The Rattlesnakes of Dismal Holler
by
Sleazeweazel


Beechgrove Tennessee isn't too far off from Hoodoo and Bugscuffle, down southeast of Nashville. I'd come looking for rocks to build a waterfall in the Nashville Embassy Suites Hotel, and felt like the sailor who once said "water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink". Tennessee is full of rocks, but none of them suited me. I was in need of a drink as well, so I stopped in at the general store.

The flaxen haired lass behind the counter was much intrigued that anyone could possibly want rocks, or could it have been that I was from somewhere far away and wasn't one of her cousins? Now inbreeding can go either way, but it was clear that it hadn't done her lineage a bit of harm. Good mountain stock. She'd been to Nashville, and dreamed of someday going to Disney World. Hope blooms eternal.

I was so enchanted that I paid no attention to the other customers. Suddenly we were interrupted by a great booming voice that said, "Rocks? You want rocks? Why sheeeit! I've got a plenty of rocks!" There stood Oscar Gibson, a huge shaggy bearlike man in bib overalls. He'd come to town (such as it was) on his monthly trip in for supplies. He asked if I would pay for the rocks. When I said yes, if I liked them, he would have jumped for joy if he could have. This was his lucky day! I liked him right away, and figured he knew his rocks, so we headed back to his home at the head of Dismal holler.

As we crept up the rutted dirt road it was clear that Oscar hadn't lied. There were rocks everywhere, rocks on top of more rocks, big flat slabs of limestone on either side of the Holler going all the way up the mountain to the Tennessee valley divide. The rich valley bottom pasture was an overgrown thicket of pokeweed and possumhaw. Oscar only had a couple of cows and a mule, but they were doing just fine. The mountainsides were a riot of vegetation worthy of the tropics, and in fact the next valley over was called Webb's Jungle. Oscar's cabin made Snuffy Smith's house look like a condo. It was easy to see that this was a place unchanged by time where life was still strong.

I made him an offer and he accepted on the spot. Oscar had been farming rocks all his life, but this was the first time he had ever been paid for it. I told him I would be back in the spring when the job was due to start.

One fine day in May I rolled up the Holler in a big flatbed truck. My faithful employee Big John was already standing there in Oscar's front yard holding up a big timber rattlesnake by the head. He had almost stepped on it when he parked his truck in the yard. This was a brave and foolhardy act, for John wasn't a herper and had never picked up a snake before in his entire life, but that's just the kind of guy he was, and that's why he worked for me.

It isn't neighborly to just begin work right away, good manners dictate that you "set on the porch a spell" first. At the time I had a beautiful but overly sensitive girlfriend who had come along for the adventure. She asked Oscar if she might use the bathroom. He was a shy man who hardly knew what to say, especially to a pretty girl, so he stuttered a bit and said, "Well Mam, I ain't rightly got no bathroom". She replied, "I understand Oscar, I meant the outhouse". Oscar blushed and said, "like I said Mam, I don't rightly got no outhouse". It seemed that the hill behind the cabin served all of Oscar's needs.

When Rhonda returned she told me that the hillside had lots of the flat rocks that I was looking for, and that an old road ran up there so I could get the truck to the site. The grass covered hill faced south into the warm spring sun. It had been cold for the last week, but the sun was shining bright and this was indeed a fine day in May.

Oscar couldn't see very well and didn't move too fast, so we slowly ambled up the hill to look at the rocks. The first thing I saw was a big fat rattler stretched across the road, then another on a rockpile, and another, and another. "Look out Oscar, you're about to step on one!"

There were copperheads to the left of us and rattlesnakes to the right. Oscar couldn't see any of them and was greatly distressed to discover that the toilet facility that he had been using for his entire life was in fact a snake den! None of this was more than 50 to100 feet from his back door, and he had no idea for all those years. Once he realized that he was surrounded by invisible snakes he was almost too scared to move. I suppose he has been constipated ever since.

Oscar begged me to catch or kill the snakes, so I complied and caught thirteen of the rattlers, five or six copperheads, a huge blotched ratsnake almost seven feet long, a beautiful tricolored milksnake, two black kingsnakes, a blacksnake, several garter snakes, several wormsnakes, and about a dozen ringnecks. It was the best day of snakehunting I have ever had!

Most of the snakes were released a short distance away, but Big John was proud of having caught his first snake, and wanted to keep several of the rattlers for pets, so we built a nice big cage and installed them in our Yuppie apartment complex in Nashville. Three of them were gravid, and after the first shed and a feeding we released them all in good habitats around the State.

Things didn't turn out quite so well for Big John. I paid him much too much, so he developed dissolute habits and let the money go to his head, up his nose to be precise. Shortly after absconding with a big wad of cash that he had "borrowed" as he put it, another of his creditors put an end to his career with a .38 slug between the eyes.

John's coworker Andrew had an even worse fate. He took the money I paid him and went to law school to become a lawyer.

As for Dismal holler, I passed by that way a few years ago. The road up the holler was gated, and a subdivision was being built. I stopped in at the general store. The lovely lass was a trailer wife. She told me Oscar was dead, and the store would be closing soon due to the new Walmart Supercenter going in up the road. As for the snakes, I didn't have the heart to look.

Bruce J. Sleazeweazel Morgan
03/2/9
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