I know this has been silent for a while while the knitting side of the project has been cooking, but some news just came across the wire (Thank you, Tara) that I felt was important enough to share.
This past weekend, Rita Forrester, director of the Carter Fold in Hiltons, VA (see previous entry) had a tragic fire in her home. She lost everything, including her husband, Bob.
I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that our hearts go out to Miss Rita and her family, and they’re all in our prayers.
I’ve been debating how to start the Carter Fold entry. (Which is why it’s taken me a bit to get this up.)
See, the Carter Family, for those who may or may not know, is as close to Bluegrass Royalty as they come. If there was some kind of heritage music fiefdom, AP Carter would be a well-loved king, and he and Sara and Maybelle would have roots that extend much further than just their respective lifetimes. If you’ve listened to any of the music of Appalachia at all, you’ve listened to the Carter Family, either directly or by influence.
So I figured I’d split this entry into two and explain for you just exactly *why* the Carter Fold was such a huge event for me, and why, if I did nothing else, I was determined to hit the Carter Fold.
And that requires me to explain just a little bit about the life and times of A.P. Carter.
* * *
Someday, Sary, my name’s gonna mean something.
-A. P. Carter, pre-Carter Family days
Alvin Pleasant Delaney Carter (known as A. P. for short) was born in a remote area of Virginia that was then-called Poor Valley, in the low valleys of the Clinch Mountain range. His early story was relatively typical for a resident of the area. In 1915, he married Sara Dougherty, and they had three children — Janette, Gladys, and Joe.
It’s all very pedestrian, the facts up until then. Working man, young mother, three children in an area full of music and hardworking folk. The difference was that A. P. Carter had no intention of keeping the music to himself, and in 1927, he, Sara, and Sara’s cousin Maybelle formed the Carter Family.
The Carter Family, with A.P.’s gruff harmonies and Maybelle’s unique guitar style, catapulted the three into a kind of spotlight. They were widely heard on XERA, a legendary radio station that had to move its immense towers south of the border into Mexico because the signal was so strong that it would often blot out the local markets — and still did, sometimes as far away as Atlanta or Chicago. The Carters had an hourly show on XERA, singing and playing a style of regional folk/country music that appealed to the people of the time. It was hardworking, godfearing, and felt to many as if the Carter Family was just that — family.
The Carters were notoriously private during the Carter Family era. (Probably smart, given the near-insatiable urge this culture seems to have with celebrity.) Despite being well-known and well-heard, they were very closed-mouthed about their personal lives. Which is probably why, in 1943, when the band split up, fans could scarcely believe that Sara had left A.P. for another man — A.P.’s cousin, no less — almost ten years before. (The book, Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone, goes into a bit of detail about the private lives of the Carters during that time, and if you’re interested in the family at all, I’d highly recommend it as a great read. It handles this part of Carter’s life with a great deal of respect, which I appreciate.)
All scandal aside, if there’s one thing that sets A. P. apart from his contemporaries, it’s that he was, at the seeming heart, an ethnomusicographer, before there even was such a thing. He travelled around Poor Valley and other remote bits of the area (and the country, really), collecting local traditional music and lyrics. It was, ostensibly, to rearrange and record it all for the Carter Family.
Some have criticized Carter for this part of his career. They say that it’s unethical to claim these songs as his own, when generations of folks have sung variations of the same song. I don’t buy it, though — it takes a special kind of person to realize that your traditions are valuable, and A. P. Carter recognized that, and in the recording of these songs (including Keep on the Sunny Side of Life, one of the band’s signature tunes), they’re now preserved forever.
While I was in Hiltons, VA, at the Carter Family Fold’s tour of A.P.’s birthplace, a man in the tour mentioned a story he’d heard about this collection of folklife:
Apparently, A.P. took with him a gentleman who was an amazing by-ear guitar player on his later song-finding trips. (Either he didn’t mention the name of the player, or I’ve forgotten to write it down.) His only instruction to this man was to “remember the music”, because A.P. “could get the words”. With this teamwork, A.P. saved dozens — possibly hundreds — of songs from disappearing as the music culture evolved over the last century.
Moreover, it’s impossible to stress The Carter Family’s importance without mentioning their legacy:
I know, right?
Both individual family units that were involved with the band had downlines that continued musical history. If anyone ever questions that music is sometimes just in someone’s blood, I’ll point them to this family tree.
