During the peak of the opioid epidemic in 2013, I drove from Columbus, Ohio to Morgantown, West Virginia. I was headed to speak at a regional conference on the opioid crisis. Being a fresh transplant from California I wanted to see the state, so I took the blue road route meandering through mile after mile of woods, dead and dying farms, and based on the epidemiological data, dozens of tiny one-street oxy towns and heroin hollers.
I drove slow listening to Hank III’s Straight to Hell, which seemed like the right call with Hank crooning about the region’s affinity for pills, moonshine, and debauchery. A sucker for nostalgic grit, I stopped and snapped photos of decayed Mail Pouch Tobacco ads on dilapidated farms, rusted farm equipment and abandoned trucks. I stopped to look at a few ramshackle tree stands and hand-crafted box blinds strategically placed over orchards, pinch points, and fields several with deer feeding in them. As a hunter myself, I loved these artifacts of the area’s rich hunting culture. There was a charm to the patina of rural life that hid the extreme poverty and exploding drug problem.
Somewhere near the state line, things took an uglier turn. I passed a line of jacked-up Ford trucks parked in a field, their owners milling about drinking beer watching two guys in camo shooting full-auto assault rifles at propane tanks and a life-size poster of Obama. On the edge of the field, a Confederate flag snapped in the humid summer breeze. Hoping my Toyota Tacoma with California plates didn’t draw their attention, ire, or a stray round, I mashed down the gas pedal.
A few miles later I passed some well-maintained farmhouses and a small, 1800s vintage, country church. At the four-way stop adjacent to the church, I did a double take. A small iron statue of a blackface slave wearing a tuxedo and holding a serving tray greeted visitors at the pastor’s front door—my second jarring reminder I was straddling the Mason-Dixon line. I drove on and wondered if this in-your-face racism was worse than the mostly behind-closed-doors type pervasive in cities and the burbs. At least you know where these chuckleheads stand. I’d come expecting to see some evidence of a drug scourge but instead found open displays of racism. It was both alarming and disheartening… and I was still technically in the “North.”
Further down the road it got weird. I stopped to take a piss at a rest stop right before crossing into West Virginia. A group of men with professional-looking cameras on tripods, all clad in camo, stood smoking and chatting next to an RV. Knowing it wasn’t hunting season (it was June), I asked the film crew what they were doing. “We’re shooting a documentary on the local epidemic of Bigfoot and Dogman and Mothman sightings. This area is a hotbed,” the director explained. Ohio seemed to have all sorts of monsters I didn’t know about.
A few miles later, as I crossed over the bridge into West Virginia, a small pang of anxiety shot through me, my mind flashing to the movie The Mothman Prophecies, Laura Linny in her sheriff uniform looking down at a collapsed bridge and all the cars in the river. I need a drink.
That night in a hotel bar, I ended up on a stool next to a pretty older woman also attending the opioid prevention conference. After quick introductions, she asked me what I thought about her new ombré hairdo.
“Do you like it? I do! I think it’s a very sophisticated style,” she said.
“It’s very urban,” I said, thinking it a bad look on anybody.
When the conversation shifted to the conference, she insisted, “if we had more Jesus there’d be less oxy and addiction.” Why did I agree to speak at this thing?
“My talk is on the system dynamics of the epidemic,” I explained.
She looked at me like I just farted in church.
“Well…that sounds… interesting,” she said.
Over the years, I’d learned that faith—and the moral judgements that came with it—often crept into the thinking of people working in the addiction field. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a place for it; Hell, if you have a drug or booze problem and praying keeps you sober, then God bless and keep praying. Unfortunately, like most serious social problems, we weren’t going to pray our way out the opioid epidemic. But fully aware of the irony, I was drinking and in no mood to argue theory or theology.
As Bad Ombré got increasingly blotto, the conversation took another turn.
“Honey, I just want to thank you for talking with me. I’ve been lonely as hell lately and it’s just nice…”
Oh shit.
“Of course, it’s been an interesting conversation,” I said.
“You know—we’re about the same age. And you’re pretty damn cute,” she said.
Um…you are at least a decade older than me and I’m thirty pounds over weight and bald.
“Oh, that’s sweet of you to say. I don’t hear that much except from my wife, of course. I’m expecting a call from her any minute.”
That should hopefully do it. Time to get ghost…
She shrugged.
“It’s a conference sweety and these things happen. I got a man back home too.”
I bit my lip, resisting the urge to ask her what that yellow rubber bracelet stamped WWJD on her wrist meant.
“Anyway, don’t run off. I need to use the powder room,” she said, before stumbling off.
Seeing my chance to extract myself from a situation that could only go south, I paid both our bills; it was the least I could do since I was ghosting her. And hell, nobody had tried to pick up on me in at least a decade and that had to be worth the price of a few shitty hotel drinks. I threw down a hefty tip, asked the barkeep to let Bad Ombré know my wife called and I had to go take the call, and got up to head to my room. I stopped and motioned the bartender back over. She looked at me, eyebrow raised.
“Tell her I enjoyed talking to her and I hope she has a great conference too,” I said.
Spinning in my bed that night, I couldn’t sleep. It’d been a strange and depressing day. I rummaged through my bag and found my vape pen loaded with California-legal Indica oil, took a few hits, and clicked off the lights. My last thought before dozing off was, I’m cross-faded at a drug prevention conference…
I woke jangled, part hungover, part disoriented from the strangeness of the previous twenty-four hours. As I took my morning piss, I decided the best medicine was to get out of the hotel, grab some coffee, a greasy breakfast to sop up the booze, then nap before my talk that afternoon.
Wanting to escape the brutal humidity, I decided to stop at the first place I found and ended up at Biscuit World. In my hungover state, it took me a beat to realize the girl taking my order was speaking English not some foreign language.
“You all want chunkies with your eggs?”
“Chunkies?” I asked.
“Yeah. Chunkies. You want ‘em or not?”
What the fuck are chunkies…
“Sure, I’ll take some chunkies,” I said.
“How you want ‘em?”
For fuck sake…
“How do you like them?” I asked.
She looked at me and shrugged like she’d never considered this question before.
“Hmm. I’d say I like ‘em crispy best. But not extra crispy. When they get extra crispy they’re more like cracklins than chunkies. Ya know? And if I want cracklins, I’d order ‘em.”
Jesus, what are cracklins? Don’t ask…
“I’ll take mine like you like them then.”
She smiled and nodded.
“Alright then, hun.”
A few hours later, my gut full of crispy fried spuds (aka- chunkies), I stood at the podium in a large room and delivered my talk to three people—two graduate students and an assistant professor from Bowling Green, Kentucky. But, thankfully, no Bad Ombré.
The guy from Kentucky came up after and said, “Interesting talk. Sorry, nobody came but they put you up against the talk about faith and prayer as a road to recovery. That one has been out-the-door packed the last two years.” Of course it’s always packed.
I checked out that afternoon and headed back to Columbus. I took the I-70 this time. Rather than Hank III, I found and played a podcast by two Ohio cryptozoologists. Might as well be entertained by Ohio’s non-human monsters. Around dinner my gut growled. I wonder where I can find some chunkies in Ohio…done crispy, but not extra crispy of course.
