Title: Jesus and the plastic bong

General information about item:

• Tradition, Material Lore
• Location: Appalachian Trail, United States
• Informant: Jimmy Coleman
• Date Collected: 11/06/19

Informant Data:

• Jimmy Coleman, age 20, is a sophomore at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, where he is studying mathematics and computer science. He was born in Baltimore County and loves the outdoors, which he learned from his ample hiking and camping trips with his family as a child. He undertook his thru hiking adventure on the Appalachian Trail when he was 17 years old.

Contextual Data:

• The Appalachian Trail (AT) begins in Springer Mountain in Georgia and continues north up the Eastern United States until Mount Katahdin in Maine. The trail is about 2,200 miles long and generally takes someone seven months to complete. People can hike this trail either from north to south (SOBO) or south to north (NOBO). 

Item:

• Jimmy told us a tradition involving a man with the trail name Jesus and his plastic bong. Apparently, Jesus was a homeless man, a common demographic of people on the trail. He had been on the trail for many years, and he always had with him his plastic bong. Every time he passed through the midpoint of the trail, he carved a little notch in the bong. He would then pass it off to someone heading the opposite direction, so they could carry the bong. This created a tradition of hikers passing the bong to other hikers traveling the opposite direction, each time carving a little notch into the bong as they passed the midpoint of the trail.

Interview:

Collector notes:

• I continued this conversation with Jimmy at a later point in order to gather additional information.

Collector: Erica Busch