Phantom Murmurs

A peach sun brightens the horizon on a high standing beech, maple, and oak leaf tree line. Gradually the darkness and a swirling, cerulean tinted fog melts, revealing a series of grainy, red-bricked buildings originating from an era earlier in time. Recent buildings throughout the Main Street area are constructed to blend in with the general panorama scene. A new coating of paint causes antique storefronts to glisten in the freshly fallen dew, becoming more apparent as the rising light gradually intensifies.

The color enhancing paint was mandated by the town mayor, elected in only a year before. The silent magisterial hope was where this crisp facelift, combined with effective advertising and marketing campaigns, would attract free-wheeling money spending tourists from across the country, and with them, big city retirees.

Ex mid-level or upper crust management, and self-employed from the same ranks, would be in possession of healthy retirement accounts, purchasing Powell County real estate and processed goods with monthly paychecks often more than twice the size of laboring or retired local county residents. The money spent on a year’s worth of recruiting in these outsiders would be substantially less with much more varied use potential, than that which was needed to develop or recruit in a single manufacturing company, or to subsidize pay raises in the county workplace at large, on the white or blue collar work floor scene.

What would be the origin of this revenue otherwise, in a place where the backbone of the economy, the production base, had long since been shipped out overseas? Increasing taxes was out of the question, when good people struggle only to put food on the table, clothes on their backs, and keep a basic roof over their heads. Automobiles are often shared between households throughout Powell County and beyond, due to exacerbating expenses and less than ten percent of the employment base possessing an ability to supersede even basic living costs, let alone propelling individuals and healthy families into vibrant middle-class lifestyles. Children are remaining at the homes of their parents, rather than assuming new insurmountable living expenses; a custom not witnessed since the nineteen forties, except by individuals who were failures socially, economically, morally, or intellectually, for one reason or another.

The growing phenomenon of internet based employment offers rays of possible new solutions to an otherwise ominous situation, but as of the present day, the promise is yet to broaden where anything nearing a majority of people in need may be absorbed, let alone adequately rewarded for their efforts. In a majority of cases, middle-class lifestyles derived from online employment opportunities are mere pipe dreams, in what is amounting more with each passing day as a paste together, break-stick and stack, gig economy.

Bringing in cityfied money-laden unionized retirees also allows regional businesses allying with established banks and local governments, to hold up prices while capturing a maximum profit margin from these alien money flows, rather than lowering cost of living expenditures to accommodate a drastically reducing provincial salary mainstay. Heritage locals are thankfully wise in the art of subsisting on little to nothing, with many even building astonishingly profitable cash generating enterprises at times. Even so, people routinely grumble at an observed systemic negative reality constantly gnawing away at security convictions, and never abating even in the passage of years.

What extends past this comfortably sized town heavily steeped in heritage traditions, is a huge mountain wilderness, seeming to parochial citizens as running onward for infinity. Many patrimonial Clans claim there are phenomena deep down in these woods that have yet to be explained by mankind, although numerous county residents often harvest a majority of their nourishment from these forest depths, in an organized effort at neutralizing elevating grocery expenses.

These locals claim briskly moving, evil, kidnapping, child eating elves called Bohpoli, strange eight feet tall wolfmen, and translucent reptilian biped figures haunt the woods. Spirits of various types and demons called Stikini, are said to roam the hills deep inside the forest interior, where few dare to tread. Elders claim there are areas inside those mountains where humans have yet to trod at all. There have been times throughout the past when these bizarre creatures actually made it into the heart of town, so many claim.

One favorite story often told by elders sitting around a cozy warm pot bellied wood stove located inside the rear of Lazarus Bryant’s hardware store, a favorite local loitering place, is of a cave-like hole in the ground on the western edge of town. One night a thick gray fog laden with a scent of freshly rendered bear grease, eased out all across the entire settlement. A loud moan or roar was heard to echo from the area in an unsettling way. It continued on, in an increasingly menacing disturbance for several weeks.

