths.