Larry Goldizen and His Stuffed Cougar, Liberty, West Virginia
This is my friend Larry Goldizen, who owns a trucking company (and hunts things) on Fisher’s Ridge in Liberty. Larry and I grew up together on the ridge, which was a gravel road when my parents bought our 95-acre farm in 1974. Whenever I go back to visit, Larry takes me for rides on his Polaris ATV. It sounds like a chainsaw on wheels. It’s terrible ... but I love it. We run over logs. Through creeks. Places where there are no roads, no trails. It’s too noisy to talk. We look. And I remember these woods, walking them when I was young, and this land was everything to me.
And it’s beautiful.
We run out Fisher’s Ridge, where my mom’s farm is, filling up raccoon feeders with dog food from 50-pound bags he stacks in the bed of the ATV. We fill up the feeders and talk about the people we know, and the things that have happened to them. Are happening to them. And I feel part of their lives again.
When I was about 16, Larry wanted to introduce me to the ‘joys’ of coon hunting. He had no gun (coon hunting in Appalachia does not necessarily mean shooting something; sometimes it means practicing to shoot something). We walked about six miles through the woods, starting about midnight, while his hounds tracked what seemed to be a series of raccoons that had trained for a marathon on the slopes of Mt. Kilamanjaro. He led me through a field of briars. Up and down hills. Through brush. I was already scratched head to toe, and probably a candidate to be Life-flighted to a major medical center, when I took a step backwards while staring up a tree, and dropped about 12 feet over a cliff.
Nothing broken. A little bruised. I never went coon hunting again. I’m too soft.
When there’s a big snow on, Larry hooks a blade to his tractor and drives out Fisher’s Ridge, clearing driveways. If he did that in Portland, Oregon (where I live now), there would be lawyers involved (and they wouldn’t be at the wheel of the tractor). But this is normal in Liberty. Probably normal in many small towns where people know and depend on each other.
Sometime around 1987, I ran my Chevy Cavalier into a snow-filled ditch on Fisher’s Ridge. Stuck. The first car to come along was driven by Charlie Dillard (I think we’re third or fourth cousins). Charlie backed up about a quarter mile, until he got to Glen Ranson’s house. He went in Glen’s barn (Glen wasn’t home) and found a chain. He started Glen’s tractor and rode it back to the ditch fiasco. Pulled me out. Returned the tractor (Glen might still not know about this; surprise, Glen!).
I just realized we’re talking about ... communism! Everything owned by everyone (or so it would seem)! Sharing things! Solving problems by turning to your neighbors! All this time we’ve been worrying about the Russians, the Chinese, and the people who live in northern Idado! And all the while, the Red Menace has been putting down roots, growing, spreading, in unionized, muckraking West Virginia.
Thank you Comrade Larry. Thank you, Comrade Charlie!
To the rest of you, I say: Язы́к до Ки́ева доведёт.
You can find your way by asking friends, according to the Russian proverb.