2 men shot - confrontation at campground

PA12DRVR wrote:
Despite my best intentions to stay out of this from now on.....

....take a look at today's Anchorage Daily News article about "Alaska Bush People"....informative and illuminating, or should be.

I read that article and I don’t take “reality” shows seriously. I’ve met many “odd” people wandering around the backwoods of W VA, KY, TN and AZ. But I think the behavior of the people I see on the shows is embellished by the “entertainment” element that’s interjected into it.

I was a teenager in the late 50’s and two friends and I would take off and wander as far back in the mountains on foot as we could get. And we met some interesting people in the process. We didn’t camp; we slept in the car, under trees, and occasionally with people we ran into. The latter were interesting, dirt poor people living in a shack on the side of a ridge and only the barest trace of a road. But they treated us well and fed us breakfast when we moved on. That’s where I developed my taste for biscuits and gravy, too. They wouldn’t take any money so we always left some where they would eventually stumble over it.

We did run across a few winners, the movie “Deliverance” reminded me of some of them. But unlike the movie, we didn’t bring a bow to a gunfight, we were also well armed and both parties went their own way. Only once did things get dicey. We stumbled over a dance with the local boys and girls and the girls were paying too much attention to the new guys on the block. You could cut the tension with a knife and I suggested that unless we wanted a brawl with a dozen of the locals we ought to move on. What’s the term, “discretion is the better part of valor”?:B But the bottom line is I can’t say that the reality shows I’ve seen represent any of the people we ever met except in the vaguest way.