Mother Maybelle, as she was called later in her career, toured with her three daughters for a while under the Carter Family name, but A.P. had left the band by then, taking over a general store back home. The new Family gained a bit of fame from touring and the newfangled television (kidding, kidding…), and later, June Carter went on to marry Johnny Cash, bringing in even more musical blood to the line. A.P. rejoined the group for a few years in the fifties, with Sara and the children, but it was done again by 1958 or so.
Janette Carter, in an effort to preserve and honor the family from which she came, established the Carter Fold in Hiltons, VA, where it exists to this day. It’s a beautiful venue these days, and I’ll talk more about it in the coming days when I (finally) write up the story of my visit. After Janette’s death, her daughter Rita (Forrester) took over the operations of it, keeping in the spirit of her mother’s vision. Every Saturday night, rain or shine, there’s music at the Fold.
A.P. Carter died in 1960. The world had changed a bit, and with his absence from the industry for so long, he was largely unappreciated at the time. A decade later, he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and in 2001, he was added to the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor.
We never appreciate the good ones until it’s too late, it seems.
But the music he documented and created goes on forever.
This is an audio entry with an interview with…well, okay, the title of the post kind of gives away the surprise, doesn’t it?
A few notes of note:
The Dixie Bee-Liners’ website is at http://dixiebeeliners.com.
You can get their albums here:
(Ripe, 2008. The one with the Crooked Road song on it that inspired this particular project.)
and, to keep Buddy out of Reform School:
(2006 debut on Pinecastle Records with the other version of Yellow Haired Girl.)
Rachel Renee Johnson’s family band is, oddly enough, The Johnson Family Band. (With special guests Kevin Love and Sammy Shelor. Hooboy. Sammy Shelor.) The little snippets between segments and at the beginning and end are all snippets recorded at the outdoor concert in Bristol on July 21st. Since Rachel couldn’t be with us for the interview, I thought this was the next best thing. (I didn’t get permission. Please don’t sue me. It’s tribute when it’s love. Ignore the duffel bag.)
And finally, the Fontaine Fund has a website where you can donate to this very worthy cause. And if you’re in or around Nashville, come on over to the concert itself, because insurance companies totally suck.
And with that, the interview. Please note that it was recorded directly into the iPhone, which, apparently, has a microphone sent by heaven, but picks up things like vacuum noise and overhead music just as well as voices. The intro was recorded sans-mic in a bare hotel room, so there’s a bit of echo that I couldn’t get out, too. I figured y’all aren’t here to hear my yappy face anyway.
Disclaimers complete! Big thank yous to Brandi and Buddy (and Foghorn) for sitting with me and for being every bit as cool in real-life as I thought you’d be. Y’all are on for the Moonlight on my next trip through. 
(p.s. If that player doesn’t work for you, as it is sometimes wont to do, just click the “download” link or the little “audio mp3″ button, and it’ll take you directly to the file so you can listen via browser. It’s not as pretty, but it works in a pinch.)
It’s taking me a little longer to edit the pictures from the weekend than I thought it would, and since I have to turn around today and head back to Virginia to interview some of the Dixie Bee-Liners (Rachel knits!), I don’t want to rush through the storytelling just to get the rest of Saturday’s events up for y’all.
So, in its stead, I scanned in some of the sketches from Saturday. I’ll be back tomorrow with the rest of the stories, and a bit of audio from tonight’s interview.
Are you washed in the blood,
in the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb?
Are your garments spotless,
Are they white as snow?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Red Allen, “The Blood of the Lamb”, 1964
(based on the 1878 hymn of redemption by Rev. Elisha A. Hoffman)
* * *
Back in April, when the Mountain Sole Project first occurred to me, I had this vague idea of how I wanted it all to go. Drive, stopping whenever something came up, pick up some new music, see some sights, hit a show at the Rex and the Country Store, learn some history, and most of all, see the Carter Family Fold. (The Carters are legends, period. There was no way I’d miss the Fold on my way.)
I knew that this area is said to be beautiful, and that the Crooked Road takes you across an incredible cross-section of mountain-region landscapes. And being of a mountain sort, this appealed to me, too.
What I didn’t expect was just how beautiful it all is, and how the subtle changes go by at forty-five miles per hour, slowly drifting from meadow to peak to ragged rock and soaring trees. The road is breathtaking. Stretches of wildly curving roads lined with purple mountain lupine and cream-colored queen anne’s lace, cutting between stands of trees so high they black out all but the barest of reflected sun.
