“I’m going to drive through Appalachia, should I be scared of the inbred hill folk and the cryptids? 😱😱😱😱” no bitch, be scared of sliding off a mountain into a valley and not being found for months or years.
they’re going to be insinuating Bigfoot got you in YouTube docs while your Ford Taurus is upside down at the bottom of a mountain
The Western US has guard rails everywhere they could possibly be needed, but in Appalachia, guard rails are for sissies
I think a lot of us would like to have guard rails. It’s not a matter of pride but a matter of infamously shitty and neglected civil infrastructure in Appalachia as a product of local corruption and perpetual state underfunding.
In 1977, the mayor of Vulcan West Virginia wrote to the Soviet Union and East Germany requesting foreign aid to replace the only bridge leading into town, an old swinging footbridge that had collapsed. This was the final straw that forced the West Virginia Legislature to cough up $1.3 million dollars to replace the bridge. Not the fact residents had been fording the river or using unsecured crossings to get to their homes for two years, the bad press generated by a Soviet journalist visiting the area to assess the situation.
It’s been almost 50 years since that and to be honest not much has changed. A lot of the bridges that would have been considered unsound at that time are still up and being driven over everyday.
Driving on poorly maintained roads over flat land is scary enough but driving on a poorly maintained, cracked, potholed, far too narrow road up the side of a mountain with a sheer drop and no guard rail is enough to give anyone a panic attack. Driving over 125+ year old, narrow, rusty one lane bridges that span rushing rocky rivers is something you SHOULD be scared of in Appalachia.
I love that mayor. He's my new hero. The BALLS you'd need to do that during the Cold War.
