My buddy Austin and I find movies for each other. Or we used to. Back when we actually had time to do things like watch movies and then share them with each other.
(The best moment is when, on the same day, we each picked out Donnie Darko for the other one. Unbeknownst to the other. It was like the “Gift of the Magi”, only cool and with less hair loss.)
Life keeps us from this these days.
But I’ll always be thankful for his find: The Salton Sea, a disturbing and uncomfortable film about drug dealers, crystal meth, revenge, murder and chaos. We have watched it, by ourselves, over the years and silently commiserated. The themes are extremely vivid.
This isn’t a story about movies or my friend Austin or sharing, though. Because the Salton Sea, a 376-square mile area in southern California, came up today as I met some of my relatives.
***
That my family was involved in one of the bloodiest conflicts in Appalachia isn’t news. At least for those of you reading the blog (or accidentally asking me some question tangentially related to Appalachia, fighting, America, Americana or anything else I can relate to the Bakers).
There’s even stories of that feud, at least some of the skills deployed in the Clay County War, spilling out into smaller towns across the country as my family spread out. As with much of this tale, I’ve picked up little bits and pieces along the way, quiet stories that people start, stop, start again, stop again, leave for awhile and allow someone else, somewhere else, to fill in the blanks.
These are not kindly stories, mostly. And I won’t presume to share them here. That would defeat the greater purpose of the book.
But this – this – I have to write.
***
To be fair, I am not going to tell you the whole story so if you are annoyed by things incomplete I suggest you cut your losses now. It’s better to be wholly unfulfilled than half-ly unfulfilled.
This is your last warning.
***
During a conversation today, as with many of my conversations, these little nuggets were told to me. I can’t verify their truthfulness. Then again, I can’t verify any of the truthfulness of the anythings I write about my family.
What I can tell you is these sentences were told to me today, a sentence that ensured I would get up early in the morning to return to the trailer park in Beaumont, California.
“It was out in the Salton Sea that the Hell’s Angel disappeared. My mother had been beaten and raped for 2 weeks. Then the Hell’s Angel disappeared. After that, we moved to Florida.”
