Mountain Roads

Knoxville Tennessee is an oasis of redneck sophistication. Fancy restaurants, great shopping malls, outstanding clinics, and of course - Big Orange football – all are part of the milieu, that makes Knoxville the capitol of the East Tennessee highlands.

Fifteen miles away, on back roads that wind their way through the Smoky Mountain foothills in rural Blount County are people who tell tales of personally seeing the devil walking and snatching the souls of evil doers. No one who has roots in the area has a conflict with the extremes between Knoxville’s sophistication and the Balkan-like superstition that exists in the foothills just a few miles away...

Johnny Turbyfield sat at his Aunt Zora’s table waiting for the ninety-year-old woman to return inside from her small garden plot just outside her back door. The kitchen smelled of baking. It had always smelled of baking since as far back as Johnny could remember. Soon he heard the squeak of the screen door opening. Aunt Zora was back. In her apron, she carried some small potatoes. “New” potatoes were the common name for the spuds Aunt Zora had just unearthed from her garden.

After putting all the potatoes except one in the sink to be washed, Aunt Zora took the remaining potato and cut it in half with a small knife she carried in the pocket of her apron.

“Which hand has the warts, Johnny?”

“This one, Aunt Zora.” Johnny lifted his right hand and held it up to his aunt. Aunt Zora mumbled something over the potato halves she held, and then rubbed the cut ends of both over the five warts on Johnny’s right hand.

Handing one of the potato halves to Johnny, Aunt Zora said, “Okay Johnny here is what you do: Tonight at midnight go to the Century Presbyterian Church cemetery and bury this potato on your uncle Sam Turbyfield’s grave. I’ll bury the other potato back in the garden. While you’re burying the potato, say the Lord’s Prayer three times. Tomorrow morning, when you wake up, your warts will be gone. Now you better hurry and get to work or you’ll have more problems than warts.”

Johnny stood up and wrapped his arms around his aunt’s humped back, kissed her on the cheek, and left. Johnny had found warts on his other hand five years earlier and his mom told him to see his Aunt Zora who was well known for practicing home medicine - even though some of her prescriptions were a little spooky. The treatment had worked and Johnny had no doubt it would work this time as well.

He just had to remember to set his watch alarm so he could be in the cemetery before midnight. He stroked the accelerator of his little Dodge pickup trying to make it to the Maryville Infirmary in time for the beginning of his shift as a medical technician in the emergency room

To be cont....

Question?

Who do I know in Wheaton,Illinois?

Wheaton College is located not far from downtown Wheaton. Its campus features the Billy Graham Center, named for the college's most famous alumnus, which contains a museum dedicated to both the history of American evangelism and the international ministry of Billy Graham. It features conceptual exhibits intended to convey Christian ideas.

It's Republican.

He/She uses a macintosh - Resolution 1920 x 1200

Beats me....

The Deadly Diary

Sometime, way back when, people got it into their heads that writing a daily diary was a good thing. Therapy. Collecting and organizing thoughts, etc. Some parents encourage their kids to write diaries - then the kids - realizing that parents are sneaking peeks - hide them.

In a tragic story I was recently told, I was given cause to wonder if keeping a diary is really such a good thing or even a safe thing. The person who told me this story is in the murder business. He investigates murders for a living. He used to work for the state, but now he has his own shingle and works for lawyers who defend murder suspects.

It seems that several years ago that there was a young girl that was murdered. It seems these days that young girls get murdered all the time. In this case, the young girl kept a diary. Whether mom knew about the diary, we'll never know. However after her daughter was brutally murdered mom "found" the diary. While reading her murdered daughter's diary, she made a starting discovery. Her young girl was socially very active - if you get my drift. She told of her experiences and mentioned names. Sometimes the names of prominent young men in the community. Distressed and devastated the mom did what she thought was the right thing to do. She gave the diary to the head police official investigating the murder.

The head police official - not a very straight up guy - recognized many of the names in the diary and realized the value of the book was much greater for himself than using the book to solve the young girl's murder. He took the diary to the person who would be most threatened by its contents. That person asks him - What are we going to do about the mother who gave this to you? The high police official - who is now a conduit - shrugs and says this is not his problem.

Finally it is decided that it would be much better for the interested parties to "buy" the mother off than use the diary as evidence in a murder trial. That's the way it came down. The rather humble and semi-impoverished mom and dad, get a nice house and piece of property out of the deal, the diary disappears, and the prominent well-connected murderers and accomplices never make it to trial - all because of a diary and a naive mother who thought the high police offical would do the right thing.

Did this really happen - or is it my friends imagination?

