Local Lore

So, serendipity strikes. I'll reformat it for here and remove some of the chatty verbiage.

There's a metro stop here called 舵落口, loosely translated as "rudder fall harbour". I asked someone who I was with what that meant since I knew all the characters (well, guessed at the first) and couldn't fathom what they meant together. He looked it up on his phone and the story that came out was this:

Hundreds of years ago, there was a lake here, and there was an immortal by the lake. One day, he stood on the bow of his boat and released a stream of black gas from a gourd. Suddenly there was loud thunder and his boat sank to the bottom of the lake, the immortal flying away into the sky. Local fishermen pulled up the sunken ship, but its rudder was missing.

Years later, there was a severe drought and the lake dried up. Fishermen found the fallen rudder under the sand near the sunken ship's wreck. The rudder suddenly turned into a red dragon and flew into the sky to bring rain.

People were grateful for the great kindness of the immortal's rudder that fell off the boat in the lake and turned into a dragon bringing rain down upon them, so they called this area the rudder drop harbour.

It had never dawned on me that subway stops could be such a treasure trove of local folklore. Guess who's going to investigate every stop now…

Imagine a moonshiner so notorious, so untouchable, that even the law couldn’t haul her in. Picture a whiskey queen who ruled from a rugged fortress in rural Tennessee, and that’s where history buffs will learn of the legendary Mahala Mullins.

Catch-able, But Not Fetch-able Mahala Mullins wasn’t your average moonshiner. In fact, through the mid-1800s she was one of the most notorious bootleggers and sellers of illicit whiskey in Tennessee. It wasn’t that the government didn’t know about her. They did. It’s just that, whenever they came to arrest her, they couldn’t quite get her out of the house and down the rugged Appalachian Mountains.

Records report that she had a dozen warrants for her arrest, and numerous treks by officers were made through the 16 miles of remote Hancock County backwoods to her cabin. So even if the revenue agents made it all the way up to her house, they’d never be able to lug her back down. Because of this, lawmen would say she’s “Catch-able, but not Fetch-able” due to her tipping the scales at more than 600 pounds. Mullins would even taunt them by saying, “Take me if you can.”

Working from Home Sometime after giving birth to her 19th child, Mahala was infected with elephantiasis, which permanently enlarged her. Eventually, she grew too large to move from bed. And from her bedside, she’d pour and sell whiskey in large quantities to locals, confident in her immunity from any sort of punishment. At the time, moonshine was noted as a way to “let loose,” medicinal, a cleaning agent, or a preservative. Mahala’s famous pear brandy brought in customers from all across the mountains.

Mullins was too large to be moving around the home. So, she took on the entrepreneurial mountain woman spirit of conducting operations that supported her large family from her bedside. She was often open in saying that it was not wrong for her to make a living in that manner. Mahala’s cabin was a special reserve for her, as her husband and sons had lost their lives in mountain fights and were buried in the backyard so that she could gaze at their gravesites from her bedside.

Mullins always seemed to be confined to the mountaintop ridge in which she lived, having spent her childhood and adult life within a three-mile radius, never venturing to town or seeing a railway train. However, she delighted in visitors and conversations, having been known for telling a great story and offering cookies and milk to her guests.

Around age 75, Mullins passed away and was removed from her cabin through a hole that is now occupied by a chimney. She was buried in her four-poster bed beside her late husband and sons along the ridge on the homestead.

Melungeons in Appalachia Mullins was also noted as one of the most famous Melungeons of her time. Melungeon is a term that first appeared in print in the 19th century, used in Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina to describe people of mixed ancestry. The Hancock Couny area was known to host one of the largest populations of Melungeon people in the country. Melungeons were considered to have a mixture of European, Native American, and African ancestry. And, Mahala Mullins was just as about as mysterious as her heritage.

Mahala Mullins Cabin The cabin has been relocated to town and into a museum that tells the story of Mahala and the area. Vardy Community Historical Society 3845 Vardy Blackwater Road Sneedville, TN 37869

Kris Lindahl is regarded in Minnesota about the same as a cryptid. Nobody quite knows where he came from or who he even is but his face is EVERYWHERE. He owns 600+ billboards throughout Minnesota and supposedly has started putting them up in other states as well.

Some examples of Kris Lindahl sightings:

This picture was taken TODAY! ^^

He doesn't just limit to only putting up billboards either...

At one point, another realtor put up a similar ad in a completely different place:

And Kris Lindahl SUED THE GUY FOR TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT!! (It was thrown out by a judge)

He's so prolific in Minnesota that there are actual news articles written about him from our local stations and newspapers:

It even made the news when his billboards left the city with the article Kris Lindahl’s Billboards Spotted In Colorado

Parody billboards have even started to go up to make fun of this man. Most notably:

At one point a suburban teen invited him to his graduation party and as a response Kris Lindahl put up a billboard to congratulate the teen:

Now... All of this is funny on its face but I'd like to end this by introducing everyone to the best example of this entire phenomenon... Long Lindahl