Johnathan Kyle Hughes Portfolio
Table of Contents Reviews: “Snatched” Insults Viewers
5-6
Go See “Get Out”
7-8
What “The Shack” Lacks: An In-Depth Analysis
“Samurai Cop” Doesn’t Need a Partner
9 - 10
11 - 12
New Media: The Bizarre “God Monster of Indian Flats”
14 - 19
“Dead End Drive-In” and the Future that Doesn’t Matter
20 - 23
What Does It Mean to be a Millennial?
24
Magazine: Lunch with Sally Ann
26 - 31
Same as It Ever Was
32 - 39
Mister Keller’s Tin City
40 - 59
Reviews “Snatched” Insults Viewers
5-6
Go See “Get Out”
7-8
What “The Shack” Lacks: An In-Depth Analysis
9 - 10
“Samurai Cop” Doesn’t Need a Partner
11 - 12
New Media The Bizarre “God Monster of Indian Flats”
14 - 19
“Dead End Drive-In” and the Future that Doesn’t Matter 20 - 23 What Does It Mean to be a Millennial?
24
What Does It Mean to be a Millennial
Video Link
Magazine Lunch with Sally Ann
26 - 31
Same as It Ever Was
32 - 39
Mister Keller’s Tin City
40 - 59
Lunch with Sally Ann It was junior year of high-school. A Friday. My mother let me skip that day, because I had spent the morning amazed at how many times I could dry heave. I
had become comfortable in school coasting on charm and half-assed assignments. So, the prospects of looking
for a college, being good enough for that college and doing well there, were as claustrophobic as crawling in a storm drain with no light. Although that seemed preferable
to spending more time over a toilet bowl. My mother was driving us down East-West Connector, tulip poplars, and loblolly pines lined either side. We were heading to the U.S. Café for lunch. We hadn’t said much since we’d gotten in the car.
But then she said, “I just want to make sure you
understand, sex is a beautiful and intoxicating experience. I mean, I know it is for me.” A man on NPR told us how easy it was to support
public radio. “Thanks, Sally.”
She was pretty casual about many things, one of which was letting me call her Sally. It started as a privilege for being on the honor-roll, but it became just what I
called her. I only called her mom when one of us was being difficult.
“I’m serious,” she said, “Don’t take it so lightly. And I’m not talking about that staying pure horseshit. I stopped believing in that when they wouldn’t let me wear
pants to Sunday school.”
Sally grew up on a diet of potted-meat
sandwiches and Baptist hymns, but also MTV and the Sex Pistols. Her home was Powder Springs, Georgia. A town, she said, where there was nothing to do, but “get the
livestock and each other pregnant.” Now, at forty-seven she wore zebra-print glasses, Barbie-shoe earrings, and
had started to call her freckles age spots. The traffic on East-West Connector slowed to a standstill.
She said, “I just want you to understand if you get a girl pregnant, I’ll cut your dick off.”
I didn’t really know how to respond to that. I knew that plenty of her classmates had become parents young, and that she had helped at least one friend clean
up a botched coat-hanger abortion. And I knew even without knowing these things she was damn serious.
She turned down the air-conditioning, and the standstill traffic started to move again. Sally said, “Things are different. You all are having kids later. I mean, I lost my virginity the night I got my high school diploma. He was my high school
sweetheart, Roger Perry. He smelled like Burger King and grape flavored Bazooka gum.” “Mom.”
“And he drove a Corvette. Look, I’m just saying it needs to be with someone special.”
Someone special? She was never this boiler plate about anything. When I was younger and she wanted me to wear my seatbelt, she didn’t just tell me to do it
because it was safe. She grabbed my hand and pressed it against a divot in her skull left there by the second
windshield she’d gone through. So, someone special meant something else.
“You know,” she said, “you could have been Roger Perry,
Jr.” “Oh my God.”
She laughed. “I’m teasing, I dumped him pretty soon after that. He wanted me to move into a trailer with him that he was gonna put out back of his mama’s
house.” It sounded depressing, like something I would
never want. But I just laughed. Sally said, “I took a year off from school for him. I was putting on lipstick just to go to the supermarket. I felt
trapped. So, I ran. I signed up for Georgia State and was department chair of photography before I was thirty.” Sally didn’t want to settle. But it wasn’t as simple
as realizing Roger was a mistake.