The "Sweet Jesus Talking Boy"

The little rich boy had a modus operandi you might say. He would go through his "Jesus talking" seduction rituals and after the seduction was accomplished, he would become increasingly brutal with his victims – yes, you heard it right – victims. He didn't kill them, but he still had victims of his rage. They're still out there – some could be your neighbors - and they still remember the "Sweet Jesus Talking" boy. Why was the stocky built boy so brutal? It could be that the "guilts" set in after he accomplished his conquests and not wanting to admit his own failings, he blamed his fall from grace on his victim and would punish her for leading him astray. While I understand his reasoning, "Sweet Jesus Talking" boy is still a killer, abuser, and victim of his own vices of drink and drugs.

On the fateful day of the young girl's death, "The Sweet Jesus Talking" boy set up the rendezvous point as normal and followed the little girl as she drove away in her car. What started out as regular sex became increasingly violent. Some say "Jesus boy" was not alone, but had friends who liked to watch and sometimes participate. Friends who like him loved drugs and booze. The little girl to them was nothing but sport. An innocent child who had wandered into their web and got caught. An autopsy showed that numerous men had put sperm in the little girl's vagina. Of course, this never came out in the news media or the trial. There were reasons.

White House strips immigration policing powers from Arizona sheriff

Daniel Nasaw in Washington guardian.co.uk, Friday 9 October 2009 17.04 BST Article history

A controversial Arizona sheriff known for taking a hard line against illegal immigrants has been stripped of some of his powers in what he described as a political move by the Obama administration.

Joe Arpaio, a gruff lawman who styles himself as America's toughest sheriff, has won acclaim from US anti-immigrant forces for his relentless pursuit of mostly Hispanic illegal immigrants in Maricopa county, Arizona, a fast-growing county of 4 million people that is home to Phoenix, the nation's fifth largest city.

Arpaio's aggressive tactics include the jailing of illegal immigrants in tent cities surrounded by barbed wire in the middle of Arizona's searingly hot summers, the reduction of meal costs to 20 cents per day, the use of pink jail clothing for men, and chain gangs for women inmates.

Arpaio also came in for criticism when he appeared on the Fox reality show Smile: You're Under Arrest.

Under a two-year-old agreement with the federal department of homeland security, Arpaio and his deputies had been authorised to enforce federal immigration law by arresting suspected illegal immigrants in the field and by checking the immigration status of people arrested on other offences.

But after drawing thousands of complaints and a civil rights investigation from the justice department, Arpaio was this week stripped of his federal authority to make immigration arrests. County attorney Andrew Thomas, one of Arpaio's supporters, condemned the "setback in the fight against illegal immigration".

For his part Arpaio has promised to continue chasing illegal immigrants using state laws. In an angry press conference, he called US homeland security officials "liars" and said he would personally drive those caught on the streets to the border if federal officers refused to take arrested illegal immigrants into custody. "I'll take a little trip to the border and turn them over to the border," he said.

Arpaio's critics decried his continued plans to arrest illegal immigrants and said the Obama administration should sever all ties with him.

The now-rescinded authority to conduct field sweeps of illegal immigrants yielded only about 300 out of the roughly 33,000 total arrests of illegal immigrants since 2007, the Obama administration has done little to curtail Arpaio, said Frank Sharry, executive director of immigration reform advocacy group America's Voice.

"He's going to go down in history as a man who terrorised the Latino community for the sake of his own visibility and political popularity," Sharry said. "The fact that the Obama administration would lend any of its legitimacy to any of his activities is surprising and disappointing."

Arpaio was first elected sheriff in 1993.

"The department of homeland security is making a historic mistake if it continues its relationship with Sheriff Joe Arpaio," said Paco Fabian, spokesman for immigration reform advocacy group America's Voice. "The federal government is lending its full force and legitimacy to a rogue cop certain to go down in history as a serial violator of civil rights and an enemy of the Latino community."

An estimated 12 million illegal immigrants live in the US. The federal government is virtually paralysed over how to react, with conservatives like Arpaio calling for the arrest and deportation of illegal immigrants and increased border enforcement. Obama, many Democrats and some Republicans call for a system that will allow most to gain legal status after paying a fine and learning English, but reform efforts in 2006 and 2007 withered under sustained rightwing opposition.

More than 60 law enforcement agencies across the country have signed onto the same programme under which local officers are effectively deputised to enforce immigration law. But critics of the programme say it wastes police resources needed to fight street crime, promotes racial profiling of Hispanics, targets peaceful workers, breaks up families and breeds distrust of police among immigrants, who become afraid to report crime for fear they will be asked for immigration papers.

Snakes !!!

MIAMI (Reuters) - Burmese pythons and other giant snakes imported as pets could endanger some of America's most important parks and wilderness areas if they are allowed to multiply, according to a report released on Tuesday.

Wildlife experts say the Burmese python is distributed across thousands of square miles (kilometers) in south Florida. There could be tens of thousands in the Everglades, a wildlife refuge that is home to the Florida panther and other endangered species.

The Burmese python and four other non-native snakes -- boa constrictors, yellow anacondas, northern and southern African pythons -- are considered "high-risk" threats to the health of U.S. ecosystems because they eat native birds and animals, the U.S. Geological Survey report said.