Down The Mountain In Cana
Around here Cana is the small town on the Virginia-N. Carolina border. What I am about to tell you is only what I have heard. I seems Cana has a reputation for "white lightening" or moonshine. The mountainous terrain with numerous branches (that's southern for "creek") and hollers (southern for "hollow") as well as the border location made it a natural. I can attest that today strangers are not welcome on the back roads surrounding the town. When we were there doing the unbearable insurance job we were warned it was best to be back on the main roads before dark. A Cana welcome involves gun shots.
I was told several days ago that Cana has another claim to fame (or maybe infamy). That seemingly quiet town hosts high stakes card games. I had posted a while back the tragic tale of a local husband murdering his wife and then turning the gun on himself. A footnote to that is the husband, loosing bigtime at the Cana gambling tables, ended it all. The other theory is that someone was sending a message about large unpaid gambling debts.
In the daytime traveling down the mountain from Fancy Gap on highway 52 Cana is a great place to buy produce, antiques and those cement statues for the lawn. There are several places where produce from the many surrounding orchards and farms can be had at very reasonable prices. The antique stores are pretty much what one would expect in a mountain community, not much glitz and fairly reasonable prices. Bears and Confederate soldiers dominate the lawn art stuff.
For the most part the folks around Cana are pretty nice (they did warn us) even though things haven't changed much in the past several hundred years. We found more of the "old mountain" environment around this area then any other we have visited.
posted by The MacBean Gene at 8:02 AM
4 Comments:
I really enjoy your blog. Who would have thought there'd be a Groundhog Mountain blogger? My family bought a house in Doe Run last year. We try to get up there as often as possible. I guess we're "outsiders" because we aren't from the area, but we've been coming up to stay at a friend's house in Doe Run for 20 years. It's great to have a place we can finally call our own.
Keep up the great writing. I love finding references to neighbors and places we know around the mountain.
Hi anonymous. Just come on up and join the rest of us outsiders. Let me know when your going to be up and maybe we can say hello. It's a great area as I'm sure you know.
Somehow this sounds more like an old Western movie to me.... *lol*
Quite charming in it's own way!
It's more like the Beverly Hillbillies meet Rambo,
Mrs. L.
Kasia, I'll try to come up with a post about the dialect. The only word that comes to mind now is from the comedian Jeff Foxworthy who does jokes about the south. "wicha diga" as "You didn't bring the pickup wicha diga?"
Post a Comment
<< Home