A burley bewhiskered snaggle-toothed local hunter and rowdy adventurer named Criss Carole, in company with three more fellow accomplices, decided to investigate, when others shuddered at the thought. The four vowed to their families and fellow townsmen, they would put a stop to this mounting situation. They packed in a long hemp rope and a supply of loaded firearms. Criss agreed in allowing himself to be lowered inside that stony hole, with only a single foot firmly positioned through a solidly knotted loop on rope’s end, carrying down only a flashlight and a Smith & Wesson 38 revolver. The agreed upon distress signal would be a series of sharp tugs on the rope.

When the team hurriedly pulled him up, this otherwise intrepid man had an utterly horrified appearance on his face, and this strange moan was becoming a louder roar, sounding agitated. Criss raced back home far ahead of the others in a desperate frenzy, and was admitted into a mental ward soon thereafter, never speaking a single word to anyone again. He died some twenty years later, with a curse of perpetual silence upon his lips. Nobody ever knew exactly what he witnessed, but it must have been something more horrible than even a child’s imagination can conceive, so said locals who knew him best.

Elders claim a huge beast with a powerful manlike torso and a buffalo head, thrives in deep mountain caves and catacombs. Shawnee legends speak of him, calling him Boogaroo, in a local interpretation of the native word. Bugaroo is said to be an eater of men, attacking native villages, carrying off children and women. He uses the women to first breed his own kind, and he contains the children in tightly fashioned retaining pens as livestock, roasting and devouring them, if they were male or barren females. Many good men attempted to slay Bugaroo over the years, but none were successful as of yet, often meeting their own violent, bloody end.

Mysterious entities are also found inside local cemeteries referred to as Nalusa Falaya, there again, a local interpretation of a native reference name. Several ageless mainstreet mansion homes of old time doctors, railroad and mining barons, are said to be possessed, especially in areas where the locals engage in secluded timeless ceremonies in attempts at contacting these entities, and the spirits of their long dead relatives. Certain individuals and families bear an inherited reputation for being expert in this otherwise nefarious communication with the forbidden realm.

On some foggy nights in the fall of the year, eerie glowing robed figures veiled in mysterious hoods known by locals as Riannon, will be seen standing on the wooded edges across certain yards and fields, chanting strange poems and singing songs in ancient languages few understand. When these entities are pursued, they simply melt into the vegetative backdrop, without leaving a single trace of physical sign.

Skilled policemen with bloodhounds fail in every incidence to locate them, as have expert hunters, trappers, and even special forces personnel. A three million dollar bounty is presently offered to any individual who can find information leading to a valid arrest. Locals have their own opinions, but nobody knows anything for certain.

These mysterious entities are said by elders to be priests and priestesses in various spiritualist cults, thriving for generations deep down inside the mountain bowels. Souls of deeply meditating cult officials can be extenuated and positioned anywhere on the face of earth, so the claim goes. Such was part of the three hundred year old Powell County defensive system, barricading aliens, terrifying potential enemies, and liquidating those daring enough to trespass anyway.

Indeed many of these cults live by their own belief systems, and have been doing so since colonial times. Some are referred to in muffled whispers by certain locals in several quaint Baptist church congregations, as the Children of Light, while others are the Children of Darkness, seemingly denoting certain specific covens, if one will, as being with the general mainstream Powell County belief system or embracing some type of conviction standing outside of it.

The town of Mckinney, Tennessee, officially began during the late seventeen hundreds, with French Huguenots meeting at a crossroad by a ford on the Keetoowah River, which dumps into several lesser rivers, then finally empties into The French Broad River. Trappers and fur traders had been making camp in the general area ever since Hernando Desoto passed through, way back in fifteen forty. Often old camping sites from the yearly rendezvous meadows are discovered, and sometimes long forgotten, but interesting relics located.

According to local rumors, Desoto and his men constructed a fort somewhere not far from where the town is positioned today. Children playing have long known of flat stone stacked into walls and morticed by a certain form of red clay good for the purpose, said by elders to be the ruins of his fort. Many curious adults have discovered fragments of pottery thought to be Spanish in origin. Several were sent off to the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville, but nothing was conclusively confirmed regarding origins.

These pottery fragments did hark back to the same general era in time, however, and appeared to be crafted from European clay. Razor backed pigs raised by the Spanish are also known to thrive in the area. Were both of these traded with natives by Desoto’s men in another faraway location, then later on by these same natives over to the Shawnee here in McKinney? Were the old walls actually Shawnee or Cherokee in origin, or those of some long forgotten castaway straggler fur trapping or trader caravan of the past? These questions remain under investigation to this day.