He wasn’t. She was proud to have known him.
His dream of a trailer helped her realize she wanted more than Powder Springs.
She also knew I hadn’t tried that hard in school and that I wasn’t looking forward to college. But, to her, college was what freed her from a future stuck in a wood
panel life. By telling me about Roger, she wanted me not to be so afraid of giving a damn.
I was stuck, not in Powder Springs, but in the warm familiarity of good enough. And the apprehension I felt towards college was really me not wanting to see how
comfortable I’d become.
Same as It Ever Was In eighth grade I tried my best to ignore a guy named Patrick. I was new at Awtrey Middle School and
not looking to repeat the year before. Awtrey was a lot like every other Cobb County
school, mid-century, off-white cinder block, and wire mesh safety glass. The teachers were unafraid to tell us about the places they’d retire if they had any damn
money or sense. The students? Middle schoolers, hormonal, fragile, perpetually bored, optimistic. Within the first couple of months I found a group
of friends, Bradford, Drew, and David. Really we were each other’s safety blanket, or at least I wanted them to
be mine.
Drew was closest to an actual friend. He was the one that
allowed me to tag along with their group. I sensed that the other two barely tolerated me. Bradford, in particular
came after me. He said things like, “Those aren’t even real Converse. You style your hair like that? I just thought you were poor.”
By October it was beginning to feel like eighth grade was going to be a lot like seventh. I was being
teased about my clothes, looks, and weight again. But Patrick transferred to our school and unfortunately for him, he made my life easier.
He was stocky, but small and regularly wore jerseys with Calvary Church of God Basketball stamped on the back. We all ended up sharing the same lunch
period.
Patrick wasn’t afraid to insert himself into a conversation and that’s how he drew our group’s ire. They already had me and didn’t want another pudgy, awkward kid.
Especially one who was more likely to share his opinion. I see now that he was lonely and trying his best to find someone to connect with. But at the time I thought he
was weird and didn’t understand how he couldn’t sense that we didn’t want him. He made Bradford and David
particularly upset and once they were, they were more likely to turn on me. That’s what frustrated me about Patrick’s presence. On some level I knew these guys
weren’t my friends. I should have confronted that, but didn’t. I should have understood Patrick, but didn’t want
to.
In seventh grade I had transferred schools. I
showed up nearly two months into my classmates second year together. I was far more shy, but still lonely. And
when I worked up enough courage to talk, it was clear I wasn’t wanted. At the time I thought, “that was then, this is eighth grade. Things aren’t like that.” But weren’t they?
The first time I felt noticeably uneasy about the way we were treating Patrick was one day after lunch. We
were all walking back to class. He matched pace with Bradford and tried to talk to him. Braford asked, “What are you doing?”
We stopped. He continued, “You can’t walk with us. You have to walk behind us. Make sure it’s like fourteen steps
behind us.”
Drew and David giggled. Patrick looked
punctured. I fixed my eyes at the acoustic ceiling tiles like I was trying to find something. Patrick walked away.
I didn’t like what had just happened, but I didn’t do anything. I remember thinking, “Well, I don’t want to stir anything up.” In seventh grade, when I had stood up
for one of my friends I got jumped by the kids that were going after him. I convinced myself that I was too tired
from that unpleasantness and Patrick would probably stop showing up now. But he didn’t. A few weeks later Patrick stomped up to
Bradford and said, “I haven’t done anything to you! Why are you such an asshole?” Bradford said, “Because you’re fat. You’re gross.
Just go away!”
I thought that Bradford was going to hurt him.
And what was worse, as part of the group I might have to help. I knew from seventh grade that this wouldn’t be
pleasant for Patrick. A year earlier one of the kids punched me hard while the teacher was out of the room. I didn’t fight back. I was out
numbered. To further humiliate me, they ganged up on me again the next day while I was changing in the gym
locker-room. They shoved me up against the lockers and one of them played with my man-boobs. He said, “You like that cracker faggot, don’t
you?” They walked away. I spent the rest of that year avoiding conflict. But here I was about to be part of
Patrick and Bradford fighting.
Patrick pointed a finger at Bradford like he was going to say something else, retracted it, and walked away.
