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• Mother's Day Out at River Place Cafe

• Stewardship--The Solution for What Ails Ye

• Historical Preservation Before and After Snapshots

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• Clinch River Conservation Center & Retreat Opening & Earth Day Event

• The Impact of Coal on the Clinch

• Spicy, Southern-Style Breaded & Baked Wild Fowl Recipe

• Community Heroes Create Conservation Easements

• Movies, Internet, and Video Games Decreasing Participation in Outdoor Recreation

• Sideshow Jobs for the “Inbred-Looking”

• River Place Featured on Tennessee's Wild Side

• Forget to stop for roses?

• Raise your Mountain Dews High

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Sideshow Jobs for the “Inbred-Looking”

When I was a very young child, I believed in the boogeyman. Maybe I’m telling my age but it’s been a long time since I feared what I’d find in them thar hills. Besides, there’s nothing out there that my inbred cousin BillyBob can’t fix with a little buckshot or that I’ll care about after a swig or two of good ol’ Clinch Mountain moonshine. heh.

Many residents of Appalachia are scandalized by a recent press release/casting call for The Hills Have Eyes/“inbred-looking” extras for a film staged as the mountains of West Virginia to be shot in the heart of Yankee country: Pittsburgh, PA. The movie is called “Shelter” starring Julianne Moore, the lucky star of yet another horror film about scary, backwoods, inbred hillbilly monsters that will eat you for lunch or make your buddy squeal like a pig.

Where do they get this stuff? Hillbilly monsters are about as common as, oh, I dunno, Bigfoot? We can speculate. The southern Appalachian region, most especially, the Tennessee Valley, we all know was highly populated by the Scotch-Irish. The legend of the 15th century Scottish cannibal clan led by Sawney Bean is a popular Edinburgh boogeyman tale. The story allegedly inspired Wes Cravens The Hills Have Eyes. So perhaps we should just chalk the Hillbilly monster up to Scottish lore?