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NEIGHBORS Some of our neighbors fished for pickerel through the ice in midwinter . They usually drove a wagon out on the lake, set a large number of lines baited with live minnows, hung a loop of the lines over a small bush planted at the side of each hole, and watched to see the loops pulled off when a fish had taken the bait. JOHN MUIR The Story of My Boyhood and Youth CXis the case in a small mountain community. If the adage "everyone knows what everyone else is doing" ever applied, it applies to the borough of Saluda and its environs. In a part of the world where the oral tradition and the art of storytelling is still prevalent, some of the best tales, of course, are true stories. And in a land where truth is indeed stranger than fiction, yarns and rumors abound. Over time some tales find their way into the realm of oral history and myth. Figures who in their day may have been considered quite common can, in the span of a generation or two, become larger than life. And then there are certainpeople who by their very nature exude mythic status whether it results in condescension or praise. Here in my neighborhood (a term I use loosely, since it generally implies an urban environment) there are and havebeen many such characters. I would be reluctant to write about them here except for the fact that they are so often the focus of uninhibited conversation amongst others . And being that gossip is an essential aspect of human interaction, and since the characters here are of such glowing colors, I will shed shyness in favor of my proclivity to gab and will talk about my neighbors —those who live here still, as well as the ghosts of neighbors from the past who live on in stories smartly,if not often, told. By way of the road, about a mile from my cabin is the home of an old mountain family. What makes these neighbors the subject of community conversation isthe fact that solittle isknown about them. They maintain such alow profile that it israre to see them outside the confines of their house. Bybeing so reclusive they have,much against no /Ipeople like to talk. And people like to talk about each other. Such P their intentions, I'm sure, created such a mystique that speculation has filled the void where fact leavesoff. In short, curiosity has become the current and currency of conversation where these quiet folk are concerned. And not knowing only exaggerates the speculation about that which is not known. "Oh, if I could only be a fly on the wall of that house," Mac said to me one dayrecently when we were pruning apple trees in hisorchard. Mac had been their nearby neighbor for more than twenty-five years, and he was fascinated by what he did and did not know about this quiet family. And WaltJohnson had almost prided himself on the fact that his family and theirs had lived close to each other for so long and had rarely, if ever, spoken. In the case of Walt, Ifeel sure the sentiment and behavior were more feudlike than simply contrary, as everything with Walt was either black or white. Where people were concerned, they were either friend or foe.Walt was a burner of bridges—if not figuratively, then literally. After all, was it not he who had burned his family home-place to the ground in a fit of rage over a pittance of money? Walt didn't have anything good to sayabout the family down the road—but his tales were suspect owing to his biasedperspective if not to his coyote-like personality But in the end I think Walt knew no more than the rest of us about these old mountain folks—all of us hog-tied by our ignorance and fit to be tied by the tall tales told. Of course, WaltJohnson himself was one of the most colorful characters of all. As my friend, if not an actual neighbor during the early days of our acquaintance, I often thought of him as a classic character for a southern roman a clef. "Faulkner would have loved this guy!" I would think as I watched or listened to Walt in action. A kind of hillbilly Charlie Chaplin, Walt engendered such sentiments about himself. In a way,he was his own worst enemy and at the same time...

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