Way down upon the Swanee River...it's fun living in the deep South y'all!

Went kayaking in the hills of north JAW-JA.  I found a "kayak outfitter" place near the river.  It was run by Ma and Pa Kettle (not their real names....but close enough). They had ONE kayak for rent.  And their niece was on hand to help out.  She favors chain smoking Marlboros, guzzlin' Mountain Dew, and I think I saw a Moonpie poking out of her lumberjack coat pocket.  Oh, and she was sporting a beard.  Not a full beard, but I guess I would describe it as a thin, prickly-short type of beard.  .....with matching moustache.

So...back to the kayaking....the kayak trip was great.....beautiful scenery, no one else on the river, perfect weather.  We kayaked in the stillness....in the one kayak that was available.....which it turns out came complete with a small hole that slowly but surely transformed our floating boat into a small oblong swimming pool that sunk so low that it scraped along the bottom of the river.

At the end of the day we waited 45 minutes for Pa to pick us up.  In the meantime,  I talked to one of the locals who was hanging out on the small dirt road that ran along the river.  He was selling some stuff that he said he found in his basement, including some old Coke bottles, a few naked dolls (don't want to know why he had those), a pile of rusty dusty tools, and some items that were not identifiable.

I tried not to stare.......but dammit, I could not make out what the tattoo was that ran across his bare belly.  It was one of about 10 tattoos he had on his body----about seven of the ten tattoos were of women, mostly nude. So anyway, I don't know why I was straining so hard to see this one tattoo,  but I was. I felt compelled to figure out what it said.  As if maybe, possibly, it was something critically important, something significant, something meaningful.  It was on his belly after all.  The tattoo was all letters, written in some fancy script. I had to know what this important message was.  Finally I got close enough to make out the letters.  Spelled out, across his belly was......

H I L L B I L L Y

Perfect.  

Redundant.  But perfect.

Perfectly redundant.

Oh....and apparently there is no dental insurance South of the Mason-Dixon line. 

This is a woman I saw in Krakow Poland. I believe she is a distant relative of the bearded niece.