That Old Story

21 October 2008

Evening rode quickly across the Buffalo River to the Little Buffalo River, at the foot of the Ozark plateau. Vic stopped me to rattle off a few questions about the ride, snagged Johnny as he was walking by, and Johnny said I could camp out in front of his trailer. Johnny was selling everything he had to go bicycle around Hawaii. After grabbing a bite, I returned to Johnny’s place, rooting around vainly for a comfortable arrangement. Vic must not have felt at ease with me at Johnny’s, as he shuffled over to open up his place to me in case I wanted a shower or to camp in his patio.

Vic had a kind of jittery and prolific energy, bouncing from leg to leg as he spoke like a young child and talking for hours in a sort of stream of consciousness…

“You see we retired here years ago I knew I wouldn’t be able to get Linda any further west and this place gets all sorts of folks there are a bunch of Buddhists north of here and then you got the folks out on Mt. Judea they’re a little bit what you might call angry and crazy you know I mean you know what I mean they don’t much like people coming round over there so we mostly let them alone you know that old story” (umm, I guess so) “and then in the 70s Willie Nelson said the best weed he ever smoked was from here from Murray Valley and so all these hippies moved into Murray Valley and started growing their stuff and it’s so far back up in there that the law don’t try and do much about it and even when I moved in everybody thought I must have been a narc and then they realized that I wasn’t and they figured I must be a grower and now they’re not too suspicious anymore but these hippies they keep growing over there but they didn’t much count on the elk you see the elk they’re rather fond of pot you know that old story” (umm, not really) “and so they had to keep the elk out of their crops and even in some places it was made legal to take an elk on your property but a lot of the hippies started growing organic blueberries along with their pot” (at this moment, Linda was making divine muffins with these blueberries) “and you see we got the river here too that brings a lot of people around it was one of the first protected rivers in the country which is good but sometimes the Park Service goes a little overboard and they want to throw away the key I mean you know what I mean so we kind of have a running battle with the park service you know that old story” (actually, yes) “and we’ll run the river when they don’t want us to but they can’t ever quite seem to catch us you know they want to lock up some of these roads but we need these to get down to run the river and so you know we’re kind of in a running battle and sometimes they want to take a piece of land for the river and eminent domain it and they tried to do that with old Fawn Cash but he’s an angry old ball of lead and everyone told them that he would literally kill them if they tried to get anywhere near his land and the Park Service kinda didn’t pay them any mind but they got run off the property and had themselves a little scare you know that old story” (eh) “and so you know it’s kind of lawless out here and they don’t try and do much about all the weed oh they’ll sacrifice a gringo every year or so you know that old story” (huh?) “oh you know they won’t turn over a local but you got these flatlanders coming in and they’ll sacrifice one of them every year or so to keep the law happy and then you got the folks that Y2ked themselves up here and they got these extreme homes like fortresses in all these limestone caves they’ve got around here and don’t you know they keep finding these new caves and I tell them don’t tell the Park Service about it they will lock those caves up and keep you out and so they finally learned and stopped telling the rangers about the caves you see we have this kind of running battle with the Park and anyway this one guy built himself a fortress down in one of these caves and I mean a fortress but then you know Y2K never amounted much to anything and now this guy wants to bring in white rhinoceros to live on his estate and what are you going to do with a rhinoceros in a cave you know and you gotta have some of Linda’s hot chocolate it is unbelievable and sometimes people get lost down there by the river and in these caves you probably heard a few years ago that little girl that got lost yea she got angry cause her grandpa wouldn’t let her go in a cave and they were hiking and so she kind of wandered off she was so angry and they spent four days looking for her and the Park Service is out there looking of course they’re all fools and they couldn’t get anything done but they wouldn’t let the locals go in certain places even though everyone’s out there wanting to help look and finally a couple locals said hey this girl is gonna die and so they went and found her near a cave and she was still angry she was an ornery little cuss she didn’t even seem to care she had been lost all full of hellfire and that river gets high in the spring especially all this water we had last year and we decided to run it of course the park wanted to lock us up for it but we ran it anyway and all these little rapids had turned into class six holes that would fold your canoe in half and the water was so high we were up in the trees and this one guy got snagged up in a branch and ripped right out the boat just hanging up in the branch by his clothes and the one thing we didn’t count on was the water moccasins, they got flooded right out and you know that old story…”

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