I was relieved. I later learned that Bradford had been making fun of his clothes earlier in the day. Bradford turned back to the group and rolled his eyes. Drew said, “What a fag.�
Drew had called him that before, but it clicked this time. I think it was because I heard fat, gross, fag so close together. It was the same. I hated them for doing
that. I hated feeling ugly and isolated. Patrick must have felt that way too.
I didn’t want him around because we were a
good deal alike. We were both stocky, pasty, lonely kids. I even had some Christian basketball jerseys at home. But I
had found friends, in some plastic definition and I was clinging to them. And Patrick’s presence showed me how desperate I was. I hated that, too. And now I was part of
the group causing that pain for him. My fear of being bullied made me into a bully.
I wish that I could say I was disgusted with myself enough to make things right, but I didn’t. I realized what we were doing, but I told myself that we weren’t that bad. We
hadn’t harmed him physically.
Mr. Keller's Tin City I first heard about Keller’s Flea Market from one
of my Professors, Lee Griffith. He described Keller’s as a seedy place, a pirate cove. A place where people go to
disappear. My friend Isabella said, “We’re going.” Isabella’s tall and takes no shit when she doesn’t want to, but I wasn’t all that keen at first. Tight spaces and crowds,
for me, feel like being trapped in a wool comforter in June. And yet, the danger and the romance of a treasure
hunt at Keller’s intrigued me. Flea markets have always been concerned with quick cash and second hand goods since the first modern
market, the Marche Aux Puces in Paris, opened in the 1860s.
Marche Aux Puces simply means flea market, but, at the time, was meant to demean the merit of the goods and people there. And while this conjures images of aristocrats spitting on peasants, it remains true today. Keller’s Flea Market is only open Saturdays and
Sundays. It sits off of I-17 behind a towering, bulbous, fiberglass cow wearing earrings and a sunhat. It was founded in 1985 by classic car enthusiast and amateur
racer, Hubert Keller. He bought the land from a then failing mobile home sales lot. The market started with only
four buildings which Mr. Keller built by hand out of culled lumber and tin sheets. Since 1985, Keller’s has added two more buildings, restrooms, three concessions stands and
a second parking lot.
I drove and missed the entrance the first time because it was almost hidden, squeezed between a used
car lot and several ragged trailers. A small gavel road wound through pine trees toward a parking lot, bordered with muscadine vines and rusted out farm equipment.
Isabella and I got out of the car. Reggae and Bluegrass echoed from somewhere among the cluster of buildings.
We walked past several small shacks, mocked up to look like old saloons, their porches crowded with speakers and rocking chairs, their faď –ades covered in dry, untreated
wood. Outside of the first large building was a mobile
trailer dentist office. People sat in plastic lawn chairs, waiting to be worked on. The dentist put on his mask and turned away from the circular window.
We headed into the first large building off the parking lot. It, like most of the them, was a long hallway
patched together with rusting tin. Orange electrical cords haphazardly snaked around exposed roof beams, bringing power to work-lights. And yet, the hall was still dim.
Isabella and I squeezed in, trying to maneuver through the crowds of young men wearing chokers and skull shirts,
sleepy mothers pushing strollers with angry children, and old men always chewing. Isabella handled moving through people better than I did. I wanted to find a wall to back
up against. There was no way, of course, stalls filled with all sorts of things cluttered the hall. Yellowed books
stacked worryingly high, dusty glassware perched on plywood shelves, Turntables and woodgrain speakers and vinyl purses with rhinestones.
I opened the door at the end of the hall. Just as we were leaving, I turned and heard a vendor giving a demonstration of one of her Tasers. The one she was
holding was shaped like a pen. She pushed its pink button. Harsh blue light flickered across her crowd’s excited faces and the polished swords behind her as the staccato snaps rattled off. A toddler in a stroller covered his face with his hands.
Back in the open air there was farm fresh produce, cardboard signs selling cold beer, phone cases, CD’s, and IPad cases. Five years earlier in 2011, Keller’s
was raided by police who confiscated over one-thousand counterfeit phone and IPad cases. Seven people were
arrested. A little farther on we came across rows of caged puppies. Isabella stuck a finger into one of their cages
and a puppy curiously nipped at her.
