(05-15-2024, 11:51 PM)Durian Fiend Wrote: That area certainly has a bad rep. I've never known anyone living there.
I've only been to HOVE once recently, and even that was about a year ago. Interesting experience. In a way, seeing really nice homes next to "tarp living" people reminded me of Puna, then we went a long stretch without seeing any structures or people, then out of nowhere, a dirty, skinny, mostly naked man burst forth from the bushes and started walking across the road without looking or showing any care in the world. Of course I slowed down to avoid a collision and told the wife... "Look! It's Methsquatch! Quick... take a blurry picture!" I was pretty amused with myself, her not so much.
Our acquaintance out there was building a cabin and about 3/4 the way through decided the area wasn't for him. The exclamation point on that decision was when he came home to his cabin and found that people, or at least a person, had been inside of it! He didn't have anything of value in there, in fact it was mostly empty. I guess to express their frustration with having nothing to steal they decided to leave him something on the mattress in the loft. I don't want to gross anybody out so I won't describe what it was.
Oh, who am I kidding... geezers just spout things without choosing their words carefully: It was a pile of crap. Excrement. Human feces. With flies buzzing around and everything. Okay, to be honest he never mentioned the flies but whoever gifted the glistening mattress monument certainly was living on the wild side like those kids in Lord of the Flies. Having unwelcome strangers in the cabin wasn't the exclamation point so much as the feral declaration of dominance left behind.
So anyways, when I think of HOVE, unfortunately Methsquatch and flies are what come to mind. I'm sure it's a much nicer place to live than what this post describes, and for that, I'm sorry I don't have a nice rainbow and kittens story to sort of balance things out and not leave the mental palate with such a lingering stench.