** Weird Texas, Wesley Treat, Heather Shades, Rob Riggs, and Mark Moran, 2005
Our realtor gave this this to us for a house-warming gift when we moved in Oct, 2008. It's a good coffeetable book, but we don't have a coffetable, so it became the bathroom book. (You know, the book with short snippets you can skim on your visits to the throne.) As a result, it took a while to get through it.
I was put off at first because the first third of the book focuses on paranormal phoenoms, with sections labeled Local Legends, Ancient Mysteries, Fabled People and Places, Unexplained Phenomena, and Bizarre Beasts. I have little patience with what I consider vain speculations about "facts" of questionable provenance.
Finally, after months of celebrating the final stage of the gastro-intestinal process, I arrived at the sections called Local Heroes and Villains, Personalized Properties, Roadside Oddities, and Roads Less Traveled. This was the kind of stuff I was interested in and it worked well.
Unfortunately, it was followed by Haunted Places and Ghostly Tales, and Cemetery Safari, bookending the content of substance with content of little interest to me. YMMV.
2 comments:
I think you may like Roger Pinckney, though he is a local to my region. Here is a quote from Seventh Son on Sacred Ground:
"The Judge thought for a minute, then reached into the drawer that held the flask. There was a Bible in there, too, beneath an automatic pistol...
'But how come the Lord would kill that girl for something her grandmama did' (I asked)
The Judge went back to the Book. 'Now, that ain't what it says. The Good Lord don't have nothing to do with it. He's merciful above all things. It's just how things work. The wages of sin is death. Spend a dollar on gas down at the store. The storekeeper pays his rent with it and that dollar gets bounced around Pritchardville two or three weeks till somebody runs off to Savannah and buys dope with it. That's the same way sin is, it just takes longer. But that don't really matter. Sin didn't kill that little girl. Modernization did. "
Tales in the LowCountry drip thicker than the moss on our ancient live oaks and Pinckney tells them just like a relative who was there or at least knows the official hand me down version...
Here's his link: http://www.rogerpinckney.com/
Check out "Useful Links" tab for immediate reading gratification (various magazine articles)
And the video on this page that hints a bit @ his hoodoo voodoo Blue Roots (voodoo is still a strong undercurrent in this Gullah Rich community):
http://www.sandlapperpublishing.com/RogerPinckney.htm
Tell me if you dig him... or, if you don't :)
Interesting character, good writing.
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