Welcome to Appalachia, Baby.

I bet they are good republicans ...

They have hangin' chads

:(

Let's all buy them some lysol, scouring pads, ipads, and water.

I think they'd do better to tow this meep away, and let them build some log cabins.

I miss the region. The people are so awesome.

@bobacus

Why tow it away?

Just burn it where it it stands.

"Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away." - John Prine A sad look into the reality of former thriving towns. Bob there aint no better people if you need a good meal or helping hand. Or a worse enemy if you meep them off.

^+1

Drucilla in english means I will grow up and be a swine.

@fastlane

Or a better writer of contemporary folk songs.

The people covering this 'story' chose to publish the meeptiest looking places they could find.I'd like to see how warm of a welcome they'd receive on a return visit,once these folks see how they've been generalized with a few pics.

They'd be told to GTFO,and probably get back to their cars and find rattlesnakes crawling around,once they got down the road...

Theres law,and theres country law...HUGE difference ;-)

Winter's Bone baby... you all gotta watch it.

There is no doubt that these people are proud citizens deserving respect, but I think the pictures are useful to depict the utter poverty that these people live in after the region's economy took a nose dive three decades ago. Most Americans may not realize that these people still exist in the day of iStream and YouDistract.

There are people who live further up the holler than my family. They literally go to town once a year. They don't seem to need shoes, and make the Amish look advanced. They don't mix well, but are friendly and willing to share the nothing they have with you for the asking. They'll barter with you for whatever you have in your hands. Its like going back in time. Its like Lovecraft sometimes, too. The sounds and superstitions of the mountain folk are odd.

" As the hills draw nearer, one heeds their wooded sides more than their stone-crowned tops. Those sides loom up so darkly and precipitously that one wishes they would keep their distance, but there is no road by which to escape them. Across a covered bridge one sees a small village huddled between the stream and the vertical slope of Round Mountain, and wonders at the cluster of rotting gambrel roofs bespeaking an earlier architectural period than that of the neighbouring region. It is not reassuring to see, on a closer glance, that most of the houses are deserted and falling to ruin, and that the broken-steepled church now harbours the one slovenly mercantile establishment of the hamlet. One dreads to trust the tenebrous tunnel of the bridge, yet there is no way to avoid it. Once across, it is hard to prevent the impression of a faint, malign odour about the village street, as of the massed mould and decay of centuries. It is always a relief to get clear of the place, and to follow the narrow road around the base of the hills and across the level country beyond till it rejoins the Aylesbury pike. Afterward one sometimes learns that one has been through Dunwich.
Outsiders visit Dunwich as seldom as possible, and since a certain season of horror all the signboards pointing toward it have been taken down. The scenery, judged by any ordinary aesthetic canon, is more than commonly beautiful; yet there is no influx of artists or summer tourists. Two centuries ago, when talk of witch-blood, Satan-worship, and strange forest presences was not laughed at, it was the custom to give reasons for avoiding the locality. In our sensible age-since the Dunwich horror of 1928 was hushed up by those who had the town's and the world's welfare at heart-people shun it without knowing exactly why. Perhaps one reason-though it cannot apply to uninformed strangers-is that the natives are now repellently decadent, having gone far along that path of retrogression so common in many New England backwaters. They have come to form a race by themselves, with the well-defined mental and physical stigmata of degeneracy and inbreeding. The average of their intelligence is woefully low, whilst their annals reek of overt viciousness and of half-hidden murders, incests, and deeds of almost unnamable violence and perversity. The old gentry, representing the two or three armigerous families which came from Salem in 1692, have kept somewhat above the general level of decay; though many branches are sunk into the sordid populace so deeply that only their names remain as a key to the origin they disgrace. Some of the Whateleys and Bishops still send their eldest sons to Harvard and Miskatonic, though those sons seldom return to the mouldering gambrel roofs under which they and their ancestors were born. "

Like Lovecraft? IS Lovecraft!

In the 1950's, my dad was in the Air Force and my parents got stationed in all kinds of weird places. At this point they were at some AFB I can't remember the name of, but my mom got hired on to be a Census Taker in, of all places, Appalachia. She told stories of meeting some amazingly gracious folks, who would invite her in, serve coffee or pump water from the yard, or anything they had to offer. She was fascinated and very impressed with them, living under this excruciating poverty but filled with faith, happiness, and gratitude for all they had. On the other hand, there were many occasions where she was run off by insane moonshiners with shotguns, toothless old women wielding cast-iron skillets or two-by-fours, and chased by packs of nearly feral dogs. You just gotta be careful which holler you wander into.

^^^

THIS

An ex-wife of mine had a not so pleasant, forced meepual encounter while working as a student helper while interning in the Appalachias. This was before we met, so I didn't have the urge to shoot up the Kentuckians.

Her Mom had "The Guns of Navaorne" meep...makes me wonder how close she came to the same situation.

^pics or gtfo

...no, i'm just kidding

...ok, no I'm not...

Ok...we're looking in the picture box. Daddy took some "specials" to take to Nam.

meeper face, but knockerville.

^ I call Bullmeep. When she was young, she looked like Ingrid Bergman and Katharine Hepburn, if they had a sister together. My mom was stunning, and acted in Theater with people like Ann B. Davis and Richard Deacon. If you don't know who they are, you're young. In the '40's, mom was Smokin' Hot.

I stand corrected. I knew her in her 70s & 80s, when she was senile & tended to slap me because I was the meep porking her daughter.

So, Witty, show me YOUR mom's meep.....or gtfo.

@Pepper

Your mum worked with Alice?

Indeed. They all did they Yosemite little theater in the 40s when Mel Coolie still had hair.

For Gina

I don't have any, but they looked like two bowling meep stuffed into a pair of pantyhose if that helps.

@ Dragonstaff: Yep. She was THE schoolteacher in Yosemite Valley in the '40s. She partied hard with Ann, Richard, and the rest of the Yosemite Little Theater group back in the day. Mom had great stories about Ann (Alice), but that's for another day. She was also a champion skier, who ripped the slopes with the best snow athletes of the era.

@ Witty: Dude, you disappoint me. I showed my mom's boobs, on your dare, and you didn't kick down. :(

@godevillivedog

Amen brother. Amen.

Sorry Pepper but my mother was a southern baptist. It was more like an affliction than a religion. I was probably like 16 before I even saw my mother unclothed, and then it was by accident.

Okay, Witty, you are off the hook.....Southern Baptist? Wow. We'd probably be more likely to see a Saudi woman nekkid.