After a trip east and south (into West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and back through West By God) I got home to a couple hundred e-mails, including one from a lister her about searching for a cemetery in the back roads of the Mountain State. I know she meant no slur (I really mean that) but I have to add a note about my own experiences on those back roads. Thirty-some years ago, I took my new wife and baby son "back down home" to West Virginia, to show her where my daddy was from, to give her some idea of what she'd married into, though it was too late to back out, what with the little one in her lap and all. I had vague recollections of where my dad had taken me on a few trips before he'd died, and how to get there. But we made it, back to where he was born, where his father and mother and baby sister were buried on a hilltop where two dirt roads converged. There, too, was the home of my third grade teacher, and a few cousins. Why is it, you get to such a place, and though you were born and raised some hours and miles away, it "feels" like home? Could it be the people, the generations of experience mingled with the dust and mud and trees and fields? I showed my wife, "There's the house where my dad and I stayed the night when we visited, a cousin of some sort. Really nice folks! That was the 'switchboard room' there at the corner of the house, when they brought telephones into the area." Those cousins directed us to other friends and cousins, folks who were first cousins of my dad, and who would remember all the old folks and all the old stories. Uncle Arch lived just a few miles off, not more than fifteen minutes away, they said, and told us how to get there. Well, in the hills, if you don't know the area, no way it's fifteen minutes away, not the way I drive those mountain roads. We stopped at a gas station/grocery store on a mountain top, where the screen door slammed and kept the flies outside, where two good ol' boys were drinking long-necked Stroh's out front. "Arch Wiley? Hell, yes we know him! He was the mailman for thirty years! Not more than fifteen minutes down this here road. You take this here road about a mile (it was always "about a mile") and take the first right, and…) We kept doing that, taking the first right, and asking folks where Arch Wiley's house was. After an hour, we stopped at a house "up on stilts" in a creek valley and asked again for Arch Wiley's house. The folks (the whole family) who came out on the porch said it was just down the road. The "big white house just down the road." Right. We'd been doing that for an hour. But, sure enough, about a mile farther on, there was a modest, two-story white frame house, with morning glories and honeysuckle climbing up the porch bannisters, and the sweetest lady in the world who greeted us. We had found my dad's cousins. They told us it was a wonder that the folks down the road had told us the truth. Just the week before the sheriff had stopped by their house in pursuit of someone, that the folks in the house on stilts had told them that the folks the sheriff was after had just gone down the road, raising dust and going like a bat outta hell. Hadn't been anyone down that road all week except us. We had the most pleasant visit with my dad's cousins, so long and enjoyable that we forgot the time. They gave us supper and milk for our baby's bottle, and just before dark we had to leave, to find our way back to Wheeling and then back home. But we left with memories and names and locations of other cousins, and my wife's most striking memory of the trip was how wonderful the people - everyone - were to us. Thirty years, and many more trips later, and our memories and experiences remain much the same, only better. The landscape is one God took His good time making, and the people much the same. That's the only place on the earth I can imagine where we'd stand on a hill at sunset, and as we watched the colors changes from green to blazing oranges and reds, hear a lone bagpiper on a hill a mile off playing, for no one but himself and God, and the sounds of "Amazing Grace" and "Scotland the Brave" would float over on the breezes to us. Anyplace you want to get to in West Virginia will take some time, but if you take the time, it's worth it. And if you pull over and park your car and talk to the folks, you'll meet kinfolk, or people who know your kin, and you'll be better for it. At least, that's been my experience. Jim Wiley = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = James Wiley, AKA: [email protected]