[Granville-Hough] 1 Apr 2009 - Merry Hell
Trustees for Granville W. Hough
gwhough-trust at oakapple.net
Sat Apr 1 05:44:13 PDT 2017
Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:17:56 -0800
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: Merry Hell - 1 Apr 2009
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
Griersons 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..
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." .
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