Dead Men Dance No Polkas, or CSI: Giles County

I'm here tonight to tell you an interesting story, a story that, if I had anything to do with it, you'd already know.

We in the Sauerkraut Band are gearing up for the full-swing edition of Oktoberfest at Mountain Lake. For two weekends in September we play on Saturday nights, then in October (or is it Oktober) we go hog wild and pig crazy and play on Fridays and Saturdays.

Mountain Lake is a resort, a resort that's, and I know you'll find this hard to believe, on top of a mountain with a lake in it.

Yes, you go up, up, up, winding around till you're sure you'll puke, and you finally get to the top of the mountain. And right there at the top of that mountain is a lake. There's a gazebo overlooking the lake, some nice grounds, a giant chess set, some cabins, a barn (yes, Sauerkraut Band plays in the barn, which is more appropriate than you'll ever know), and the big main building of the resort. For those of you who've seen the movie "Dirty Dancing" (and it's OK, you don't have to admit to it, I wouldn't), you'll see lots of Mountain Lake because a lot of the movie was filmed there.

However, there's been a problem with Mountain Lake Resort over the past decade or so. The lake's been - well, it's been shrinking.

It's the talk of the Oktoberfest crowd, how every year we get up there and every year Mountain Lake is more and more mountain and less and less lake. There's apparently been quite the scientific experimenting and speculating, is it global warming, is it something in the earth's atmosphere, is it the drying of some secret spring feeding the lake, but no one really knows.

Saturday before last was our first night of revelry, and we all got there a bit early to find that, well, that there is no lake at Mountain Lake anymore. It's completely gone, replaced by a large expanse of mud, and we don't know if they're planning to change the resort's name to Mountain Mud or Mountain Lakeless, but that gazebo now looks out onto nothing much in particular.

The band put the finishing touches on microphones, wires, decorations, and the like, we hung out, got to know each other again after a year, and prepared to play. We had a small crowd that night but they were a good crowd, and they seemed to enjoy the evening.

I came home and prepared to forget about it till the next Saturday.

But two days later the band received an email from our fearless leader Ed, with some news about upcoming performances and the like. The last paragraph went, and I quote, like this:

For those of you who haven't heard, a corpse was found in the dry lake bed at Mt. Lake on Saturday. The county sheriff came on Sunday and verified that the remains were human. It is believed that the body dates back to the 1920s and officials are working to identify the remains. Follow the link below to the news story from WDBJ 7.

And so I followed the link, because, really, that's something you just want to read more about.

Apparently a man and his son wondered what it would be like to mill around in an ex-lake and did just that, and they found what used to be a human being. His skeleton was there, as were clothes and personal items, a ring, a cigarette lighter with initials, and some coins. According to the article, the police are suspecting either a drowning or foul play, but that's about all they can say. After nearly 90 years, they don't have a lot to go on as far as who this poor unfortunate may be.

But every year he's been there, dead as Sarah Palin's brain, beneath the lake, while we've been playing music and dancing around and drinking shots of Jagermeister up on the mountain. He's been there while Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey wooed each other in the movies. He's been there for countless weddings, wine tastings, beer festivals, and summer holidays.

And that just really intrigues me.

And it intrigues me even more that this discovery was going on while I was up there.

But what intrigues me the most is that since that day I read about The Man Who Went Up A Mountain And Never Came Down, I've heard nary a thing more about it. Well, I guess nary implies "nothing." I've read one more story on the subject, about a professor from Radford University who's looking at the items to see if she can unravel the mystery.

Maybe it's just me, but if I ran Mountain Lake I'd be going crazy on this one.

I'd have the national news up there. I'd want everyone to know about it. I'd let forensic scientists from everywhere head up the mountain and look around, see the remains, look at the personal items. I'd have historians in dusty rooms of police archives, checking missing persons reports.

And that's because the story interests me so much I can't wait to find out the tale of the victim. Who he was, how he got there, if anyone tried to find him when he went missing. For some reason I feel like this fellow is my fellow, he's been up on the mountain with me all those times I've been there. I feel responsible for him, and I feel like the world needs to work on finding out about him.

But that's me. See, I'm a kind and tender-hearted person. The people who own and run Mountain Lake, I can't believe they're not doing all of the above for other reasons.

See, Mountain Lake is what is known in the business as a white elephant. A dinosaur. It's a dying resort, people. It's barely hanging on financially, and other than Oktoberfest, weddings, and private parties, has minimal business at best.

With a 90 year old corpse found in what used to be their lake, wouldn't you think they'd also want everyone to know about it? Have all those people coming to investigate, and staying in their hotel, eating their food, writing nationally published articles about the Mystery Ex-Lake Dweller Dead Guy? Wouldn't they want "CSI: Wherever" to pinch the story for one of their episodes, or even have a second movie filmed up at Mountain Lake, "Dirty Dancing on the Remains of a Dead Guy?"

I mean, there's a Legend of Mountain Lake just waiting to be born!

OK, so that's really crass, and it makes me think of the last half of "Ace in the Hole," where they set up a carnival because a man's trapped in a mine. But it seems the kind of thing the Powers That Be up there would do, and I'm surprised this discovery has been such a non-event, even around here. Most people haven't even heard the story.

Anyway, I care about you, Mr Man Who Went Up A Mountain And Never Came Down, and I hope they find who you are. And I can be very secure in the fact that because of the years they're dating you back to, the Sauerkraut Band can not be implicated in your death in any way.

Which is not to say there aren't others who were quite so lucky.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* I worked my ass off last night. Well, it's still there, but I was on the go from morning till bedtime. I'm taking tonight off.