The Unsolved Mysteries of Amherst County

I’ve been taking a walk every day in Virginia, on the backroads behind the residency. On these walks I pass various insolubles. After nearly two weeks here, I am getting no closer to the answers. It’s particularly frustrating because I’ve started rereading Sherlock Holmes and have a higher-than-usual desire to solve the mysteries in a satisfactory manner.

Unsolved Mystery #1: The Case of the Loud Country Music at the Car Dealership.

My walk goes right by a car dealership. As I near the dealership, loud country music startles the empty street, like a radio station has suddenly come on. The dealership must have speakers that broadcast the music into the parking lot. Or is it a truck parked in the lot, with its stereo on full blast? That was my thought the first day, but the fact that the music has been playing three days in a row (with the exception of today, which is Sunday) suggests that it is coming from the dealership itself. Why would they play music to an empty parking lot? Is it to entice people to come to the dealership? (This doesn’t make sense, as the only people on foot, who could hear the music, are poor artists at the residency where I’m living, who can hardly afford gas for their own cars, let alone buy a new one.) Is it for customers? (But if the customers are already parked in the parking lot, headed to the dealership, why do they need further encouragement?) The last possibility I can think of, which occurred to me as I was writing this, is that the music is blasted outside because the customers are shopping for cars outside, and it enhances their shopping experience. Case solved.

UM#2: The Case of the Big Pipes in Some Dude’s Yard

There are large pipes in someone’s yard that are welded into strange shapes. They seem to be highly utilitarian but I can’t imagine their purpose. Are they stills of some kind, for making moonshine? Or a place to keep errant chickens? I have no idea. Case unsolved.

UM#3: The Case of the Cackling Porch and the Occasional Ambulance

Whenever I walk by one particular house, set deeper in the yard than most houses on the block, there are people are on the porch, cackling loudly. Yesterday, amidst the cackling, someone was yelling at a pet. But there was only a kitten in sight. Were they yelling at the kitten? What had it done? And what was so damn funny? As I continued walking, I saw a dog sniffing around in the yard, but it seemed to be offstage. On my walk today, I saw an ambulance pull up to the house. Thirty minutes later, when I walked back by the house, they were out on the house, cackling again, yelling “Hey” at me from the porch. So did anything bad happen or not? If something bad did happen, why were they laughing? And where was the kitten? Case unsolved.

All of these mysteries are made more suspenseful by the fact that there are gunshots going off at all times in Amherst County. They don’t have anything to do with the unsolved cases, per se, but the sound is unquestionably ominous and adds a note of real danger to the rural scenery, even if it’s just a bunch of hunters hanging out on a deer stand. If I were Holmes and/or Watson, I suppose I would investigate further. But since I’m just a writer, and not a detective, I’m going to go take a bath instead, and see if I can uncover any more clues, in a lazy, haphazard sort of way, during my walk tomorrow.