UPDATE MOUNTAIN MUSIC WITH DRUG REFRAIN

Even majestic peaks that have thrust proudly into the sky since God's dog
was a pup get nervous in an election season.

For one thing, it is the time of the helicopter in the uplands, as our
government whirs overhead and looks down on us, pursuant to regulation that
says doing anything useful on a mountain is to be discouraged.

Our government, sometimes intentionally, but more often with the blunder
that seems to be democracy's main product, provides much of the problem
facing mountain culture.

My friend Gordon McKinney, the rare Republican in Appalachian academe,
suggests that one of the worst things that ever happened to the mountains
was the establishment of the national parks, which put millions of acres
out of production -- the kind of production that will sustain a culture
through industrial ages and information ages and all other passing fancies.

To appease the great white hunters whose main contact with a forest on a
sustained basis is their choice of mulch, we are introducing huge
half-runner-loving animals from another culture that can only be shot by a
mountain farmer who is willing to play "Mother May I?" with the government.

Deer have overrun farming country, wildlife regulation being their NAFTA,
and regardless of what some people say, they are not fit to eat.

Questions for Hazard Mayor Bill Gorman: Are you willing for 100 percent of
mountain ridges to be leveled off? Are you asking what will stop that from
happening as long as the nation needs coal and candidates for governor need
money and do not have the character to penetrate mountain culture beyond
the narrow interests of their donors?

It is depressing, and in times of depression, we either take pills or sing
folk songs. Anything else will have to wait until harvest time, which
ideally is after the first frost, but is done prematurely more often than
not because of the helicopters.

It used to be that folk songs reflected the times, but that was before
recording devices froze them in time. Now we must bring them up to date to
reflect the new realities in the mountains.

Somebody must rewrite the folk music of the mountains to modern problems:
free pills, too many doctors, the subsidizing of disability and the
destruction of our ability to produce food locally.

Here are the latest folk songs:

"Uncle Phen-fen" is a rousing fiddle tune that starts out, "Late in the
evening about sundown, getting high in the hills, gonna lose some pounds."

One of Bill Monroe's tunes would become "Blue Spoon of Kentucky."

It is time for Ralph Stanley to sing "Little Baggie," who stands over
yonder with a gram glass mirror in her hand. And after he sings that one,
he can do "OxyContin Eyed Joe" and finish with a more serious one, "Crack
Rock of Ages."

Instead of Good Old Methodist Pie, a modern troubadour would do "Methadone
Pie." That would present an easier rhyme than "Methamphetamine Pie."

And somebody could write a new folk song that blames the government for
providing all those drugs and put in a verse that says that the steady
proliferation of drugs roughly paralleled the steady increases in jail time
for their use or transfer.