Written from memory on 7/21/26
One drives in switchback wise up the face of the long mountain, crests the top facing southwest, turns northeast and drives down along the back of the mountain, down Panther Road. Then, unseen, one passes a ditch-like driveway descending into the hollow of the mountain. The driveway is about a 30% grade, maintained by Christos with his tractor and gravel drops. He is building goodwill with his neighbors, the natives and the other recent runaways. A culvert is crossed in the hollow bottom and the drivers ride up onto a bench and continue, following a powerline cut north.
Just off the cut, another hollow is reached, where Christos and Grudge Girl have their acreage in twain. The lady’s property is guarded by two vicious mastiff-like beasts, as she raises six kinds of birds for eggs, feathers and food. Two house dogs guard the interior. Christos, traveling on his bike to coaching and fighting venues and to do security work, has no time for the ownership of a dog, that beast he has such a pack affinity for.
His acreage is uppermost. First one passes the spring tree, an oak worked into the image of a downward thrust trident centuries ago, still growing in its weird way. Locals say it points to a sweet water spring.
Next one passes a portal down into the hollow that serves as a shooting range and fox den for the local, four-legged chicken thieves. This portal is framed by another oak, which remains slim, having been bent to form an arch one could drive a car through.
Just past the arch oak is a side cut driveway that forms a C-loop with the main driveway, which is to say Lower Panther Road.
Entering the drive from the upper end, from the east, one encounters the hermit shack. The cedar shingled sides rise six feet to a steep pitched tar shingled roof. A broken screen door is open. A new inner door is closed, on the north-facing front. Various appliances and work materials are scattered before the entrance, a storied West Virginia housekeeping tradition.
Within. One finds himself in a single 8 foot wide, 12 foot deep room. There is a vertical slot, west window to the right, a shopvac beneath. The molding has just been completed. Faux wood flooring slats have been applied for the floor. On the right, east wall, is a futon, the foot of which ends three feet from the back slot window, facing south over the hollow bottom, where Christos snipes fox and coyote. The head of the futon is just inside the door, two feet from the front wall, where a light, three-level slat bedstead supports a flash light, paper towels and water bottles.
A four foot deep loft begins eight feet in, at 5 feet 10 inches. That solid loft faces a long south window. The bunk space has not yet been fitted with a ladder, which will hit the floor under the left, west-side window, through which the long slanting sun, glinting through the oaks, sets.
Under the loft, soon to be under the stair as well, is a four foot long roller top desk; the perfect writing station, with a drawer or slot for everything a writer brings. Christos has permitted me a change of clothes to leave in the left bottom drawer, to make room in the suit case for the bottle of moonshine he purchased from Jay for me. There is a nice desk chair of wood.
Against the south wall, in the alcove framed by the loft above and the off white walls all around, is a book shelf holding a set of encyclopedias from the old days, Bullfinch’s Mythology and other good books of interest.
A foot path traces westward along the driveway, with the hollow down to the right, to the main house. This house is built into the hill, with an exposed basement wall on the south side, the master’s porch, complete with rocking chair, grill and sword. Facing north on the flag walk from the porch, beyond the post oak fence, is a trash can east-left and a burn barrel west-right. A large working diesel pickup, a motorcycle, a tractor and an ATV grace the drive and central parking berm.
To the west is the barn, a two door block garage. The north side is a gym, the south side a mechanic’s shop. In 100 degrees with 95% humidity, the garage remains cool. Outside is an all-terrain pickup truck, an ATV and a trailer. Three smaller shacks, sheds for tools and such, frame the western portion of the acreage abutting his Woman’s property.
The gym has a 12 by 16 wrestling mat before the roller door, framed by that door, block wall to the north, and an interior wall that backs the shelving on the mechanic’s side of the building. A leather coach faces the mat on the eastern side. Behind the couch is a barbell rack for squats across from a bench press, behind which is a Red Bull retail cooler loaded with water. Christos uses his old BJJ belts on the squat rack to do pulling and twisting exercises. On the east wall is a mural fronted by an Athena like figure stepping on a tyrant with a circular script of patriotic resistance which I now forget; something like “our land” is “where tyrants come to die.”
I have left out any details of the interior of the house. Christos inherited two cats, Girl Cat and Boy Cat, who have run into trouble on the mountain. Girl cat was killed by a stray dog, and clawed Christos badly while he was rescuing her. Boy Cat, was once a great Tom, and is now elderly. He made much common cause with this withered old shed guest. Many a time Boy Cat walked in this diminishing shadow between the various buildings, never more content then when we both occupied the porch.
There was also Gimp Cat, a woe-befallen feline born without a tail and the last segment of its spine. Rescued by our hero and heroine, two days before my arrival, and medicated as best they could, Gimp Cat remained highly social. On my final day there, he lie down in the grass, apparently content, no longer whining for attention. I went and visited him and gave him a pet, which he seemed to appreciate. A half hour later, we checked and he was gone. I asked if I should get the shovel, and Christos said, “No, this cat is getting a Viking burial.”
That creature’s entire life span was a week on a dottering ape’s decline.
