Well, I've got another road trip under my belt and if misery and adversity makes you a happier person, I'm well on my way to relentless heavenly bliss. I basically had to go to Wheeling, West Virginia for a weekend, doing the same crap I did in Cleveland. The difference is that West Virginia is a cesspool of inbreeding and unbridles hickiness. Hell, West Virginia only became a state in the first place because the Confederacy didn't want it! And there I was, sophisticated, intelligent me, in the middle of it.
It was an experience. It wasn't actually that bad since I was one of the more "urbanized" section of the state, meaning that it had paved roads. I still saw a TON of teenagers pushing around strollers and/or with buns in the oven. Hell, I saw a few that were barely out of their twenties with three or more damn kids! I also saw quite a few people with snaggled green teeth and a few old horny ho's who wanted to douse their homefires with my steamy young blood.
I'll say one thing, though, those West Virginian chicks are pretty well stacked, considering that most of them were officially jailbait (in most states anyway--I don't even want to contemplate how low the age of consent is in that most civilized territory). We suspect that it was because they start 'em young out there. The state motto is "If there's grass on the field, play ball!" If they're old enough to bleed, they're old enough to breed. We were talking to one chick who said she she didn't have any kids yet (she was an old maid at 16), and I noted that she could obviously outrun her brothers. Verily, a place where cow tipping or getting drunk on grandpa's moonshine and running around naked in the chicken coop is considered a high class outing is no place for me.
All in all though, I've got to say that country bumpkins are fundamentally similar to their urban dreg kin. Neither could even conceive of life in each other's environment. Both of them are often victims of rampant teenage pregnancy, but the urban ones are often mercifully left in dumpsters while in the rural areas they are raised into the same mad circle of existence. Urbanites often mutilate themselve and make themselves grotesque with piercings and tattoos while boonies are born that way. They also both freak me out. Oh well.
Before I forget, I also had to share sleeping quarters with another guy again, just like before. This guy was a twitcher, though, constatnly elbowing me in the back and sliding into my side of the bed. On the last day he rolled over and lovingly wrapped his arm around me. I immediately sprang into wakefullness and said, "You'd better be asleep". Fortunately for him, he woke up, too and immediately withdrew. Blackmail is a good thing when you're on the profitable end.
WEST VIRGINIA: A crappy place to visit, and I'd hate to live there.