By the riverside, exchanges were made between trappers with freshly prepared hides and furs, and agents bearing factory made commodities shipped all the way over from Spain, then France later on in time. Soon British sales agents lent a hand in this exchange of valuable hides and furs, and factory made products from several coastal areas. Legends abound of huge wealth amassing once upon a time on these now mid-sized town grounds.

Favorite stories told by elders sitting around pot bellied wood stoves inside local hardware stores and inside family owned old time dry goods stores, are of trappers becoming sales agents, purchasing factory made goods at rock bottom price back east on the coast, in places like JamesTown, Williamsburg, and Petersburg Va, then selling them to fellow trappers at the yearly rendezvous for ten and twenty times their value. The poor natives then traded furs at a price far greater than what the trappers paid for these factory crafted goods.

Many of these enterprising trappers and sales agents later amassed huge unregulated fortunes, utilizing them to purchase elegant land tracts from the Shawnee chieftain who first owned and controlled the area. Later on these enterprising individuals were establishing permanent agricultural plantations and raw product processing facilities with their newly amassed fortunes, and constructing impressive chateau styled residences, many of which still stand and thrive to this very day; owned and operated by the originating Clans, who eventually transformed into a type of homespun patrimonial dynasty.

These fine folks possessed the local plantation store, selling everything from raw goods, to goods processed right there on the estate from these raw resources. Any and every kind of tool was forged in the estate blacksmith shop, to be traded in the plantation general store. Clothing was sold inside these general stores, made in plantation sowing shops. Wagons, carts, and buggies were constructed on these plantation sites, then sold back down to the general public surrounding the estate. Most importantly, all of these items could be purchased via loans taken out there in the plantation office, or downtown in a quasi-dilapidated, now abandoned bank building located on mainstreet beside the old railroad depot used as a community building, owned and operated by numbers of these Clan dynasties.

Several of these bank owning Clans also cut and distributed their own uniquely crafted coins, backed in a pure gold or silver value equal to the face value on the coin. Others attempted to back the coin value with that of arms, gallon sized jugs of moonshine, beer, and wine, or pipes of tobacco, and reloaded ammunition for lesser values. All of these clans managed to build lives of an extravagance envied by citizens of every Tennessee county, and Southeastern states alive today.

Folks in McKinney are very proud of what they consider being a gilded heritage, all of their own, unlike any other found anywhere else in America, including the State of Tennessee. The greatest threats to this patrimonial heritage came first with the US Civil War. McKinney, however, and Powell County at large, were fiercely guarded by guerilla forces allied with none other than the heroic master commander to the West, Nathaniel Bedford Forrest, natural born wizard of the saddle. In the end folks held firmly on to what was rightfully theirs in Powell County, making it through this rather difficult era of the past, in their own special style of accomplishing such ends.

When the US Civil War ended, large corporations financed and backed by the foremost pre-centralized treasury of its day, the Bank of New York; extended rail road and textile mill operations into various adjacent areas inside Powell County. While the labor was more steady with these factory operations than what was found on plantation estates, through use of corporate issued script rather than US greenbacks, eventually residents were laboring only to pay off incessant waves of incoming debt bills every month to the company store and office general, with little to nothing remaining.

Company stores gradually took the place of plantation general stores, and due to legalities imposed after the US Civil War, the company bank was now the only one allowed in town. Life choices were often dictated from inside these banks by deviating haughty outsiders, who local folks simply could not form any type of connection with, or even understand in many instances, for that matter. Sadly, long established Powell County family dynasties and their grand estates, commenced to wither away from this idyllic panorama landscape, like flowering clover after springtime in a mountain meadow.

Folks in Powell County, Tennessee, are survivors, as individuals and a society at large. When one opportunity closes, they instinctively know more will open. All one must do is remain alert for the possibility. One time not long ago, a tornado ripped directly through the county’s heart. Several good people lost their expensive homes. Some outsiders who lost fine homes there, relocated elsewhere in the nation. The locals remained in place.

