China Travel Agency - Long Trail a-Winding - Traveling Before Interstates the Long,

West Virginia to elope with the ruggedly handsome Joe Goode, who had fled a comfortable life as the most popular young lady in Clarksburg, virginia, she spent half the year with us and half at the home of her older daughter. Grandmother Stuart arrived each fall as regularly as the robins deserted Pittsburgh for warmer climes.

Right down to preparing savory rabbit or squirrel stew, she became a model farmer's wife, while Joe and his hired men toiled. Quickly became the belle of the farm community, unsupervised for the first time in her life, virginia. Twelve miles from the nearest train line and far enough from his in-laws to avoid their fury, joe took his bride to the family farm in Ritchie County, instead of remaining in town after their marriage.

He rarely complained because he could visit his own mother and sister along the way. Consequently he set aside several days each fall and spring for her transportation, my father was the only one of her two sons-in-law willing to make the rugged 300-mile round trip in a car piled to capacity with Grandmother's clothes and treasures; unable to live alone, when Grandmother became widowed.

While the trunks and boxes were stacked in the rumble seat, my mother and grandmother alternately holding me, the three adults were wedged into the front seat. The trips were made in the original green Chevrolet coupe my father bought in 1927, for three years after I was born.

Not to be replaced until we moved to Philadelphia just one month before Pearl Harbor, served us throughout the Depression, or any of the amenities one expects today, radio, the black 1932 model without heater. A two-door car with a trunk and a back seat from which I could not escape, reo spotted a second-hand Chevrolet coach, before long. Reo, he consulted his dependable mechanic, but when it became unbearable, my father tolerated this arrangement for so long as it was merely uncomfortable and inconvenient.

A charming tree introduced to the area by Italian immigrants, undulating hills lined with Lombardy poplars, winding through low, pennsylvania, we headed toward Washington, proceeding from the South Hills area of the city. Pleasant Interstate jaunt it is today, the journey from Pittsburgh to West Virginia in the 1930s was nothing like the swift.

Until we were back on solid ground, a veritable rolling coffin, this turned the car into an instant hot box. Mother commanded us to roll up the windows, the moment we hit the dust. To come upon WPA work crews ripping up the concrete and erecting DETOUR signs, however, it was common. Most were paved throughout the first lap of our trip, although the main roads we traveled seldom progressed in straight lines.

Whether or not the car occupants appeared to be of a plant-and insect-smuggling nature, a procedure followed in both directions, every car was thoroughly searched for plants and food that might harbor insects. By Department of Agriculture agents who scrutinized all travelers with visible hostility, sometimes for as long as an hour if traffic was heavy, we were inevitably detained, as we approached the Pennsylvania-West Virginia border.

" West Virginia has rattlesnakes! Stay on the Pennsylvania side. "Be careful, his partner shouted in alarm, as he and a co-worker tramped through the high grass between the truck and the K station! Had something to do with telephone transmission) near the Mason-Dixon line, i gathered, my father inspected K stations (isolated buildings that, at one point during his AT&T career. There was rampant ignorance about the nature of what lay beyond the horizon, because most people did not enjoy the luxury of traveling beyond the borders of their own state. There was considerable fear in those days about wayward insects and creatures of other kinds.

" he laughed, "Snakes can't read maps. My father thought this was gloriously funny.

" he said, i can't help you, and if you don't watch your step, "Everyone knows that West Virginia is filled with rattlesnakes. His friend was not amused.

But this bit of logic escaped the gruff men intent on ferreting out the "varmints" from Grandmother's enormous stack of boxes. Department of Agriculture travel faster on the wing than by car over the treacherous roads leading to and from West Virginia. S. So did the insects that terrorized the U, just as rattlesnakes eschewed reading maps.

1913, and graduated first in his class from Wheeling High School on June 13, and French, german, greek, it was there that he studied Latin. But the city of Wheeling headed his list, he had many favorite locales, owing to the vagaries of a bishop who regularly moved his "holy men" like so many pawns, as a minister's son who had lived in many West Virginia towns. Precious memories filling his head, father's eyes glistened, each time we neared Wheeling on the first leg of the journey.

Unpainted dwellings directly beneath the belching mills stretching from Benwood and McMechen to Moundsville, it was even more depressing to gaze upon the unfortunate souls who made their homes in sagging, bad as it was to breathe the noxious odors emanating from the steel mills that lined the Ohio River. I found it hard to share Father's affection for the city of Wheeling because the route we drove cut through the worst part of town.

And the steely-eyed red-necks riding shotgun over them bespoke naked violence should one of the inmates so much as glance cross-eyed at a passing motorist, the prisoners were clothed in the black-and-white striped uniforms depicted by cartoonists. Another five were required to layer it with macadam. And gravel, rocks, at least five years passed before the single lane of red clay progressed to two lanes of dust. Improvements came slowly. The state prison at Moundsville provided prison gangs to labor over the twenty-mile portion of West Virginia State Route Two between Wheeling and the penitentiary, marys run. For the portion of my young life touched by the Pittsburgh-to-St. We were nearing the chain gangs. Mother always directed us to roll up the car windows and lock the doors, on the approach to Moundsville.

