Rocky and Steep

the way from Berea to Booneville was long, winding and steep!
i climbed some nice hills and roared down some better ones,
it was like being on the Jamaican bobsled team-

The Mountains are coming...

so i get to Mc Kee Kentucky in Jackson County at around 6:PM-
(on this terrain i'm covering 24 miles in four hours as opposed to
40 miles in five hours- perhaps i'll get some speed back when i
get used to riding upward...)i find the sheriff and ask him if i can
camp in the city park, he tells me to ask the mayor or the police.
the mayor, he says, was just up the street at one of the parks.
small towns, gotta love 'em. so i run up there and find another
uniformed officer, he gives me the number to county dispatch and
says they'll get me the mayor.

twenty minutes later, the mayor shows up. he's a real hoot too!
he says he saw me back in Sand Gap, he was driving a school bus.
he's got this teenage girl with him, she's his friend's daughter and
she's doing community service so she has to run around town with him while he patrols the parks and picks up litter. small towns.

the mayor and i talk for about 45 minutes or so, he tells me
all about how the last mayor started all these city park projects but
didn't finish them and no one knows where the money went. he says even though
you'll be right next to the police station, "you probably won't see them
at all, i can't get them to come down here and do what they're supposed to,
they wanna stay out in the county." then he tells me about the new deputy that he
hired that seemed like he was going to be a good cop. but then he turns out to be
taser and mace happy, he's apparently tasing people before he tries any other method of pacification, even talking i guess, "if you can't handle a hundred and ten pound woman on yer own..."

i asked him what made him run for office? he said he had to, other wise the previous mayor would have gotten in again, however holding office is obviously a big head ache. i could tell he really cared about the place though.

despite the mayor's embarrassment over the ugly welcome to Mc Kee signs and the poorly planned and dubiously missing funds of the city parks, Mc Kee is a cute little place, tucked away in the bottom of a valley in the Appalachian Plateau.

during this talk we walked around the park and scouted out places for me to set up.
the teenager was of course intrigued by my gauged ears, she had them too and she couldn't fathom why i would ride my bike across the country. the mayor said to her, when you older you'll understand. it's funny to me how relaxed everything was and how much business he shared with me, he even told me he was looking forward to the IRS coming to investigate the last mayor- is that TMI on my part???

then i told him about my dream to pick banjo with folks in these parts and asked him
if he knew anybody. fortunately, in these parts, bluegrass and old time fans are everywhere, you can't go five feet without running into one and another twenty will get ya with a fiddler or banjo picker. so he tells me about a fella down the street, who lives right across the street from him that makes fiddles and would love to do some pickin'.

so down to Philip Holliman's house i go. Philip is a delightful fellow and his wife
is a sweetheart and they have two very enthusiastic dogs. he shows me his workshop and explains how he makes his fiddles and shows me some works in progress, and patterns a raw blocks. after that we set to pickin', it goes a little rough at first but after a bit we start makin' music together. Philips fiddlin' is really good too.

after a while, his neighbor Larry comes over and tells us we are welcome to some burgers he's grillin' up. so we get over there and do some eatin' and socializin' and then Larry's wife brings out cherry cheese cake! after about a hour more of songs i'm kind of spent so we call it.

shortly after i get back to the park, the neighbor Larry shows up and tells me he's getting me a hotel room. i'm sort of beside myself at this point, Larry's says, "the owner is friend of mine he probably won't charge me but ten bucks." i figure he was soft pedlin' that but he really wanted to help me out, so i went. this an other example of the magnificent generosity that i have encountered on this voyage and again, i am so grateful for it!

the owner of the place is a retired geologist and archaeologist who still goes out to do digs and is in love with Mongolian culture and music, he showed me a bunch of pics from his last trip. we talked for about a half an hour

by this time, i'm really needing some sleep!

i get to my room and almost fall asleep- but then i call my friend in Berea and since it's only twenty miles away she decides to bring me some dried chili that she made for her last biketrip that she had to abandon because of knee troubles.

we took to each other almost instantly the day we met and when we sang Shady Grove together, magic happened. our friendship is really special and i'm so glad she came to visit me, i miss her quite a bit right now and thank her for the sunrise and the encouragement under the rain and the chili and the song she taught me the other day. Ha! and so far, she's the only banjo picker i met that was interested in learning some weird Klezmerish scales on banjo!

She's responsible for some really fantastic projects around Berea College and she seems to be a walking encyclopedia on the local flower, fauna and soil and most things that relate to them.


* * *

So i'm in Booneville right now camped at a hospitality station set up at the Presbyterian Church, the accent up hear just got thicker but these people are darlings. later tonight i'm gona try to meet up with this fella named Lowell who is a local renowned Story Teller and Double Thumb player.


i got some trash bags from a lady so i can make rain chaps...

-and soon... the mountains are coming.