This term, remains in place, is defined in McKinney and Powell County at large, exactly as the terminology speaks. These locals simply took spent plyboard and two by four scraps, made lean tos and A frames, living in these there on the land tract and rebuilding their once elegant homes a section at a time, paying each section off, until the home was fully reconstructed. In three years time most of these destroyed homes were completely resurrected, and totally debt free, minus the extortionist tax, as the good folks there love to label it.

Being able to recount such tales of enduring resilience around community pot bellied wood stoves is a source of great dignity to the local heritage population. No matter what may come, every heritage born individual appears to instinctively know they will win out somehow in the end. It’s the way they were raised and their general methodology of living life in this section of the country, so goes the local braggadocio.

McKinney has much that is very interesting to visit. In the heart of town sits an explicit model on a natural land rise, in an exact scale of the temple to Apollo in Delphi, Greece, as it would have appeared in antiquity. When corporate checks and balances preventing offshoring and in-shoring were pulled by the federal government back in nineteen eighty three, and virtually all mining and manufacturing operations closed, city and county leaders knew survival was dependent upon establishing an endowed source of income somehow.

Retiring World War Two generation workers hailing from unionized provinces of the US, were actively seeking out areas of lower living costs. If these wealth laden persons could feel as if the area possessed something unique to an individual’s interest, then they might possibly decide to remain inside town, and the county at large. In the heart of town on a hill where a dilapidated, crumbling warehouse once stood, this dazzling copy of the temple to Apollo was calculatingly constructed. The massive Doric columns and accompanying sensations of mystery, truly do complement the general overwhelming timeless atmosphere of the town and county-wide province itself.

In the beginning admission was only a mere three dollar charge. For a time, every three years it seemed, this price doubled. Now it is twelve dollars to enter this resurrected shrine. Not much of a marketing effort was needed for word to spread, and soon visitors from afar arrived. Some locals rented vans, providing convenient shuttle services from nearby hotels, to the shrine, the theaters, and the most elegant heritage diners. Many of these individuals also provided touring services, all for a nominal fee, of course! Regulation may have prevented such enterprising activity in other areas of the US, but this was McKinney, Tennessee, for crying out loud, and here blood looks after its own brood first.

When the temple model first went up, many locals highly criticized it. The premiere question of the time they demanded answers to, was from whence did the revenue originate? Were local taxes going to rise soon, as a result? Others accused town and county officials of accommodating out-landers, and using the local vernacular, of coddling to outsider pagan sentimentality, who very often did hold ideas and ideologies strange to heritage residents. “We have long time worshippers in these springtime cults who were here from the beginning!,” many would coarsely yell in town meetings. “Please justify our need for more from beyond somewhere!” Now these same locals seem cheerful and a bit proud that they alone hold on to a very unique space in America, in high demand these days.

Several vineyards have sprung up in McKenney and the county at large. One which is a favorite of locals and visitors is The Old Rose Mill Vineyard. The original Rose Mill was a grist mill along the vineyard creek, referred to affectionately as Rose Creek, of course. The fifth great grandfather who constructed the mill, had a wife named Rose Alister. There was a general store where mill products, mainly, were sold. The old store was referred to as Rose Grocery. It was said one could ask for moonshine, and if grandma Rose felt comfortable, she would take one into a hidden back room, where she kept gallon jugs filled with the intoxicating clear liquid.

While today the grist mill house is primarily a tourist attraction, the old general store continues to operate, selling bottled wine, T-shirts, and vineyard paraphernalia. Every now and then bags of fresh stone ground grits and flour are sold. Most visitors from afar turn up their noses at grits, though more than likely to make some sort of subtle snooty political statement, rather than for reasons of taste, so say long time heritage residents. The vineyard also specializes in its own brands of pickles and preserves, crafted and canned onsite. This particular store and vineyard are working on selling finely crafted products of all types online. Soon their own unique webpage will be up and running, claim local residents, who seem thrilled at the vineyard experience in general.

Every Saturday and Sunday from 1400 until 1900, various local musicians sing, as attractive intelligent, enticingly clad waitresses serve out daily wine specials and host locally famous wine tastings; although word of the area, the vineyard, its activities in general, and the wine tastings, was trickling all the way down into the very heart of Florida. Soon more people would be relocating in, it was presumed by long time locals with a sigh.

