In a message dated 12/19/2007 8:00:48 PM Eastern Standard Time, [email protected] writes: > > I need some help here. I am finally back working on my book, > "Matheny and Me" which presents our southern West Virginia home as > seen through the eyes of a young boy growing up in Matheny in the > thirties and forties. At present, I am trying to reconstruct the > community in my mind as it existed around 1940 (+ or -). I am > confident that I remember most of the people in "upper Matheny," but > I am not so sure about the residents of the area across the river > from the church downstream from the Frank Stewart place to about > where Stollie Parsons eventually lived. Stollie Parsons is still living! At least she was a year ago when my mother went to visit her. I grew up in Wyoming County in the 1940s (Red Jacket coal camp between Mullinsville and Turkey Creek). My aunt Hettie Hurley Atkins was a Baptist preacher, and we used to attend Stollie's church in Oceana on a regular basis. The Paitsels were friends of ours who attended church there, too, along with my aunt and uncle Charlie and Beulah Hurley O'Brien. When I was in 8th or 9th grade, Stollie and her family were going to northern Virginia where she was going to conduct a revival at the new church built by my aunt Hettie who had moved there in 1953; but in those days there were no interstates, and Stollie had no idea how to get there. So, I was piled in the car with Stollie, Earl, Betty and someone else to make the 13 hour drive (at that time) to Fairfax County, Virginia because I could show them the way. At that time, you had to drive through Charlottesville and every little town between. Guess no one had road maps, but I had been there. My payment was to be that we would stop at Natural Bridge, Virginia so I could see it. We had never stopped when my family visited my aunt, so this was to be a treat. It didn't happen. By the time the two weeks were up, everyone (except me, of course) was tired and wanted to get home. Gee, I had forgotten that until Stollie was mentioned. Carrol Hurley Ullrich **************************************See AOL's top rated recipes (http://food.aol.com/top-rated-recipes?NCID=aoltop00030000000004)