Chopper Hostel

The Hostel is located right in the middle of post coal mining southern West Virginia. Beautiful country that’s been devistated by everything imaginable. The shut down of the coal mining industry, a brutal opiod epidemic and generations living in poverty and passing it on likle it’s a tradition. There are no jobs to be found but plenty of work.

With the smell of a few hundred dollars in scrap ready for the pickin’, any hillbilly worth his salt is ready to destroy anything he owns to nip at that recycling teat.

This is what happened when my hermit passed and his sons came for the left behind trailers and RV to take to scrap. Sometimes I wouldn’t even know they had been there as their workday seems to start around four in the afternoon. Some nights you can hear ’em strippin’ aluminum siding and others the RV would suddenly be up in flames so they can get to that prime stripped metal underneath, mountain gold, good as cash.

They seemed to be on the last leg of the scrappin’ quest when I get a knock on the door and standing on the other side was one of my hermits’ sons. He was wonderin’ if he could borrow some power so they can Sawzall the remainder of the RV.

I have been passively helpin’ clear the area since Charlie died and if a little power will rid me of that final piece of the puzzle on my quest for a junk free property, I was happy to oblige.

The hump to overcome was that the RV needed to be closer to the power source. Systematically they calculated the power needed to move the Rv chassis. It wasn’t an easy roll as the cleansing fire that had brought them this fortune also burnt of 5 of the six tires to kingdom come, leavin’ the chassis dragging like an anchor in the soft ground.

Apparently, the answer to that equation was: chain a front wheel drive, flat black Saturn thing to a 1/2 ton two-wheel drive pick-up with 300k on the clock and a frame rotted though in at least three places.

There needed to be about 10 feet of chain in between the Saturn and pickup truck, six feet between the truck and the chassis. The key ingredient was backin’ everything bumper to bumper and then when you punch the gas the jolt of the chain becoming suddenly taught would get it all movin’ if the pickup doesn’t break in half first

It was a success, the only casualty being the currently unkept lawn. Clese enugh to the power in The Danger to feed an extension cord for a Sawzall and a light or two without blowin’ the brakers.

I left them to thier own devices and left me hearin’ all kinds of craziness that I tried to ignore as I downed yet another box of mac and cheese. I came back out just in time to witness the drivetrain removal.

Draggin’ the motor into the truck with a chain and the mighty Saturn. The motor actually finished the frame from the wheel arch back and the bed dragged the ground with that weight in it, yet they kept on loading it.

It was late, probably around 2 in the morning, when the lights they were using shut down and the noise stopped. I had long since fallen asleep and the nxt morning woke up to this. Ground zero of the hillbilly apocalypse.

These guys are nothin’ if not industrious. I don’t know what that pickup looked like when it left but it had two engines, an automatic transmission and the entire frame and components to the chassis loaded in the back. There’s a few pieces of yard art left in the field I’m sure they’ll be back for.

I hope they do well at the recyclers, they sure as fuck earned their money.