Outside of town on the high banks of Tomahawk Creek, up on a hillside overlooking a sharp bend in this rather deep and wide water run, is a cave referred to among heritage locals as Powell’s Partisan Killing Point. From that cave a partisan ally with Ebanezer Powell, bearing connections with none other than general Nathaniel Bedford Forrest himself, went on a personal vendetta against Federal troops, during and after the US Civil War. In the end more than four hundred Federal troops and citizen allies lay dead. He was never apprehended, and few knew of his connections until the nineteen forties. The man’s name was Old Dead Eye, Jack Hinson. Few outside of Powell County, Tennessee, have ever heard of him.

Nowadays this cave is a major tourist site visited by dozens of people every week from all over the nation and the world, since ole Captain Jack was not the first or the last to live in it. Some speak of it among outsiders, simply calling the site, The Hermit Artist’s Cave, to remove all appeal to emotion generated by its blood drenched history born from a disdain for those not native to the soil there. In general reference, this history is hastily recounted in a ring of light amusement among its additional history as being the home of native Americans, and one certain eccentric local artist of renown, George Bogart, who claimed to be a long lost relative of Van Gogh. Many relics have been discovered there and are housed in the City of McKinney historical museum.

According to the local account, Old Dead Eye was neutral during the onset of the war. People warned him to remain loyal to his own blood, since invaders and outsiders couldn’t be trusted. Federal troops crept onto Hinson’s farm one day, uninvited. Two of his sons, mistaking these troops for deer, decided to pursue. In their pursuit, both were callously murdered in cold blood without warning. Both corpses were then decapitated, and the heads stuck onto axe sharpened fence posts as a macabre warning to other potential partisan combatants. From that day forward, Jack the Yankee Slayer, vowed revenge.

Jack knew from spending long days hunting, that the sound of shots from the cave rang out from the bank hillside and the cave, in a manner distorting any directional sound of the shot. Supplies were often ferried from ready established main stations, downstream back to troop legions inward upstream toward Nashville. Many times these large Jon boats were polled or paddled, transporting three to four men, with supplies packed and loaded in the center to a point where the boat appeared as if it might sink.

The three to four men were easily picked off from above by old Dead Eye and his custom made Whitmore sniper’s rifle. The supplies were hastily collected and sold back to Powell County citizens at affordable rates, then these Jon boats smashed and used or sold for firewood. Huge Federal posse were sent out in search of this arch sniper, but they always returned empty handed. A twelve thousand dollar price was put on Hinson’s head, but no Federal official ever collected the reward, and more than a few pursuers were lost forever somewhere deep in the hills.

Citizens of McKenney and Powell County have experienced much over the course of their more than two hundred fifty years of life in these hills. In every instance they have always emerged victorious, in their own special style. Any situation arising in the future threatening the established way of life and blood status, would be dealt with in similar fashion; elders laugh as they gather around pot belly stoves, chewing tobacco and smoking their home fashioned pipes..

On the western edge of town, where visitors from across the Mississippi River enter, is a Market House and courtyard dating back to McKinney’s founding, and was built by none other than Richard Gilespi, a wealthy developer, speculator, and businessman from the era. The Market House is a large square box-like structure containing a series of meeting rooms, sitting atop huge archways opening in all four directions. The area was once a crossroad, while the crossroad transformed over time into a circle around the Market House structure and grounds. Outward from this old Market House, is a park referred to as Liberty Park. This park constitutes what was once the Market House courtyard.

A five foot diameter post oak tree nearly sixty feet tall, growing and shading near the center, is claimed by elders to have once been a hanging tree, harking backwards beyond the founding era deep into pre-European native times, being more than a thousand years old. A skeleton buried beneath the old tree dating back to the year nineteen sixty, is said to have been the last individual hanged on its massive limbs. No person has ever bothered to confirm this claim, however. When the subject is mentioned around wood stoves in the rear of local hardware and feed stores, elders will laugh as they puff their cigars and pipes, smiling around finely designed long, home crafted clay pipe stems, and speaking in low tones;

“Yeah, folks hereabouts were always rough on communists and hippies back in our day. A few attempted to saunter in here unnoticed, with their greasy long hair and their ghoulish, disgusting ways; but their whining, complaining mouths always gave them away, not to mention the stench found in their lack of hygiene. Testing the strength bound up in a good homemade hemp rope was about all the use we ’uns could e’er find for ’em.”

