Boogertown

by charles anders and diane goldberg

FOR YEARS, it had called to us. A point on the map. A name devoid of context, but rich in meaning.

Boogertown. –It's a name that hovers somewhere between Hee Haw and Deliverance. A place where we imagined pencil-legged girls balanced babies on jutting hips before dropping out of high school. A city of sin eaters, snake handlers, and future NASCAR drivers. Maybe Boogertown, N.C., should suggest something even darker, swampish, primal: the sole preserve of real Southern spooks and haunts, the bogeyman, the thing at the foot of the bed.

When we spotted Boogertown on a road map at a gas station, we were finally compelled to visit. When someone told us about Booger Mountain, nestled within its borders, it became an obsession. We envisioned a sunbathed green slope. Booger Mountain stands at the edge of Gastonia, close to the South Carolina border. Maybe in its shadows we'd hear the ghosts of Native American warriors, or see a dead Confederate solider, his bloody gray uniform a chimera in the haze.

At last we found a free afternoon and decided to make the trek from Charlotte to Boogertown. Figuring out directions to Boogertown was easy with Mapquest, but locating Boogertown in real life turned out to be a major challenge.

As we drove south on Route 321, we left the modern skyline of Charlotte for a B movie South. Exhausted strip malls sold Baptist-brand salvation, big hair cosmetology, and porn in adjacent storefronts. Stores sold bait, used clothes, eight-track tapes, and shotguns. Pickups with gun racks replaced SUVs. When we stopped at a gas station, a man with bruised knuckles and only half his teeth gave directions to Boogertown. He flirted with both of us, switching from one to the other in a jerky fashion, like a bisexual with ADD.

When we neared what seemed to be the heart of Boogertown, the scenery went suburban. Soon prefab houses with expansive lawns dominated the streets. We drove past a huge country club. We had left the desperation, the slack-jawed Luddite resentment of the Reconstruction South and landed in Anytown, USA. Worse, we couldn't find downtown Boogertown anywhere. It seemed as if the whole place had been swallowed by the wave of yuppies avoiding Charlotte's property taxes by moving to Gaston County.

We stopped at a second gas station, one that on our map appeared to be in the dead center of Boogertown. A teenager stood outside smoking and speaking on his cell phone. He shrugged when we asked about Boogertown, and claimed never to have heard of the place. He didn't seem very impressed when we told him that he was right in Boogertown's heart. He wanted us to leave. We could feel his hostility crackle in the air.

If Boogertown had ever had a life of its own, it had been assimilated totally into the Gastonia sprawl.

Fresh from that disappointment, we almost didn't bother searching for Booger Mountain. The first few people we asked about it claimed it didn't exist. Could it be a mythical place, like Shamballa or El Dorado?

Finally, we stopped at yet another gas station, where both of the women working behind the counter claimed no such mountain existed. Here we saw Moon Pies marketed for Halloween: Orange Moon Pies, the ultimate marketing crime against nature and insult to the glory of the Old South. And in the cooler rested sweating bottles of banana-flavored Yoo Hoo.

The South can exist without rampant racism. The South can survive the influx of Ohio natives in khaki shorts. But the South cannot rise above the loss of Moon Pies and Yoo Hoo sodas in their natural chocolate state. No Booger Mountain, and now a culinary atrocity that seemed to wipe away the past. Mournfully, we admitted defeat and headed for the exit. Just then a large middle-aged man walked up to us and began giving very precise, straight-faced directions to Booger Mountain.

First there was a mountain, then there was no mountain, then there was one again.

The man told us that Booger Mountain had lost its original name. A real estate developer had turned Booger Mountain into a gated community for the county's richest. Those high-rolling socialites had no desire to live on Booger Mountain. They would probably buy orange Moon Pies for their orthodonticized offspring.

Following our guide's directions, we finally stumbled on the entrance to this community, simply called the Mountain. The Booger-less community warned trespassers to stay out, but we forged ahead, driving up into an enclave containing massive, exquisitely built houses ripe for an issue of Architectural Digest. God could not have afforded one of these homes without doing a bit of insider trading.

How can we describe the view from the Booger summit? We could see for miles, across lush forests and gorgeous fields. For those who could afford to live here, the Booger heights offered an unspoiled view very different from what we could see on the ground. Even if we missed seeing the Old South in Boogertown, we had a view of the Old Old South from Booger Mountain. We were as gods, looking down on the little people through a veil of primordial green.

We left with a deep disquiet, despite experiencing nature's tranquillity. When Booger Mountain is gentrified, what's next?