[Granville-Hough] 1 Apr 2009 - Merry Hell

[Trustees and Executors for Granville W. Hough]

A few days ago, part of the town of Magee, where I went to high school, 
was blown away. 20 people were injured, but no one was killed, so far as 
we presently know. Winds were reported as 150 miles per hour. A local 
church, Corinth Baptist Church, was reduced to splinters and blown away. 
Some of its church records were found at Garlandville, four counties and 
fifty miles northeast, as the crow flies. I had to think about 
Garlandville a bit, but I think it is a town which grew up near where my 
mother, Lizzie Richardson, and her brother Martin Richardson, had taught 
all grades in a one-room school in 1909-10, just 99 or 100 years ago.

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TORNADOES, BLOWDOWNS, AND MERRY HELL

That Mississippi is subject to violent tornadoes is a fact that 
impresses itself on the people living there all too often. No part of 
the state is free of the threat. Sometimes they leave a wide swath of 
destruction and eliminate a whole town, and sometimes they drop down and 
hit one or two dwellings. Tornado warnings can now be given, but that 
does not tell anyone that their home or buildings have been designated 
at targets.
Just over two years ago in 2004, I believe, the Mize (School) Attendance 
Center was hit by a local tornado which took away the second story of 
the building. There were no injuries as everyone had apparently taken 
refuge on the first floor. It did leave some traumatized children who 
will never forget how it feels to see and experience the power of a 
tornado.
In growing up on the headwaters of McLaurin Creek, I heard about the 
daddy of all tornadoes early in my youth. It had happened about a 
hundred years earlier about three miles south of where I lived. The 
country was covered by longleaf pines over 100 feet in height, and had 
just been obtained by forcing the Choctaw Indians to go to Oklahoma 
(Indian Territory) and taking over their land. This tornado cut a swath 
through the piney woods about a quarter mile wide and a few miles in 
length. It was a mass of fallen pine trees, which soon was covered over 
with the natural undergrowth of oak, and all other kinds of brush, 
briers, and bushes. Because deer are browsers, they loved the tornado 
blowdown; and hunters came from miles around to stalk them. The blowdown 
itself was large enough that you could get lost in it, so most hunters 
just worked along the outside.
The blowdown was still there during the Civil War, and one contingent of 
Grierson’s Yankee raiders got lost in it. They had drafted a local to 
take them through it to Simpson County roads west, but he got confused 
and just as lost as the Yankees. They terrorized him, but he somehow got 
away during the night and presumably found his way home. They did not 
record his name, and he apparently did not boast of his deed, if indeed 
he got home. I was told this tangle of brush and briers was called 
“Merry Hell,” and that is how the area got its name. I never knew any 
other name for the creek until I found an early map which showed it to 
be McLaurin Creek.
My grandfather, Jim Richardson held the land which divided the Okatoma 
and Okahay Creek basins and most of his land was on the headwaters of 
McLaurin Creek.. My father's land was entirely in Okahay Creek basin on 
the headwaters of Clear Creek. Only 1/4 mile separated their fences.
Other reasons have been suggested for the name Merry Hell, one being the 
type of moonshine distilled there. I do not think that was proper usage. 
You might say: "This is genuine "Merry Hell," moonshine, "and eventually 
that covered a whole section of Simpson County in McLaurin Creek and 
Okatoma Creek swamps. This moonshine approached 100 proof or 50 % ethyl 
alcohol. A few swallows would make you as drunk as a hoot owl. For later 
generations who never heard of the great Merry Hell blowdown, I guess 
the moonshine name will do well enough.
Still others of later generations reversed the situation because they 
knew the people who lived on Merry Hell as Merry Hell-yuns; and 
everywhere the Merry Hell-yuns went, there went brawling, fighting, and 
sometimes killing, also. So Merry Hell was simply the home of the Merry 
Hell-yuns. If you violated customs of respectable Sullivan's Hollow 
folks, and the Smith County law was looking for you, you could get 
banished over the Simpson County line into Merry Hell; where you had to 
fend for yourself among whatever thieves, bootleggers, outlaws, and 
other Merry Hell-yuns lived there..

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P. S. 7. Who am I to say "The time is now to end America's disastrous 
War on Drugs." Well, I can only say I am a bereaving father who was able 
to recover only a few bones of my son Robin Hough, who died in July 1985 
in Blanchard Canyon, Tujunga, CA, from some sort of relationship or 
crime involving methyl-amphetamines. Whether killed or overdosed, I 
cannot say. Robin was a brilliant musician and graduate of Cal Arts, 33 
years old..
Not long after Robin's death, Roland Herbert Hough, Jr, my nephew, a 
Vietnam veteran, was found in Texas with some marijuana, or some similar 
drug, and got the typical Texas sentence of hard time at Huntsville 
State Penitentiary. We bellieve he was killed by other inmates a few 
days before the end of his sentence.. He was the only child in his family.
There has got to be a better way. I remember Prohibition and a 
by-product of that era called "Jake-Leg." After Prohibition was repealed 
and Jake-Leg victims all died, we forgot all about it. As few of you 
have ever heard of it, I want you to see it as a precedent to the ruined 
lives we see today from the drug epidemic. One of our Hough friends is 
probably the national expert on "Jake-Leg." He will help us understand 
this forerunner of "bad fixes." .