As we pull up to a remote general store, we see three older folks sitting on a nearby porch. One of them shouts, “Ya ain’t sellin’ anything, is ya? ‘Cause we ain’t buyin’!” Hostile town, I think. We’re playing defense before we even get out of the car. But it turns out it’s all show. They’re extremely friendly, and when we ask about the history of the town’s name, we’re told to go inside the store and talk with “ol’ J.C. Pickett, who knows everything.”

Inside we find J.C., who is so eager to help that he follows us around until I have to ask him to sit down while I scout for a good spot to take his picture. While I look around I ask him about the town’s name. He says that Sweetlips is called such because two Civil War soldiers, who were surveying and making maps, stopped at a local stream on a scorching summer day and drank water they described as “tasting sweet to the lips.” They labeled the spot on their map Sweetlips.

J.C. shows us the edge of town a half-mile up the road. It’s marked by a homemade sign that’s nailed to a tree up on a steep embankment. Fearful of the rugged terrain, I do my looking from the road, but J.C., 25 years my senior, bolts straight up the hill through the rough brush to show me the sign.

As he poses for us, J.C. is part Popeye, part country curmudgeon. Of the cigarette clamped between his lips, he says, “Doc tells me to quit, but I ain’t never gonna. I had two strokes and an aneurysm and I’m still kickin’.”

He has a nice smile when it appears, and he doesn’t want to stop posing, but we have to be on our way.