This is landscape that can shape a man. It soars above you and humbles you. It’s impossible to feel too self-important when the very earth around you reminds you just exactly how small you are. There is no question as to God’s presence; only the strength of your faith.
Being here, being surrounded by Clinch Mountain and the blue rounded peaks beyond, the music begins to make more sense, somehow. The way it reflects and has become a community affair, connecting people beyond traditional demographic groups — we’re all in this together, because there’s something greater than we are.
* * *
I managed to get lost in Abingdon.
Understand, this is a pretty big feat. You could fit quite a few Abingdons in Seattle, and I can navigate around that just fine. In fact, I’m kind of proud of the way I can find my way around most of the time. Until I got the phone, I said I had an inner GPS. Point me in a direction, tell me what it’s near, and let me go.
Not so in Abingdon, apparently.
After getting completely lost looking for a local art gallery that specializes in regional artists, and getting stuck in the traffic that was congregating for a theatrical production of the Wizard of Oz, I gave up. Pulled over and jacked unsecured internet from someone (sorry, owners of the dball network near Main St. in Abingdon), and looked for comfort yarn.
If you’re not a knitter, you probably won’t get it, but there are times in every knitter’s stressed-out existence, where the only thing that’s going to fix what ails ye is a skein of great merino wool. This was one of those days. I’d just wasted an hour looking for something when I wasn’t really sure how far it was to get to Bristol (where there were a few museums and a mural I wanted to see), or how far beyond that was Hiltons and the Carter Fold. (And, no matter what, I was going to get to the Fold for the show tonight, regardless. It was the mecca of my trip, really, and getting lost in Abingdon or not, I was going to get there.)
The shop came up on the GPS search, and was nearby, so I hightailed it to A Likely Yarn shop posthaste for some wooltherapy.
(I ganked that photo from the website. All rights are theirs.)
It’s a great little place. Lots of local hand-dyed yarns (which, of course, I had to pick up for the knitting side of the project — how could I not?) and a pretty big selection of commercial stuff, to boot.
Now, some of you (I’d wager most of you, in fact) know that in my Other Life, I’m Miss Violet, of Lime & Violet knitting podcast. That there are a fair number of people across the country and the globe who knit who know who I am by voice, if not in person. (Around forty thousand who listen, give or take a few thouand any given week, and probably more who know who I am and just think I’m obnoxious. Which, really, I am. It’s okay.) Yarn shops for relaxation can be a dicey proposition if I open my mouth, because (and I mean this in a perfectly boggling kind of way versus an ego-puffed way), I’m recognized by my voice. This trip, however, hasn’t been about Lime & Violet. It’s not intended to be a rock-star tour or a book signing, it’s just me, Elli, in a truck with Iowa plates, learning a little about Appalachia and hearing some good music on the way. It’s for inspiration-gathering, not appearances and perfect hair.
So when one of the girls teaching a class looked at me and asked what my name was…well…I thought very briefly about lying.
I know. Sorry, Cassie.
We chatted for a few minutes, and I let her get back to her class and went to check out before I ended up spending even more money on yarn. (It was really hard NOT to — the selection of hand-dyed stuff was pretty amazing, and some Blue Ridge Yarns and Miss Babs kept calling to me in that sirensong kind of way where you’re powerless to resist. Just sayin’.)
When I got to the counter, Karen was ringing up my stuff and we were chatting about the Mountain Sole project and how I was pretty chuffed to find yarns dyed right around here. She called over Janet, the owner of the shop, to talk to me about the Project, and Janet gave me a TON of information about local artists and the regional network they’re putting together. (I’ll link it when I get a chance to go through all my notes.)
Karen asked me for my email address to add me to the mailing list. Violet, I said, like the flower, at limenviolet-dot-com.
Her eyes got as big as platters. I briefly wondered if I owed her money.
“Are you….one of them?” she said.
I nodded, said that yes, I was Violet.
And she screamed. Literally. She yelled for Cassie, whose disembodied voice came from the other room, “I KNOW, KAREN. I WAS TRYING NOT TO GET ALL FANGIRL, THANKYOUVERYMUCH.”
Heh. So much for incognito. We took pictures and chatted briefly and I know that if I ever get back this way?
I’ve got friends.