They all huddled together in the corners and seemed too docile for being so young. Their prices ranged anywhere from $350 to $600, depending on the breed. Most of these puppies were shipped to Keller’s from a puppy mill in Lyons, GA, called Sportin’ Chance. If
not, they came from another, K-Bar Kennel. An elderly lady bought one and held it like a baby. She hummed softly and rubbed its belly. But I didn’t see any comfort in
its eyes. We passed by a girl who must have been no
older than fifteen, hunched over a cart filled with iced beer and chip bags. A bell on the cart rang every time she took a step.
Eventually, we found a building surrounded by planters made out of all sorts of rusting bins and basins, and tacked to its walls were enameled signs for Red Rock
Cola and Phillip’s 66 Service Station. Inside, chairs and sickles hung from the rafters. China cabinets, ratty lamps, and chunky tea glasses sat in rows on the warped plywood floor. An unused headstone capped off one of the rows of stuff and rocked slightly as Isabella and I
passed. We cut through the farthest building to get to my car. As I drove us back into Savannah, Isabella asked me
what I thought of Keller’s. I wasn’t sure. We had seen so much, really hadn’t talked to anyone. It was definitely a
shabby, jumbled place where not all of the business was completely legal, but there was something I liked about it.
I came back the following weekend with my sister, Sarah. We passed where the dentist’s trailer had been. Now there were four rat-rods adorned with skulls, Christmas lights, pinup women, American flags, and even a casket. Next to them in the shade was a band of older
men playing Get Together by The Youngbloods. Sarah wanted to look for antiques, so we cut through the first building, hurried past the puppies, to the
entrance of the antiques building. We started looking at the selection of colorful glass bottles, back lit by a couple
of desk lamps. A man named Mark Murray sat on an old stool, drinking a Coors’ Banquet. His beard was greying and he wore a camo jacket even though it was seventy-
eight degrees. Mark asked, “What y’all think?”
I said, “Seems good to me.” “It’s all junk,” he said, “‘least I think so.”
“But you’ve got a good selection.” “Hell, this stuff ain’t mine. I’m just watching here
for a friend.” It wasn’t any of my business if that was true. I said, “Okay.”
“I guess I should be helpful,” he said, “See that crystal thing on that shelf, go pick it up.”
I walked over and picked up a cut crystal Ice bucket that was deceptively heavy. “See, ain’t that son-of-a-bitch heavy? It’s
Waterford, from England.” I thanked him and Sarah and I walked on to the
other end of the antiques building. He had a refreshing kind of authenticity.
He was trying to be a good friend, even if he
didn’t care about Irish Crystal. In a booth at the other end of the building, I found, tucked away under an old armchair, a metal Coca-
Cola tray with a smiling Victorian woman, for eight dollars. I bought it to remind me of home in Atlanta. I went over
to the middle aged cashier, while Sarah continued to look through a basket of old rings. The cashier had on a pocketed vest like he was going fishing. He asked, “How
much does it say on it? Eight. How about six?” I said, “Sure.” I asked him if he liked working
around antiques.
He said, “My boss has been doing this for fortyfive years. Can you believe that? I’ve only been working for him for five. I guess it’s a thing that gets in your blood. But yeah, it’s alright, I’d be fine to do it a while longer.” Outside we passed a food shack that boasted
THE FRESHEST LEMONADE IN GEORGIA and stopped at a booth full of VCR’s and old VHS tapes. Half of the lights were off. Sarah picked up a sun-bleached tape of Bambi.
I grabbed one from a shelf titled “Horror Classics $3.”
Dead and Breakfast, where group of college students stay at a bed and breakfast in a small Texas town and end up fighting an army of the undead. A raspy voice came from behind a stack of
boxes asking us if we were finding everything alright.
On the other side, sitting in a rolling chair, was a man in a yellow dress shirt snacking on fries covered in
mustard. He said his people called him Old Pete, although the next time I talked to him he introduced himself as Hal.
“Y’all will have to excuse me,” he said “this is the first thing I’ve eaten all day. Not breakfast. Not lunch.” “All day?” I asked. “It’s 4:15.”
“Yeah well,” he said, “I should have had something earlier, but then it got busy and stayed busy.” “Well at least you have something now.”
“Yeah but it’s this unhealthy stuff. I need to watch weight my doctor says. She’s a lady doctor. I say,
I’m eighty and I’ve been eating Cheetos all my damn life and I’ll snack if I want.”
