My Hillbilly Childhood Story

When I was really little, we spent a brief time living in Cruso, NC. If you've never heard of it, it's outside of Waynesville, which is outside of Asheville, which is outside of Charlotte; all located in a state of no consequence. Seriously, up until the Google Fiber Initiative, North Carolina was irrelevant. Except that it's the setting for this story.

 

We moved there when I was 4 because my dad installed satellite-tv antennas, so that backwoods, Deliverance-types could get a glimpse of civilized folk. And so that small children - like me - could imagine what it would be like to one day live in a big city, and not 100 yards a river named after flying rats. But the satellite-tv antenna industry wasn't so much booming in rural North Carolina, and we were dirt poor. In fact, we only had kerosene heaters to heat the house with, which I managed to regularly burn myself by running into them. I still have scars on my hands and stomach from one particularly bad incident involving a Sit-n-Spin.

 

My dad was off installing Godzilla-sized dishes, and my mom had a job as a secretary, so I was babysat by the actual people from Deliverance. Who needs day care when you have the river and the side of the mountain?

 

Every morning, my mom would drop me off with Jack (the dad), Lou (the mom), Travis (sister; 5), and Jesse B. (brother; 3). I don't remember what Jack did, other than shoot at things, namely his neighbor. Lou was a stay-at-home mom, but who knows what she really did since we were never allowed to stay inside the house; even if it was raining - we had to go play in the barn. Travis and Jesse B. hated one another, but loved me, and I relished in their attention.

 

One afternoon, after being banished from the front yard for pulling clothes of the drying line, we thought up the idea of going on a bear hunt. Of course, not even in rural North Carolina are small children allowed to play with loaded guns, so we found large sticks with which to poke the ferocious bear to death. We snuck the Honey Bear jar out of the kitchen (for bait), and set out on our hunt.

 

It didn't take long for us to scare the shit out of each other, and soon every unexplainable noise we heard was attributed to a child-eating black bear. Unfortunately, because we were listening for sounds of impending mauling, we were missing the sounds of a much more plausible impending catastrophe.

 

We climbed up on top of an old pig shed (I'm really not making any of this up), to take a break and perhaps spot bears from our high vantage point. As we prattled along about whatever 5, 4, and 3 year olds talk about, we became aware of another sound nearby. A very scary, and dangerous sound.

 

I can't say that my 3 years in the remote mountains of North Carolina taught me all that much about outdoor survival skills, but I can say, that the handful of skills I had learned served me well on this particular day.

 

First, a rattling sound should always be immediately assumed to belong to a rattlesnake. Rarely, if ever, is there a baby shaking its favorite toy in the woods. Second, bear poking sticks are useless against rattlesnakes. Third, the closest medical facility is in Asheville, and too far away. In fact, we had been repeatedly instructed by Lou to not get hurt because she "wasn't going to drive all that damn way, so you'll just have to stay broken or bitten, until Jack shoots you like we do the horses."

 

Finally, screaming "SNAKE!" at the top of your lungs is the hillbilly equivalent of yelling "FIRE!" and it really gets people's attention. And that is exactly what we did, in the special, high-pitched way that only small children can shriek.

We clamored down off the pig shed, and ran full speed toward the house. In the panic, I forgot one very important thing - duck when you get to the driveway, or...

YOU WILL BE LAID FLAT THE FUCK OUT BY THE ELECTRIC FENCE.

Yes - there was an electric fence. To keep the horses from wandering away. And we knew to duck, but I had forgotten to duck. Now being 4, I was the perfect height to catch the electrified wire right across my neck. It, being an electric fence, shocked the shit out of me, and knocked me flat on the ground. I lay there, crying and screaming, doomed to become snake bait.

But my little hillbilly friends were all the way to the house by then, screaming and pointing chaotically toward the driveway.

"SNAKE! RATTLESNAKE! IT TRIED TO BITE US!!"

I can only imagine how this must have looked to Lou, and my mom who had just arrived to pick me up. There I was, in the middle of a dried up creek bed (that doubled as a second driveway), screaming and writhing in pain.

My mom ran over asking where it had bitten me. "Oh no!" I thought, "I've been shocked and bitten?!?!"

This only re-doubled my hysteria. Unable to get an answer out of me as to where I had been bitten, Lou and my mom proceeded to strip me down to my underwear looking for a snake bite. Of course there was none. Finally, my mom noticed the large, red whelp across my neck.

"Did you run into the fence??"

"Yes."

"Because you were running from a snake?"

"Yes."

"Get up young lady! And pick up your clothes. You are in a world of trouble."

To this day, my mom still seems a little angry about this incident, like I somehow orchestrated it on purpose to make her look foolish.