I have so many stories about tonight. But it’s one a.m., and I’m exhausted beyond the point of words.
Tonight ended at The Carter Family Fold. (seen above)
Tomorrow, I’ll find the words. For now, I’m going to sleep, and hold close the new friends I’ve made, the old ones who make my life rich, and the memories of tonight that will last as long as I do.
Thank you.
They call it “the stoplight” up in Floyd County.
The reason they call it The Stoplight in Floyd County is because that…? That stoplight you see right there?
It’s the only one in the entire county.
You can be several towns away, I found, and ask directions to anywhere in the town of Floyd, and they will give you directions based on that light. Go south from the stoplight about two blocks, take a left, and you’re there.
Oddly enough, people don’t miss them a bit.
* * *
My plans have been abbreviated a bit. (There’s a stray dog named Wilford that might play into that abbreviation, but the legend of the Stray Magnet in my forehead has been largely understated.) Because I only have one weekend instead of two, today was all about exploring Floyd for most of the day, hit the first few acts at the Country Store (south from the light by about a block), and then zipping off to Galax for the night to see the live radio broadcast at the Rex Theater.
There’s too much to do in these two towns for just one day. The people here are in no hurry — probably from the lack of stoplights to mark the time — and it’s rubbing off on me today.
I don’t mind a bit.
* * *
Floyd, VA is in Floyd County, which is largely punctuated by the Blue Ridge Parkway’s presence, running through the blue-and-green hills on the backbone of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It’s fantastically beautiful, to the point where, at times, the vistas cease to feel real. It looks like a painting, or an imaginary CGI landscape, or something you dreamed once when you were much younger and much more optimistic. Rocky Knob, for instance, is literally at the crest of the mountains, and from its overlooks you can see nearly a full-circle view as if you’re standing on the very top of the world.
About ten miles outside of the town of Floyd (and also south from the stoplight on highway 8), the Mabry Mill is a historic site on the Blue Ridge Parkway, maintained by the US Department of the Interior (or so the signs say). The signs also say that it’s the most photographed site on the entire parkway, and I can see why:
What the signs don’t tell you, at first, is that it’s also a living historical park, with all kinds of exhibits about colonial life in Appalachia — with a working blacksmith shop, a residence of the time (complete with spinning wheels and looms — no kidding…), and the mill itself functions as a mill, so you can buy cornmeal and buckwheat flour and such, made right there on the premises.
I might have gone a little nuts in the gift shop. I barely resisted buying a ton of alpaca yarn from a local farm (alpaca, sadly, sometimes makes me sneeze a little, but it was so soft that I nearly overlooked that whole allergy thing.), but gave in and bought every Foxfire book they had. (If you haven’t seen these, they’re books with little how-tos on just about every topic pertaining to mountain/self-sufficient living. They’ve been around for a long time; I remember getting them from the library when I was a kid. Volumes 1-4 were out then, I believe, and now they’re up past #12. Swoonworthy, for sure.)
The ladies behind the counter at the Mill were chatting happily when I thunked down the eight zillion pounds of Foxfire books. The cashier, Jenn, checked to see if they were all the same price, and surprisingly, they weren’t. The two thinner volumes (which weren’t even the newest ones), were a dollar more for no discernible reason.
Faye, the other lady, checked to see if the prices were right. They were.
Jenn raised an eyebrow. “They’re the thin ones. Why would they be more?”
“Because,” Faye told us conspiratorially, “those are the good ones.”
* * *
Every Friday night, the destination of choice for Crooked Road travellers and Floyd locals is the Floyd Country Store’s Friday Jamboree. Several old-time and mountain music bands play in the store, and local musicians gather outside for an impromptu (but regular — it’s a paradox.) jam session to entertain the overflow.
And overflow, it does. I bought my ticket at four p.m., with the show starting at six-thirty, and the seats were almost all taken. I ended up standing in the back (after buying what could only be called a metric ton of CDs and some black raspberry ice cream that they hand-dip from the bakery side of the store.) and talking to groups of people, most of whom were locals, but some were from as far away as Spain.
Yes, Spain. The country.
The stage is small and wooden. Traditional instruments are scattered around it on display — the mandolin on the wall, an upright bass gleaming in the stagelights, a dobro on a stand edged in chrome and ornately carved. Four microphones, modern and black, look almost out of place.