The entire park and Market House structure sits proudly upon a rise, comfortably and neatly surrounded by a four foot high flat-stone wall. Driving around this wall from the west, then going around Liberty Park hill, heading due east, one will enter the Main Street area some two hundred yards down the road. Lazarus Bryant’s Hardware Store, a local landmark, is found inside this two hundred yard stretch of road, tucked comfortably back aways from it in scattered woods, with a small fish pond behind it.

Liberty Park earned its name from Revolutionary War patriots meeting and assembling there in front of the Market House, before marching off to battle. Several constitutional articles were discussed on those grounds at these assemblies.. Thomas Jefferson was said to have attended a number of these meetings. The great militia leader, Patrick Fergusson, was said to have rallied troops on these grounds following a renowned address of Jefferson, in regard to issues of patriotism and the natural right of liberty. Following the address, Fergusson headed away toward King’s Mountain, onward toward his now famous victory. Other people of local interest participating in events occurring on this hallowed ground during the Revolutionary Era, were those of Clan Powell, serving in the Continental Army, and cheerfully marching forward with Fergusson’s muster.

As one enters the Market House, so called because farm goods of every type were once auctioned off or exchanged by hoards of local traders underneath the central point of these large archways and out in the courtyard; near a narrow winding stairwell rising upward into the office areas, stands the old elegantly decorated cedar wood auction block in the exact center. Today local festivals and parades are often initiated from this point, down through Main Street toward the far end of town.

Out in the park are a number of roses, tulips, gladiola, and other flower gardens surrounding statues of men important to the founding of McKinney and Powell County. The first statue one encounters upon exiting the Market House is of Thomas Jefferson. Beside his venerated statue stands a birdbath, and two concrete flower pots. Visitors often place bouquets of flowers inside these pots on holidays such as his April 13th birthday, coinciding with the local Planter’s Day Festival, Christmas day, Fourth of July, Heritage Festival Day on May 10th, and others.

Down from Jefferson’s right, toward the slope on the opposite side, is another similar flower garden surrounding the statue of Patric Fergusson. Directly across from Thomas Jefferson, closer toward the center, is another flower garden filled with red and blue tulips, interlaced by a small head high tree with thick, deep green leaves, bearing white carnation-like flowers from early spring on into the heart of summertime, surrounding an elegant heavily anointed statue of Nathanial Bedford Forrest. Toward his right hand side, near the sloping edge, is positioned another flower garden surrounding a statue of Ebaneezer Powell.

In the precise center of the park stands an elegant, large timbered, snow white gazebo. Here weddings are often performed, birthday picnics enjoyed, and retirement parties held. On the opposite side of this gazebo, directly across from the statue of Forrest, stands the statue of Old Dead Eye, in its own flower garden of red roses and tulips of the same blood tint.

Inside this park and underneath the Market House archways are held annually a number of interesting heritage spring festivals, lasting from Friday at 0900, through Sunday, until 1900. Locally made crafts are sold from stands throughout the park, books celebrating the town heroes, and various shop made artifacts presented. Often local authors offer book signings at these events. Cost free tours throughout the town, large historical homes and grounds, are hosted during these special events.

A parade of Confederate and Revolutionary soldiers march down through Mainstreet from the Market House, followed by several local high school bands, highly decorated floats, local authors, movie stars originating from Powell County, and other recognized faces. Horses, cars, and pickup trucks carrying large advertising signs for local businesses, then follow. These cheer-filled celebrations are concluded in the evening by a large feast on the grounds, dancing, storytelling and poetry readings, local bluegrass, folk music, and other entertainment.

This scene has been largely unchanged throughout Powell County and the town of McKinney, Tennessee, since the town’s founding. Always, no matter what the potential threat down through the ages, the character of the town, county, and its residents with their time honored belief systems, have remained unchanged in spirit or convictions.

Anybody who doesn’t like it can simply pack up, sell out, and get the damn hell out on down the road, as established heritage locals are fond of saying. The four things we hate most ’round here are communists, kudzu, mosquitoes, and any old Boogaroo.