Here the
bullies of the two counties would come together to decide who was
the "best man." Here was naturally engendered the hostility
between the hill-dwellers of Wise and the valley people of Lee,
and here was fought a famous battle between a famous bully of Wise
and a famous bully of Lee. On election days the country people
would bring in gingercakes made of cane-molasses, bread homemade
of Burr flour and moonshine and apple-jack which the candidates
would buy and distribute through the crowd. And always during the
afternoon there were men who would try to prove themselves the
best Democrats in the State of Virginia by resort to tooth, fist
and eye-gouging thumb. Then to these elections sometimes would
come the Kentuckians from over the border to stir up the hostility
between state and state, which makes that border bristle with
enmity to this day. For half a century, then, all wild oats from
elsewhere usually sprouted at the Gap. And thus the Gap had been
the shrine of personal freedom--the place where any one individual
had the right to do his pleasure with bottle and cards and
politics and any other the right to prove him wrong if he were
strong enough.
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