Oddfellows and Uncle Jim

Good Gawd ya'll. It's colder than a witches tit in a brass brassiere in the holler today, yet it was 61° on Sunday.

Craziness.

I spent most of last weekend lying in bed, watching America Unearthed on Netflix. I was slothful and unproductive due to an unscheduled visit by Old Aunt Flo. She showed up Saturday morning, I hadn't seen her since October and it had been a year before that.

Why won't that bitch just die already?

Anywho, because my brain gets stuck on a topic and kicks in to high gear, spinning out of control, I was Googling ghost stories from the holler, pre-Colombian inhabitants of Western North Carolina, examining Google Earth maps of my property to figure out where the stream bed was, looking up the old Oddfellows Cemetery (which is up on top of a mountain off a dirt road back in the woods) and checking prices on metal detectors.

My crazy. When it gets stuck on something, it's turbo charged.

I've never been to the old cemetery, but it wasn't too many years ago that Ma rode in the back of my Uncle Donald's pickup to go visit Great Uncle Jim's grave. He was an attorney and the original owner of our land.. after the Indians. That's really all I know about him, other than he died in front of the art deco styled S & K's Cafeteria in Big City, a fact pointed out to both T.A. and I every stinking time Ma drove by it.

As for the Oddfellows Cemetary, what the sam hill it's doing in the holler of all places is beyond me. I can't find any reference to a chapter anywhere near here. If ya'll could see where it is.. literally up a dirt road where you have to have four wheel drive to get in and damn near on top of a mountain. Ma used to say they had to carry the bodies up there in a horse and wagon, long after the invention of motor vehicles, because it was the only way to get there.

Anywho.. The Oddfellows were or are one of those lodgey dodgey organizations with secret ceremonies and shady affiliations. There isn't a wealth of information on them that I can find, it looks to me they mostly still exist in the U.K.

It's one of those stories I like to dig around in and speculate upon the possibilities of ancient conspiracy theories and keep myself entertained for weeks.

So I really want to go to the cemetery. When Ma went up there last, she took some pictures of an old grave stone with weird lettering. Of course now I can't find the picture, so I have to go up there and see what it was. Perhaps I'll do a little YouTubing of the adventure. Whatcha think?

As for now, I gotta get my nose to the grindstone. Ya'll have a great weekend. We'll talk again soon!

Later Taters!