“I mean, at eighty I’d be doing what I want, too.” “Well I am slowing down. I think I might retire soon. The
only problem is when I think about that I think about my friends. I have a lot of friends out in the cemetery that
retired, went home, turned on the TV, and never got up again. I’m looking at that too, dammit.” “Sorry, I’m afraid I’m not there yet.”
“You’re alright you know that. It was nice talking to you.” I handed him three dollars and caught up with
Sarah who was waiting at the end of the hall. Outside there was a hot breeze blowing. A small,
but constant dinging came closer. A young man in his late teens was hunched over that same cart that I had seen the girl pushing before.
He stopped to wipe his forehead and fanned himself with his trucker cap. I walked over to him and said, “I don’t think I could do this kind of work.” He scratched his spindly goatee and said, “The heat ain’t so bad.”
“What’s the worst part?” “The worst part is reaching around for something like, I don’t know, a pineapple surprise and then nothing. I
gotta say sorry and my hand is numb for the next ten minutes. Anyway, Need a drink?”
“Coke?” “Pepsi.” “Okay.”
Sarah and I sat for a moment on a makeshift bench made from a large, carved-up propane tank. We Passed the Pepsi back and forth. I asked her if there was any other stall she wanted to see. She said there was one that sold glassware in the same building as the woman
selling Tasers. We walked back over to it. Its shelves went up to the rafters and were crowded with cordials, candy dishes, red and white wine glasses, ruby depression glass,
vases, amber tea glasses, and decanters. A lady with greying frizzy hair and a Dasani bottle
filled with coffee came over and introduced herself as Judy. She said that all of this glass was from estate sales that she’d caught wind of.
She said. “I buy them and sell them, but I want to find them good homes. They got memories in them. If your Grandmother ever wants to give you something that means one of several things. It’s worth something, something to her, or both. You gotta know what you have.
This one time I bought a set of sterling silver utensils that served twelve from this one gal. She wanted $60. Well, I sold that set for $850. Know what you have. You’ll love it
more. You got anything like that?” “I’m getting my Grandmother’s china that we use
every Christmas,” I said. “Good. See, what you’ll have of that is the memories that come with it. You can’t put a price on
those.
Like the saddest thing for me recently was not my father-in-law dying. Yes, of course, that was sad, but what was worse was trying to save a message from him
on my answering machine and accidently deleting it. His voice is gone now.”
The whole time Judy had been talking she looked me in the eyes, but talking about here father-in-law made her look at the concrete floor.
“He had Dementia,” She said. “Where his memory went away. It’s hard to watch.”
“Yes,” I said. “But, that’s why these things are important, they hold the memories of the best times. Write them down if you wish,
but give something to your grandkids so they will have something from you.”
I bought a bell pepper shaped decanter. As Sarah and I headed back to my car, I stopped to take a few more pictures of the rat-rods. A scrawny old
man in a stained t-shirt and wide brim straw hat was buttoning up the roof of one named Grey Ghost. I asked
him, “Was that a Ford?” He said, “Yep. A 31’ Model A, but the engine is a 51’ flathead V8.”
“Where did it get its name?” “I named it after a World War II plane by the
same name.” “How does it drive?” I asked. “It drives real sloppy, but it’s fun. I even got to
lean out the window to see, otherwise I can’t when I back up.”
I stuck out my hand, “I’m Kyle by the way.” “Hubert Keller.” Here was the man who had started this whole
place. I was a little intimidated. He may have been scrawny, but his hands were meaty, honest, and adorned with several fat gold rings. I shook his hand and he got into Grey Ghost. I asked Sarah if we could stop for a moment. We
sat on a swing surrounded by makeshift planters so I could take some notes. This place seemed much more inviting than it had when I’d first heard of it. Sarah noticed
that the swing had built in cup holders and said, “God bless America. We’re a dysfunctional mess, but at least
we have cup holders.”
I knew she was joking, but I think it was the best possible way to describe Keller’s. A business practice that started overseas, but now forever entwined with American
culture. With practices that are shady and some items less than legal. Still more are kitschy, useful, beautiful, laughable, wearable. This market is ugly, backward, and vulgar, yet strangely welcoming.