Ghost Dancing on the Cracker Circuit: The Culture of Festivals in the American South

Chapter One: Stuffing Sin in a Lard Bucket: Rattlesnake Roundup at Whigham, Georgia

C H A P T E R O N E STUFFING SIN IN A LARD BUCKET Rattlesnake Roundup at Whigham, Georgia t's late on acold Fridayafternoon in January,and an itinerantsnakehandling cowboy named Buckleystands on a rise overlooking U. S. Highway 84, which runs between Thomasville, the county seat of Thomas County, and Cairo (pronounced Kay-row), the county seat of Grady County. This is the deepest part of south Georgia's sandy coastal plain. A few miles farther south is the Florida state line, and only fifty miles beyond that is the Gulf of Mexico. To the west is Lake Seminole, where the Flint River meets the Chattahoochee and forms the Apalachicola; to the southeast is Lake Micosukee, and fifty miles beyond that flows the slow black water of the famous Suwannee. Near the edge of the red clay bluff above the road, Buckley, who enjoys the congenial good looks of a hefty Smokey and the Bandit-era Burt Reynolds, has propped up three flat and wide boxes to serve as temporary billboards declaring his trade. On one box, his promotional pitch has been hastily spray-painted in red, each parabolic U S" fanged with the bold slashed promise of reward, a simple, sensational gambit for attention sure to make anyone (including me) pull over and stop:«$NAKE$! $NAKE$! $$Rattle$nakes Wanted. We pay Cash$$.» Buckley has set up his weight scale and snake boxes on the side of this south Georgia highway because tomorrow, the last Saturday inJanuary, is the Whigham, Georgia, Rattlesnake Roundup, and, as Buckleytells me, he needs to buy himself some snakes. Buckley's a snake buyer for the Mustang Trading Company out of Texas. His business is snakeskins. You can tell just by looking at him. He's a walking advertisement for 3 I RATTLESNAKE ROUNDUP A family affair the hide trade. His straw cowboy hat is banded with a choice strip of python. His burly torso iswrapped in a rattlesnake vest. His pants are likewise belted, his feet arelikewise shod, and hiswallet, which hepulls out of his back pocket with the well-practiced easeof aquick draw, is made of the same. He says it was a "spurn of the minute" thing that brought him to Georgia for the roundup. He had a free weekend and his company needed skins, so he recruited a friend to ride along, and they drove all night from Texas. But now it looks like it was all a waste of time. Buckleyexplains that earlier this Friday morning he tried to set up his snake box billboards in Cairo. He had expected to do a heavy trade there because it's the closest town to Whigham that has any motels for the snake hunters who are coming to the roundup with their tin boxes and canvas sacks and plastic ice chests and percale pillowcases full of rattlesnakes. Buckley figured for sure he'd score some snakes because he offers good money, top dollar. Four bucks a pound. Dead or alive. "I need mefifty,a hundred pounds of snakes to make the trip worth my while," he says, squinting beneath his straw hat and rhythmically squeezing the handle of his aluminum snake hook. "I figured for sure I could get me that much. Twenty, twenty-five good snakes and I'd have me that much. I figured for sure, 'cause I pay good money, top dollar." He bobs hishead with convincing sincerity."Good money. Top dollar." But things aren't working out like he planned. Buckley says he fell victim of a conspiracy to keep him from buying any rattlesnakes. He had just gotten his snake box billboard set up in the corner of a grocery store parking lot back in Cairo when the lawpulled up and told him to get the hell on out of town. They said they don't need his type coming into Grady County and trying to buy up allthe rattlesnakes and spoiling Whigham's community spectacle. Buckley isn't having much luck buying rattlesnakes along the side of the quiet road. He has only three so far, bought from a couple of 4 RATTLESNAKE ROUNDUP kids who caught the snakes in some woods behind a welder's shop and didn't want to wait any longer to redeem the reptiles for cash. The others, though, especially the ones who hunt for volume, are saving their sacks of snakes to sell to...