I glamourized the country life just a little bit in my head. I am having a great time out here, I love it. I love walking through the soybean fields, seeing the new plants poke up from the wheat that was harvested last month. I love the solitude. The old house I’m staying is like a grandiose time warp, the calendar in the kitchen is dated August, 1963. I can be as loud as I want. I love the fact that I am reposing in a part of the country that’s so unique and that few people ever get to know about. But . . . there are a few shortcomings to country life that I hadn’t thought of til I got out here.

Fuel Dependency is a big issue. You pretty much have to have a car to leave the property. I thought I’d be able to walk to town and putter around. Town is only a few miles away, but the main problem I have with using my ambulatory abilities is that every neighbor has at least one mean farm dog. I get to the end of the lane and they are already barking and tearing across the nearby property, heading my way. I carry a tobacco stick for protection, but I don’t want to take on three strange dogs by myself.

And oddly enough, safety is a bit of a concern. Not a worry, so much, but a concern. I was walking through one of the fields the other day, when I noticed a car coming down the road. Whoever was in the car saw me and then slowed waaay down. I didn’t like that. Also, I’m not the kind of person who is intimidated by going anywhere by myself, but I can honestly say that around here, I feel safer when not alone. There are alot of drunk, obnoxious men with an air of lawlessness in their eyes who don’t know how to act when they see a hippie girl in flowery dress and floppy hat who is obviously not from around here. (Whoa, just wait til I roller skate the square in Adairville.)

A friend asked me today what happens when the newness of living in Tenn-Tucky wears off and we all stop having a good time. And honestly, that’s part of the reason why we’re all leaving when it gets cold. It’ll be time to move on. And I’ve been meeting alot of locals around here who very much feel stuck. They regard us as novelties – as much as we regard them in the same way. So, this is a great adventure for me, but this place is a bit like summer camp as I know it will have an end. And that makes any short-comings bearable.

I’m eating tons of bacon and drinking PBR daily, so when you get right down to it all of my complaints about country life have to do with my magical expanding ass coupled with a lack of viable exercise. I might have to (gasp!) start doing yoga or some such shit. Sigh. I suppose them’s the brakes. Bacon is worth it. So is beer.

We couldn’t find it at first and stopped at a local liquor store to get directions.

First, we inquired about Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka. I’m here to tell you that it’s the BEST stuff. It’s made in South Carolina and kind of hard to find outside of the extreme Southeast. We’re running low and need to special order some more. Then we also asked for directions to The Piggy Pit – the real name of the ‘Stop ‘N Stab.’

The liquor store saleslady’s eyes got really wide when we inquired and she said, “Oh, I’d never go there unless I knew somebody. People die up there. People get shot and stabbed ‘n stuff.” Perfect! That’s just what we heard too!

“Well,” we said, “we want to go anyway.”

“Hey Mike!” she screamed to the back of the store to the her manager, “How do you get to that shootin’, stabbin’ place? They wanna know!”

We got directions and headed out. I’m not gonna lie, we were scared. We were even worried about where we parked. But when we got inside, it was just another normal community beer joint. People didn’t smile at us. They looked at us. We looked at them. I think we were lucky because it was still daylight. We ordered one round and then left. The place is in a bad neighborhood, so I could see how it might get rough at night.

Ha! We’re going tomorrow.

I had a bit of trouble finding the place and cell signals don’t work so well up there, so I stopped in for a respite at the Tenn-Tucky Tavern, located on the state line between Tennessee and Kentucky. I knew they’d wonder where I was and eventually find me, so I wasn’t too worried.

“Do ya’ll serve food here?” I asked the bartender, who just shook her head and laughed. “All right then, I guess I’ll just be having a PBR tallboy and a pack of smokes.” Turns out that bartender was one of my customers when I used to be a traveling sex toy saleslady in those parts. Such a small world.

After Matt and Hardy collected me from the Tavern, we went to the farm and visited two completely different ends of the culinary spectrum. First we cracked open a wheel of brie and a nice bottle of red wine and then followed that up with lots of PBR and some boy-scout style open pit cooking using nothing but hot coals and shovel.

We waited til dark, grabbed some tobacco sticks to use as hiking poles and then tromped through the woods, exploring a long abandoned one-room schoolhouse and a pre Civil War graveyard. We ran through fields of mist. We hung out for a bit on the state-line road. I stretched out with my head on the Tennessee pavement as my legs dangled into Kentucky’s border. Why that was so much fun is beyond me, but it was.

We stayed up all night long listening to music. I played some air banjo. We danced our asses off to old records – my favorite in particular was The Crazy Water Barn Dance. When the sun rose, casting a golden sheen on the cut wheat fields, I finally went to bed.

I love unemployment.