Some people might not find this all that interesting and might think it’s utter crap not worthy of reading but oh well. Kay Serah Serah I say. I had a lot of fun on this little adventure. I paid quite a bit of money to go and I took advantage of every penny spent.As you know from my previous posts (which are out of order by date because of the mobile blogging by the way) I’ve been in the south and eastern part of the States for the last 10 days.
That’s one of my first cousins, Randy. He rode his motorcycle to my aunt’s house and went to her husband’s family reunion with them. Then he rode with my other cousin for 6 hours to Indianapolis to meet me. This plan was spur of the moment and took a lot of wrangling to achieve. I completely forgot I”d have to drive all the way back to Indianapolis by myself.Randy comes from the Patterson and Pace bloodline and both of them are extremely colorful. The outlaw Jesse James was a Pace and the Patterson’s are known for their meanness and trouble making ways. Through him, the traditions live on.
Randy lives in a holler. That’s not hollow, as in Sleepy Hollow with Johnny Depp, it’s holler as in a small village in the depths of the mountains.Here’s a picture of the holler Randy lives just outside the town of Pikeville where Hillybilly Days takes place.
The area surrounding Randy’s place is positively true natural beauty. The vegetation is so lush and green that it’s almost a dark blue in places. His house backs right up to the mountain separated only by a small creek. There’s a million little cemeteries scattered throughout the Kentucky mountains and there’s even one directly across that one lane paved road from Randy’s house.Here’s the creek, including little fish and cemetery. You can click on them to see a larger view.
I took this picture just after it had rained. Everything had that earthy wet smell and the creek looked so pretty in the gloom.
I actually ended up walking through that creek trying to take these pictures because everything was so wet that my foot slipped and I ended up right in it.
It was worth it though because when you see the enlarged view of these pics you’ll see how picturesque it really is.
You’ll want to look at the cemetery pics enlarged. Randy’s sister lives in the house that’s just behind this graveyard.
This is one of those graveyards that the coal companies gave to people to bury their loved ones. There’s no records or mapped out plots but people do seem to visit and do upkeep on it.
They say this graveyard is haunted and Randy’s wife Paula is scared to go up there at night. Course it could be the bear spottings that has her scared.
That’s the same cemetery at night. I found out later that there has been 3 bear attacks this year. There are bears, mountain lions and panthers roaming around and at night they come right into people’s yards. Maybe I shouldn’t have been up there on that mountain at night time.
Here’s a turtle I found in Randy’s driveway one morning. It was so cool I thought it warranted a picture. Hungry little fellow. I took him back to the creek so he wouldn’t get run over.
One night my cousin decided to take me ghost hunting. His best friend and my other cousin Ashley came with us. That was the night I took the picture of the sign on a post at the bootlegger place. Randy and his friend got completely shit-faced drunk. I don’t really drink and I was driving a rental car so I was sober. Ashley had a beer and was perfectly capable of standing on her own two feet without stumbling. I can’t say that much for Randy and his friend. We didn’t get in until 6:30 the next morning and his wife was crazy pissed off about it. Can’t blame here though.
I won’t bother posting the pictures from our ghost hunt because there’s too many of them and I’m already probably boring you to death but I will share this little bit with you. One of the places we went was an old coal miner’s abandoned house. Other people have lived there since but it’s been many years.
Since that time people have used it to party in. There’s no running water or electricity in the house so I had to use my flash.It was so dark in that house that we couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces and Randy didn’t think about bringing along a flashlight. We didn’t know it at the time but there was a bat flying around in there. I didn’t find out until I put this picture on my computer.
I blew it up in adobe so you can really see the bat.
My last day in Kentucky was for a family reunion that I didn’t find out about until I got my aunt’s house on that first day. I met so many people I can’t remember their names but it felt good to suddenly have family surrounding me for probably the first time ever in my life.
One of my 2nd or 3rd cousins, not sure which, took me to see my great grandmother and grandfather’s graves. There are several relatives buried nearby in another coal mining graveyard. Here they are.
I also got to see the property they once lived one. I had been there as a small child and although the memories are very fuzzy, standing in that spot felt like de ja vue. The last place she took me was up further into the holler (oh and I forgot to mention I am related in one way or another to almost every person in this holler) where I was able to see where my mother was born. There’s nothing left except a chimney and it’s near impossible to walk up to it because there’s a steep ravine and a creek to cross.
You’ll have to look closely but that’s the chimney that remains from the house my mother was born in.
I left Kentucky the next day. I left early and spent the entire day driving from Pikeville to Bluffton Indiana where I spent my last three days with my other relatives.
While in Bluffton I stayed one night with another aunt and got to roast smores with her grand daughters and join in on their once a year afternoon tea party complete with hats, scarves, gloves and fans. I’ll never forget that. I’d post pictures but I don’t share pics of little girls.
I also got to visit my grandfather’s grave and some of his family member’s graves in Bluffton. Here’s his grave and a picture of the picture of my grandparents that’s on his grave.
That’s my grandmother and grandfather. Two people who fascinate me and yet they are people who I’ve barely known. In the case of my grandfather, a person I’ve never even met.
There’s a lot more I’d love to tell you about but this post is already outrageously long. Now that I got all that out of my system it will be back to the regular routine of weirdness and strange things that run through my head.
Until next time….
Raunchy Taters 