All people in rural America are missing some teeth. The women wear gingham dresses, the men wear overalls with one strap, and chew tobacco. They all live on dirt farms and have a battered pickup truck. They drink liquor out of jugs, every family has a young male halfwit and a young female slut. Also, they pull a gun on anyone who approaches them.
^
…and you can make them dance a jig if you’re handy with a banjo or guitar.
Yes. Me. Rural Oklahoma. 1979.
I grew up in a small town of about 1000 people. It’s a farm town. Every farmer in the county would pull a gun on you if you knocked on their door in the middle of the night. Basically it’s like this… you can’t ‘accidentally’ end up at someone’s house in the middle of the night.
Many years ago I worked with a woman whose uncle stilled lived up in the Smokies. Back in the '30’s when the government took them over for the national park, people who lived there were allowed to remain, but they couldn’t pass their place down to family.
Anyway, she said whenever she went to visit him she would wait in her car until he came out, with his shotgun (not aimed, just comfortable in his hand.) He was her uncle and she knew better than to go up on the porch and just knock on the door.
Strains of Deliverance, I know, but probably wise when you’re living alone on the side of a mountain.
So what circumstances arose that caused you to know people would do this?
I was watching one of the moonshine shows on whatever channel recently and the two shiners were driving country roads, I believe in Kentucky or Tennessee or the like, and looking for a stream and remote land upon which to set up a still. Suddenly a landowner and his wife came up on a golf cart (ha) with a shotgun in hand and told them in no uncertain terms they weren’t welcome around there and to leave. One case but I got the sense such a sentiment wasn’t that rare, probably in large part because it’s shine country.
Like Crotalus I’ve been all over the rural South; Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama, Alaska too, conducting geochem surveys where it’s often near impossible to determine where property lines begin and you’re often on a place before you can see it through the trees. I always tried to get permission if possible, went to a lot of doors where they didn’t know me from Adam but never was there a confrontation or showing of a firearm. Not that one wasn’t probably within reach but never did anyone brandish one at my approach.
So in my experience it’s rare overall but there are going to be some regions where an existing factor might make it more likely.
I live in BFE, and have many guns. I have never - and would never - pull a gun on someone who is simply walking on my property.
Country? Hell, try Detroit!
Grew up in the Endless Mountain area of PA. If we needed police, it was State Police and the fast emergency response would probably be 45 minutes. As a result we were always pretty much armed and curious about strangers but few ever saw it; what was usually visible was the rifle for potting groundhogs. Flip a tractor once and you would understand. If I walked up to you it would be hands empty as long as yours were. I may be covered by someone you don’t see and have something in the small of my back, but I’m not one to advertise. From what I’ve seen its still pretty much that way.
Exception is folks sneaking in through the trees from the next mountain over. One of the old timers had some issues with kids growing grass on his land. Didn’t want to make a federal case out of it but didn’t want it happening. Don’t know how those issues panned out but when you have around a thousand acres and a backhoe -------- lets just say that isn’t someone to push real hard.
When I was a teenager out with friends; we were driving one of our ‘country’ friends home late at night; (like 1:00 or 2:00 AM). Our car broke down a few miles shy of our friends house. This was before cell phones (remember it was 1978 or 1979). The only thing we could do was to go to the nearest house we saw to call our friends parents for help. We walked to the farmers house, of whom we all knew, and he knew us and knocked on the door. We were greeted with a shotgun barrel until we identified ourselves. Even then the neighbor only allowed his ‘neighbor’ to go into the house to call her parents. I think he thought we were up to something even after we walked back to our car to wait for my friends parents to rescue us.
Seriously? Not even in the middle of the night? I live in the city and I would consider it, based on the circumstances.
YES, I did census work in East TN and had guns pulled on me 3 Times!!
Well, when I was with a hot air balloon crew a guy on the ground threatened to shoot us, but I saw no weapon. We were flying over his small farm at about 300 feet up and some horses got spooked and were running around… If we’d seen them we wouldn’t have been so low, but trees were all around their paddock. /the pilot immediately took us a LOT higher.
Does being shot at count? On of the local farmers of my childhood shot rock salt at any trespassers.
I know a guy in northern NH who keeps a gun and uses it for answering the door. When you have no local police department and the area has a persistent problem with meth addicts breaking into homes, you don’t take many chances with people coming to your door at night.
Once I and a dreadlocked (white, if you’re wondering, and in fact even if you’re not) companion were driving cross-country together. We got hungry, so we pulled off the interstate and found an empty meadow with no fencing. We parked our car, got out, and sat down to eat sandwiches.
Then we heard the blast.
Way off, maybe 100 yards or so at the end of the meadow, there was a tiny shack. In the window, there was a guy standing, holding a long gun. We could only see his silhouette.
We left toot sweet.
I ran out of gas on my motorcycle on US24 between Toledo and Waterville, OH. It was about 11:00PM. I saw a house with the flickering light from a TV. Knocked on the door to see if maybe they had some mower gas I could buy. The guy that answered the door was holding a shotgun, pointed at the ground, not at me but …still! he explained that there was a motorcycle gang in the area that had been causing problems. He had gas, I paid him for it and I was on my way.
Is the OP still around? I’d like to know why s/he asked… did that happen, or are there plans to head cross-country through people’s properties?
That’s the only way to get to the good trout streams.
And I’d like to know how you “pull a gun” on someone when the gun in question is going to be a long gun. It’s not like you can hide that rifle/shotgun in your pocket, and remember we’re dealing with an outdoor situation here if the person is approaching your territory as stated.
Handguns aren’t so great when the guy is 50 yards off running trying to get away. (Likely to return with reinforcements if he makes it.) Plus handguns just don’t seem to go with the whole country deal.
Yes, this has happened to me.