The Lord is my shepherd,
The Lord walks beside me
as I walk upon my way.
Bluegrass Inspirations open with banjo-accompanied gospel tunes as old as the hills surrounding the town. An old man with a guitar, grey-haired and passionate, with an amazing drawl-filled voice opens with a prayer. Everyone says Amen.
He tells me
Keep your eyes upon Me
and you will not stray…
People mill by me in tap shoes, ready to dance. They jingle and ring, announcing their intentions.
The man next to me leans in to tell me that most nights, by the second band, you can’t walk through the store because everyone is dancing. He says it spills out into the street and that, on a good night, there are nearly four hundred dancers, and as many outside as in.
He asks me to dance. I tell him I have the rhythm of a trout out of water. He tells me it won’t matter by the third song.
I believe him.
* * *
The road from Floyd to Galax winds through the hills. You pay attention to speed limits here. As one person put it, there are places along the road where, if you were to careen off the side, you’d die of starvation before you’d hit the ground. The mountains aren’t for the faint of heart.
Shadows are stretching long and wide across the road, but there’s time to linger before the sun goes down. Every hill you come over has a view more spectacular than the last. It sounds like lip service, but it’s true — if you think you’d get tired seeing hill after hill, or that your eyes would eventually get jaded to it all…well, the road won’t let that happen.
It literally took my breath away a few times. I had to remind myself to breathe.
* * *
Every Friday night for the past decade, listeners to WBRF (98.1 FM, for those localish) have been invited to come listen to the live broadcast of Blue Ridge Backroads at the Rex Theater in Galax. It’s a 400-seat theater just down the road from the Galax Smokehouse (which is, apparently, amazing, but sadly, was in the middle of a street fair that made for a long wait for seats, so I had to skip it for now.), with a painted mountain backdrop on its small stage. There’s a place up front for dancers, and when I got there (late), TrueGrass was already playing and a dozen or so dancers were stomping and playing the spoons.
The music of the mountains moves people. Even though the dancers at the front aren’t many in number, no one in the theater is still. Feet tap, heads bob, some stand and dance at their seats in a hybridized clogging two-step style.
Everyone is humming along, whether or not they know the tune.
I am not immune.
Two young girls are running the aisles. Nobody bats a lash. Here, we are all family, dancing to a common tune.
Down the road
Down the road,
Got a pretty little girl waiting
down the road.
* * *
Tomorrow’s a long day of driving. I’m going to try to make it to Hiltons, to be at the Carter Family Fold for the big Saturday night show, stay the night, and see Cumberland Gap before hitting the rest of the things I want to see on the way back on Sunday.
Just make a right at The Stoplight and head straight on ’til the coalfields…
* * *
(two small administrative p.s.es.)
1. My scanner’s back in North Carolina, since it weighs more than a baby elephant. Drawings will be posted when I get there. I’m making them, but have no way to really show you yet. Hang tight.
2. Three sock patterns have come from today — Moonshiners, for Franklin County’s reputation as the moonshine capitol of the country during Prohibition, which they’re still proud of to this day. One unnamed pattern that mimics the splitwood fences of the Blue Ridge. And one lacy toe-up pattern named after the New River, which, ironically, is one of the oldest rivers in the country, and the only one that flows from south to north. Another’s in design, named for Rocky Knob. Pictures when the prototypes are done.
I’m a big fan of planning. I’m one of those annoyingly organized people about it, too — lists and checklists and maps and itineraries with estimated times for things. In the fifties, I’d have been that Road Trip Mom that allows fourteen-point-six minutes at the Grand Canyon, which is just enough time to take the required family photograph before herding the family back in the station wagon.
It’s a sickness. I know.
The way that this Inner Planner is indulged, as of late, has become increasingly easy to deal with, thanks to technology. For those of you who don’t know me well: last year, I picked up an iPhone, and there’s an app for everything organizational. When I decided to take this trip along the Crooked Road, then, I set to putting EVERYTHING in those apps. Like, everything. All my maps are saved, my itinerary and the list of contacts in each stop, wishlists of what I wanted to see, directions to jam sessions and festivals…even my camera. It’s all in my little phone. I’m in love with Steve Jobs.
I tell you all this for a reason, by the way. It might seem odd to start out by explaining my own obsessive-compulsiveness, but trust me. There’s a reason.
