Misty Mountain Hop

Misty Mountain Hop                  3545

Friday, February 17, 2006-3:15 A.M.

I rumbled out of the mountains of West Virginia like an avalanche!

There's nothing like four hours of mountain driving to get yourself into the head of the redneck, what he thinks, what he feels, and why he believes the things he does.

I left the hotel in Bluefield, West Virginia and found the bank pretty quick...Bluefield is kinda spread out, so it took a couple of loops around their "downtown" area (all one-way streets) but finally I found the bank, cashed my check and was (cue timpani) OUTTA THERE!

What I didn't realize is that even though my journey was only 168 miles or so, it would take a full four hours to complete.  At the bank, a foreshadowing occurred when I was walking down the block from where I parked my car to the door of the bank, and had to lean back because I was heading downhill at a 45 degree angle.  The mountains of West Virginia are steep and relentless, and rather than plow them flat, the Mountaineers decided to just build on them and have their cities sloped and at an angle.

The drive to Prestonsburg, Kentucky looked like nothing on the map, but the Rand McNally road atlas doesn't tell you that you're going to be driving on corkscrew turns straight down, plummeting like you were sent to the seventh bolgia in Dante's Inferno.  At one point, I saw gasoline for $1.99 a gallon, but I couldn't take advantage because I already filled up at $2.38 (the standard price through much of WV).  I consider it a minor bummer, but I got over it.

The weather today was almost excruciatingly hot for an Upstate New Yorker who has already let his blood thicken up.  It was 72 degrees today, or damn close to it, and I sweat like a death row inmate.  I noticed that quite a few schools had children playing outside (supervised) and I felt a little cheated, because when I was a small child in school, we never got recess, or got to leave the school building until it was time to go home, for that matter.  We had a nice playground area, but really no time to utilize it.  Nonetheless, as a new father, I get homesick when I see the children because I'm reminded of all the wonderful years of school that my daughter has in front of her.  I had a mostly good grade school and high school experience, and I'm going to try to provide that for Harmony.

Another thing I noticed is that in the tiny coal mining towns of West Virginia, the schools look new and great, and the Post Offices are little more than trailers with American flags in front of them.  I guess I feel better that it's that way and not the other way around, but it still made me wonder a little bit.  Also, I saw more commemorative train cars displayed in one day than I've seen in my whole life.  I guess that the trains were a big part of coal transportation (still are....I saw a freight yard with about 150 coal cars, all loaded and ready to go), and so every town has one train car, displayed with a plaque, and every single one of them was on a 20' lenght of train track, like if they just put it on the grass, we wouldn't know what it was.  Thanks, city fathers.

I checked in to the Holiday Inn in Prestonsburg, Kentucky sometime around 3:00 P.M.(the guy at the Holiday Inn in Bluefield said to me, "Kentucky?  Better watch yourself."  Like a guy with New York plates on his car can just slide through West Virginia without getting epithets hurled at him).  After 3 1/2 to 4 hours in the car, I'd had about enough.  The rock station in the area emanated from the town of Williamson, West Virginia, and was smack dab in the middle of my trip, so I listed to them, only they switched over from music to Rush Limbaugh between noon and 3...and it didn't even sound like direct feed...it actually sounded like the guy in the studio had another radio in there, tuned to another station that was playing the Limbaugh show, and holding a microphone up to the speaker.  At first I thought it was bad reception, but the commercials were loud and clear, and then Rush would talk and sound all scratchy and muted.

Another point I would like to make is that I also never saw so many churches in my life.  Considering that the number of houses I saw on Route 52 (Highway To Hell) was small, there were enough churches to accomodate at least triple the population.  The weirdest thing was watching a Wal-Mart store pop up out of nowhere...as I was driving, I saw the sign but not the store, and then I looked to my left and down into a ravine, and there it was....it was like the store that time forgot, like it had just risen up out of the mossy creek that ran along side the road...*very* bizarre.

It seems as though the Southern Man (moreso than any other region) is subjected to only one viewpoint, and dissenters are looked upon as "Godless" and "troublemakers," and lately, "liberals" who "hate America."  And because no one with a college education would really want to live in the rural slums and hollers and mountains, no one is there to call the Southerner on his opinions.  Why is a rock station playing Rush Limbaugh?  Because people want to hear it, and there's obviously some money being put behind the station, or they'd be playing Lynyrd Skynyrd for the umpteenth time for Billy Bob who's dedicating "Freebird" to his cousin Dicky who died when the car he was working on fell off the lift and crushed his chest.  And that's all we need, is Rush Limbaugh being fed to these folks through tinny speakers, trumpeting the conservative viewpoint and banging the drum that is causing the destruction of many of their communities.  Ask the former workers of the manufacturing centers if it's o.k. to maintain stockholder equity by holding down minimum wage and outsourcing jobs to Mexico, India and China.  Ask the families of deceased mine workers if it's o.k. to lobby for smaller government, and to put fewer regulations on mining companies in terms of worker safety.

Ah, let them hang themselves.  I guess it's o.k. to be penniless and destitute, as long as women can't get abortions on demand.  My curse is that I care about strangers, and maybe I should just worry about myself because I can't change the world.  Still, I get so aggravated, I want to go deer hunting with Dick Cheney wearing a pair of fake antlers on my head.

On a good note, I'm working with Just June this weekend, and we had worked together before, so I'm happy...not that I don't like working on the road with comics I haven't met before, but it's just easier meeting up with old friends and not having to do all that ice-breaking shit.  June and I worked in Charleston, South Carolina, and we were down there during shrimp season, and they were having a big shrimp-fest.  June is a black lady who does impressions of Moms Mabely (the old Chitlin-circuit comedian) and closes her show with a Tina Turner impersonation.  So she did the morning radio to promote the show in Charleston, SC, and the radio guys told her that they were going to be broadcasting live from the shrimp-fest, and that she should come down because they would tighten her up with all the shrimp she could eat.

11 o'clock in the morning,my phone rings in my hotel room....it's June.

"C'mon, boy, we're gonna go get some scrimps."

"June, I'm pretty tired....I think I'll pass."

"I'm driving.  Get your ass outta bed."

*giving in* "O.K., June, I'll go.  I gotta take a shower first."

"You ain't gotta wash your ass, boy, just get in the car!"

June is something else, I tell you what.  When we got there, it was piss raining and the radio guys were packing up shop, but June got them to stop doing what they were doing, namely getting all of their high-end radio broadcasting equipment out of the rain, and got them to go over to the shrimp tent and procede to hook us up with several shrimp plates.  They had fried shrimp and big peel-'n'-eat jobbers, along with coleslaw and hushpuppies and the like.  Then after that, we headed to a fisherman's wharf, and by that time the rain had broken, and June pulled a cooler out of her trunk and bought about $75 worth of fresh seafood and barked at these chunky longshoremen like they were hired hands.  June is all of about 5' 6", but her voice is on the starting bench for the Knicks.

Tonight's show wasn't as packed as I thought it'd be, the last time I was here, the lounge was jammed.  Still, it was a good crowd, and a little older than last time...no college kids to speak of, so my marriage stuff went over pretty good.  I sold a few discs after the show, made some lunch money, and they cashed my check, which will save me a few minutes tomorrow from hunting down the bank (not that that's a problem, the whole town is only five blocks long).

Charleston, West Virginia is about two hours and change to the east, so I'm going to sleep in this morning, although staying up writing weblogs until 4 AM isn't really helping matters.  I took a long nap this afternoon, so that's throwing off my sleep.  Maybe tomorrow I'll try to straighten things out.

Peace, wherever you are.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY