WV Landowners: Agree to sell land for pipeline, rebel as soon as gas company isn't looking

*This entry is lovingly dedicated to my friend, Ginger Hamilton (Caudill), who was a wonderful writer and story teller and who shared my sense of humor. She is so missed. 

The pipeline is coming to West Virginia. Sure they are having public relations meetings and talking to landowners like we have a choice, but we know it's a done deal because they are already piling pipes.   You can fight it. You can refuse to sell, but you know your neighbor would sell  his soul for a pack of bologna and a candy bar so the company will just take the pipeline around your place. The best thing to do is agree, take the money, and do whatever the hell you want as soon as Landman isn't looking.

Our ancestors came to the mountains because "decent people" sent us into exile for simple things like playing with witchcraft or trying to kill the king. They thought the mountains would eat us up, but we have the ability to survive like  wood roaches (a bug that isn't as dirty as his cockroach brother, apparently. If there is a roach in the kitchen, Mama looks at it and says, "Oh! Okay! He's just a wood roach! They come in a time or two when the seasons change. Don't mean we're dirty!" Then she doesn't flip out as much.)

We survived because of intelligence, ingenuity, and creativity, but we are a culture of rebels. There's the idea:  "If someone is dumb enough to show me they are going to take my land one way or the other and then offers money, I'm going to take it. I'll heed the restrictions for a day or two, but it's still my land. I do what I want."

Landman will come knocking and offering $45 per foot of your land they are wanting to purchase for the pipeline. Snap up that deal. Take the money. There are about six companies wanting to put in pipelines so if more than one company offers money, take their money too. So what if you have a small pipeline city under your place? It's the companies' job to figure that out. Take the money.

They are going to tell you a bunch of restrictions. One article said you can't put as much as a lawn chair over top of the pipeline. Another said you shouldn't build near it. But this is the state of "Mountaineers are always free...so hold my beer and watch this" (the second part just didn't translate well into Latin). As soon as Landman leaves, we will all go back to doing whatever the hell we want, as it was from the beginning. They can't monitor us forever. And just like every population we have those that lack impulse control and anger management skills.

In the grocery store, you will hear common statements such as:

"You cain't tell me not to garden or barbecue or make meth or go muddin' on my own place!"

"If I get mad at my neighbor, all I gotta do is dig up the pipeline next to his house, climb in my tree stand,  and shoot it with my AK. None-a that old Hatfield and McCoy shootin' and yellin' bullshit. And once-TUH (pronounced once-TUH) that blows, Landman won't know what happened. Me and the neighbor will both get beau coups of money from the gas company just like those folks did when that tanker train exploded near-at old Indian village, which by the way, the railroad shouldn't have been cutting through with 18 explosive cars..."

"You cain't tell me I cain't moonshine on my own property! And you cain't tell Granny she cain't can outside on the Coleman stove when it gets too hot in the kitchen!" 

I predict death and disaster from this pipeline, but it's coming one way or another. There will be a large number of body parts of meth makers hanging in trees. Pigs will be blown to bacon. Snake handlin' churches from here to Kentucky can't save us from this. Bubby is not going to stop muddin', drinkin', and buldin' campfires just because there's a pipeline underneath him. We can tell him, but he won't listen. This is the land of that'll-learn-him mentality.

"Let him blow up a meth lab on that pipeline. That'll learn him!"

We can warn the younger generations. "Kids! Y'all know Uncle Bubby only has one leg, half an arm, and one eye because he was playin' on that pipeline, and it s'ploded. We done told y'all to stop once-TUH!" (And before someone tries to say I'm using Uncle Bubby to imply that we are inbred up here, let me explain that some folks use Bubby (or Sissy) as a first name, and then Bubby grew up and became an uncle, which is a mur-acle from heaven after what happened to him with that pipeline.

There's a good chance meth-makers are going to blow themselves up anyway. People are going to shoot each other with AK's anyway. Trump sold us to China so the air quality is going to be toxic anyway. Stream banks will erode and flooding is going to increase because the pipeline is coming anyway. Might as well take the money.  It may be the only green we have left.

The Honey Bee and the Bearded Dragon

The Honey Bee and the Bearded Dragon

(c)Trinny Sigler 2017

The honey bees have been following us around. They feel a change in the air. They know it's getting cooler, and the days are getting shorter. The flowers are dying, and the little bees are frantically looking for pollen.

The bearded dragon knows the moon is about to be full. He paces in his habitat, tearing it up quicker than I can clean it up. He wanted to swim in the bath tub, but abruptly tried to jump out. I tried to lift him all the way out, and he abruptly tried to jump back in. Restless, unsatisfied, aware that something is lacking in his 50-gallon-transparent life, but unsure of what would fix it.

And here we all are, a combination of the two, always busy, safe in our glass boxes. I'm unsure if I'm observing you or you're observing me. Sometimes I watch you fly away, feeling like I'm ready to go too, but then I stay in my box, half scout bee and half bearded dragon. I watch you rush from flower to flower drinking up as much pollen as possible before it's all gone. Addicted to the pollen, farther and farther away you fly until one day your wings are too worn out to get back home. I don't want so far from  home that I can't get back, but I want the pollen, and I want the restlessness to calm. I want to rise up and fly and hum and do those things the bee does, but I don't want to leave the solid comfort of the heated rock. I want my branch to cling to.

The season will change. The moon phase will pass, as it always does. Until then we will hole up in the hives of ourselves, maybe keeping warm, maybe freezing to a slow death, but we won't be able to tell  until spring. But if the bees keep enough friends around, they can heat their hive to ninety degrees, not just surviving but thriving. The lizard hangs out in his hammock, close to the sun lamp and the heat lamp, and if he closes his eyes, he can pretend he's in the desert or even on the beach maybe, and his mind calms because he has the warmth of the sun without the fear of birds.

The bee and the bearded dragon somehow have all the answers. Find warmth among friends,  make the honey that will sweeten someone else's day, don't work so hard that you wear out your wings. Hang out in a hammock, bask in the warmth of your personal sun, go to the summer you can create in your mind.  

Appalachia vs.Appalachia at the ER

Appalachia vs. Appalachia at the ER 
(c) 2017 Trinny Sigler

I found myself in search of a quick emergency room in eastern Tennessee which was mission impossible  because all they do down there is moonshine and zipline, and that's a bad combination. I wish I could say I had been engaging in both, but at mid-forties, I don't need either to mess up my back. I was tucked in bed by 10 and woke up in the eighth ring of hell for no reason.

My buddy told me choices for a hospital that, to my pain-warped brain sounded like "Wellmart" or "Hell's Path." I don't need no discount chain ER, and I thought I was already halfway down hell's path at least, so I picked the later. While I'm waiting for the phlebotomist to come in, I can  hear her talking in the hallway.

"I had to punch in late. I locked my keys in the car."

"Well how'd you get here?" another one called.

"I had to call  my mommy."

Hear that? A girl who couldn't find her way to work without Mommy's help is about to play with needles in my tiny, rolling, spider, muppet veins. Then she walked in, and she's new. I know when they are new in the same way a horse knows the rider is spooked, in the same way a baby knows when someone has never held a baby before. She's nervous. I'm scared.

Veins and blood are the reason I'm a writer and not a nurse. I could have a thriving career making fifty an hour over time if it weren't for blood. Instead I hide in the attic and make shit up and hope you like it. I look away as she takes my arm and ties it up. She pokes with her finger. She takes a deep breath.

"Little pinch."

"Okay."

She stirs and stirs and stirs.

"Hmmm," she says.

I say "What?"

"Well..."

Another nurse comes over, "What'sa matter? Cain't you find it?"

"I cain't get it to thread."

"Oh well, try again."

"Oh no! That's a mess!"

"We can clean that up. Try again. That'un will probably bleed again."

"Ok...well...I cain't get it again."

And I'm thinking: Now half my state shoots up heroin, and any one of those shaking addicts up any holler can find a vein daily and multiple times. What's the issue here?

"Well!" The second nurse says, "You done blew that'un out. Try the other one."

I grasp her hand, "You got one more try in that other arm, and then I'm gonna puke, punch, or pass out. I don't know which. Your move."

"I'll try the hand, hon. Honey, your lil ole hands are I's co."

"Huh?"

"Co."

My mind flips through every file I've got working, and I know I've heard this somewhere before. Where? Where? Where? I's? Co? I know what this means. I got it! I heard this when I was a breakfast waitress at Cracker Barrel in Fayetteville North Carolina  in 1997.

"Ice cold!" I yell out loud with all the pride Helen Keller must have felt when she figured out water. "Yes! My hands are ice cold."

And now that the code has been cracked, I finally understand what the waitress at the barbeque shack meant last night when she asked me if I wanted "co-saw". And then the thought occurred to me that this is all Paula Deen's fault. I'm a little afraid of Pennywise from It, the nurse from Misery, and Paula Deen. If you think about it, they all have the same smile. That smile that says: Extremely friendly or psycho, I could go either way. And her damn cookin' is so good that I think she has to be in dutch with the devil. Anyway I think I ate so much for lunch that my stomach blew out my backbone.

They finally get the blood drawn, and the IV in. Another one comes in, "What brings you here today?"

"My side hurts, and my back is having spasms."

"Hmm..." she looks at the others with that look that says: These West Virginia pillbillies are coming down here now trying to get opiods. I've read about them. Saw them even on the CNN." You know that look. We've all gotten it in the ER.

Finally after about two days, the doctor comes in. He says my muscles are pulled and I have an ovarian cyst and to follow up with my doctor, and then he leaves. The nurse comes back.

"Okay, hon! You are free to leave. Here's your script."

I stammer, "But it's Easter Sunday, and I'm just like I was when I got here. I have to drive 300 miles in a Jeep Wrangler today with a busted back. Can I get a dose of pain meds?"

She gives me that look again. "Lemme ask! Doc may be at lunch now so you'll prolly have to wait."

She comes back and shoots something in my IV. "Well now  you'll have to wait on a med check."

"How long is that?"

"Fifteen minutes."

"Jesus, girl. I've been here, sitting at a 90 degree angle on this gurney for about two days. Fifteen more minutes won't hurt."

I finally get out of there and leave Hell's Path behind me. I get back to good old West-by-God and go the next day to follow up with my doctor. She takes one look at my blowed-out vein and gives the nurse a look that says: Umm hmm...all these hillbillies are on heroin. You know that look. We always get it at the ER. 

These Daffodils and I

These Daffodils and I

These daffodils to the funeral came 100 years ago

and still surround the grave.

Why this one in the whole field of stones?

Only the daffodils remember,

only the daffodils know.

These daffodils were planted by the front door

and once tended with care,

like yellow ribbons beckoning her solider back there.

Did he make it back? No one knows anymore,

but these daffodils stand, still sentinels as before.

These daffodils surround a cinder-block frame.

No family, no home, no memories remain.  

What made them  decide to leave one day?

Ask the cheerleaders of decay,

because only these daffodils can say.

I buried these bulbs before the baby came.

I wanted them to honor him this time every spring.

He's gone now, along with every other thing,

but the daffodils  and I stand just the same.

These daffodils, I know,  are tired and tossed

despite  their cheerful yellow outward gloss.

These daffodils, I know they know the cost,

of a lifetime spent hovering over all that is lost. 

 (c) Trinny Sigler 2017

One Seventy Two

One Seventy Two

One seventy two

was my aunt's weight

before cancer started

eating her.

We took her to appointments,

and each time presented her license,

her weight there in print,

and she was okay at 172.

At  16, I knew that 172

made a woman

hefty, sturdy,

strong enough to

hold up the world.

When I learned she'd be leaving,

I decided to go too.

I was 132.

She'd take her medicine

in a spoonful of applesauce.

I wouldn't eat a spoonful of anything

more than once a day.

We got weak together.

Our hair fell out.

We became delusional:

Me in a weight competition with her,

thinking that if I was her size or smaller,

and if I was still surviving,

then so could she.

She, telling me pretty lies like:

The doctor says if I drink my Ensure,

I'll be all right.

Sure.

We got down to 118

the month before she left.

I  celebrated my 17th birthday

in bed with her.

Then she said she hated the sticky summer

and died on the 20th of June.

I dropped down to 104

before I decided I'd stick around.

Since then I've gained and lost 50 pounds three times,

but I always come back to 172.

I don't know how else

to be where she was

back when we were okay. 

Kindergarten Round-up

Kindergarten Round-Up

I was happily unshod in my pasture,

my mane blowing in the wind,

before kindergarten round-up.

I bucked. I tried to run away,

but they returned me to school every day.

They had no creek.

They had no woods.

They had no blue skies.

They had windows,

that you weren't allowed to look out.

Stop daydreaming!

Focus!

I focused on the ping, ping, ping

of the old wall heater.

I tossed crayon pieces on it

and made me a kaleidoscope.  

Afternoon recess brought with it

the smell of freshly cut grass,

the promise  of a cool drink

when it was your turn in line,

a snack followed by the smell of diesel fuel.

I liked the diesel fuel fumes.

Diesel fuel meant they were about to let us go. 

Middle school:

You could get better grades,

if you'd focus!

You could be a good basketball player,

if you'd focus!

Stop talking to your neighbor,

and focus!

I'll move you away from your best friend,

if you can't focus!

High school:

Football games,

the frozen burn

when bleachers meet ass,

chafed by stiff denim

as we walked around with friends,

thawed only by the sex

nobody was supposed to be having,

in basements, in attics, in the back of cars.

Graduation day they take you to a field,

tell you you'll never all be together again,

and turn you loose finally,

but it's not the same.

Thirty years later:

Even in the yearbook,

they forced us into boxes.

I study the little faces,

the messy haircuts,

the jack-o-lantern teeth,

the shiny eyes,

before any of them considered

drugs or suicide,

before any of them went through

divorce, disease, death.

But some little hearts still held secrets.

The only thing similar,

the only thing equal,

is the size of the box.

We didn't know these things

before the kindergarten round-up,

so, yes, we've be educated.

We get educated into submission

or sent off to steeper restriction,

but  we never again get to be

the wild carefree ponies we were

before the kindergarten round up.

(c) Trinny Sigler 2017