Our destination, but not until after World War II did the state undertake improvement of the side roads and the frequently impassable hill country, route 50 from Parkersburg to Grafton was also paved. Blacktop covered the entire length of the road from Tridelphia near Wheeling to Parkersburg, by the early 1940s.

And - best of all - playing with the most recent set of kittens, watching with wide eyes as Uncle Lynden nonchalantly tossed baby starlings to the hogs and cheerfully explained that he was facilitating the natural food chain (he also disliked starlings), riding my cousins' rusty bicycles back and forth on the lane leading to the main road, almost), walking to the end of the path where the Ohio River waters lapped the edge of the Reynolds land and tossing pebbles across to the opposite shore (well, examining the Indian mound for projectile points (arrowheads) that sometimes worked their way to its surface, waving at the engineers of the B&O trains that chugged past the base of the property, wading in the slimy pond stocked with mammoth goldfish, picking and biting into succulent red tomatoes right off the vine, gathering eggs, there I roamed free feeding the chickens in the hen house. For the farm was the most magical place I knew, i envied them all. Charlaine and Millard were the twins in the middle. Respectively, gene and Joe were the oldest and youngest. And my four cousins lived, uncle Lynden and Aunt Mildred Reynolds, marys where Grandmother Pritchard. We always stopped at the Reynolds farm just outside St, before laboring on to Auburn.

But I did not count on the kitten's inquisitiveness, i felt certain that my parents would not have the heart to return him to the farm once we were well on our way. I hid him in one of Grandmother's hat boxes, just before we piled back into the car to resume the drive to Auburn. An adorable gray kitten became the subject of my first undercover act, the spring of my fifth year. Mother did not share my enthusiasm. Precious balls of fur that I yearned to possess, there was always a new batch of kittens at the Reynolds farm.

Her blood-chilling scream propelled him out of the box and onto her lap. He prodded the nearest object: Grandmother's shoulder, tiny claws, with his sharp. I saw him a moment too late. His little head emerged from the box, marys. Some distance beyond St.

That Grandmother's back seat emoting nearly precipitated a traffic accident, or the last, this was not the first time. Barely skirting a deep ditch, we careened onto the road shoulder. He turned the wheel sharply, believing that she saw a car headed into ours and was in the act of praying for her own salvation. Father saw Grandmother beating her chest with her hands, through the rear-view mirror.

Delaying our trip to Auburn by several precious hours, back the kitten went to the farm. Determined women, he could not uphold his argument in favor of one kitten against two terrified, even though this sounded unlikely to Father. They relayed the dreadful tale of a close friend whose family cat sucked the breath out of their new baby by sitting on its chest, gasping for breath and patting their chests for emphasis. But Mother and Grandmother had their own agenda, my father proposed continuing with the kitty in tow, a cat lover of long standing. The source of the pandemonium became evident to him, as it rubbed against his neck. The frisky kitten leaped onto his shoulder, just as Father got the car under control.

The possibility that a vehicle would plunge into the ravine far below was equally likely in pleasant weather, from our vantage point. Aunt Virginia later explained that one hill en route was so treacherous during bad weather that the school bus driver insisted his riders dismount and walk along that segment of the road for fear he lose control. Then more dangers surfaced. Rutted track, father proceeded warily along a narrow. We ran into a detour and were forced to abandon the main road, on our way once again.

One materialized, inevitably. An alien in the eyes of local vigilantes who questioned the motives of drivers invading their territory, it developed, he was. My father soon became lost, unfamiliar with this route. Aunt Virginia wrote us warning that we could only approach the village via a circuitous southern route through Alum Bridge. Spring rains washed out much of the final unpaved miles leading to Auburn, in advance of one trip.

He peered into the back seat where the sight of Grandmother wedged resolutely between piles of her belongings did little to allay the man's suspicion that we were about to set loose a Pandora's box in the idyllic hills, approaching the driver's side. He pointed wordlessly to our out-of-state license and spewed a yellow stream of tobacco juice onto the ground, eyes narrowed, standing menacingly in the middle of the road. The gun-toting landowner emerged from the dust as we rounded a bend.

And inserted the names of several ministers of his acquaintance who had preached in that isolated corner of Ritchie County, he enumerated all the Methodist parsonages in which he had lived throughout the state, inspired. Since Methodism was to West Virginia in those days what Catholicism was to Rome, father played a hunch that the man was a Methodist, mother later confessed, just as she was about to lose hope. We prayed that Father could convince the stranger of our innocent mission, marked by heavy breathing, pensive moment, for a long.

And insisted on climbing onto the running board and guiding us back to the right track, shook my father's hand, he lowered his rifle, the moment the farmer heard a familiar name. That did the trick.