* * *
I set out for the Road yesterday. After delays and weather and unexpected work, I finally got into the truck, grabbed the phone and my wallet, and pulled up the maps. I figured that even though I’ve got a huge meeting today that I can’t miss, I could at least make it to the Blue Ridge Institute in Ferrum, VA to get an idea of how long all this would take per day on a realistic basis.
The Crooked Road is, quite honestly, a crooked little road, winding through mountains and across Virginia’s mountain valleys. Speed limits lie here — 55 mph isn’t really 55 mph when you’re having to slow down every two hundred feet to avoid careening off the side of a mountain. (I come from Seattle. I know from mountain driving.)
Technically, the farthest reaches of the Crooked Road proper begin in the little town of Rocky Mount, about an hour and a half from Greensboro, NC (where I’m at), so a day trip to Ferrum was just what the doctor ordered.
An hour later, I’m winding through tree-lined roads so green that they made my heart hurt. Just look at this:
Two lanes. Trees. Rocky outcroppings and no one else around. I pulled over in Ferrum, and sent off a little Twitter message about how unspeakably beautiful everything was already. The radio played the Carter Family while I sketched out a weathered-wood barn on the south side of town and sang along.
Just outside the town of Ferrum is Ferrum College, and on the campus is the Blue Ridge Institute (drawn, above). The Blue Ridge Institute and Museum has two parts to it — the music side, which is largely comprised of exhibits about the music of Appalachia, and the farm side, which is across the road in a working colonial-era farm, tended by people in period costume. (I was chuffed to find a spinner there, being of a fiber sort myself.)
The music side is indoors, in a nondescript, campus-style building. In the parking lot was one of the Crooked Road kiosks (they’re all along the road, and have audio and textual explanations of the part of the road you’re on), and tuning into 97.7 on the FM dial gives you local musicians and the musical history of Franklin County, which is literally chock-full of famous fiddlers and banjoists.
Inside, sadly, the bluegrass exhibit is gone for the summer. In its place, however, is a pink-and-black painted exhibition all about Rockabilly and its origins in Virginia. Tons of artifacts and a display set up to look like a recording studio from the area sit side-by-side with a recreation of an old diner (and mannequins! in! costume!….I so love that.). Many of the stars from the original rockabilly days came through VA, if not actually growing up there.
The BRI store still had all kinds of literature and recordings of the early roots music, and a ton of Crooked Road t-shirts and such, and the lady behind the counter was excited to find out I was from Iowa. She called in an authorization on my card (apologizing the whole time for being so old-fashioned, which I thought was kind of funny, being a museum and all), and tucked in some extra leaflets about local jam sessions.
I tried to record an audio post from the BRI, since the music was playing in the background and the curator was answering all my questions like a trooper (I’m kind of obnoxious with the questions, I think.), but inside the building, I’d noticed there wasn’t any cell service, which I just kind of wrote off as being a weak signal indoors.
This, my friends, is foreshadowing. Just sayin’.
I ended up on Highway 40 going the wrong way when I left the BRI. I’d decided to go to Floyd to try and get to the Floyd Country Store, since I had a little extra time, but my map wasn’t loading like it should have. Cicely (my phone…yes, I named it.) said she had a connection, but there was one tiny little bar on the connection strength-o-meter, and after a few minutes of waiting for it to load, I went the wrong way. I hadn’t eaten anything before leaving (Floyd Country Store has handmade ice cream, and omg…ice cream rules, so I was waiting…), and when I hit Rocky Mount (again), I saw the Best Sign Ever:
And with that kind of recommendation, who could resist? FRANKLIN COUNTY’S BEST HOT DOGS. No-brainer, there.
I parked — and to the credit of the place, the parking lot was really full. I counted that as a good sign.
Not such a good sign — no visa/mc signs on the door. And I’m a plastic girl. I rarely carry cash when I’m travelling these days, since I can lose things while staring straight at them. Losing a pen? Not a big deal. Losing all your travelling cash? Not as good.
Y’know those commercials where a couple friends are in a crowded restaurant and one of them says the name of his/her insurance broker or banker or somesuch, and ALL CONVERSATION STOPS?
I walked in the door of Bowling’s. The screen creaked and slammed behind me. Two old guys sat at the counter, chainsmoking and talking to the waitress, a sturdy-looking woman with two-toned hair in a severe bun, who was leaning with her elbows on the table while she talked. Severeal couples were in the booths, ranging from groups of teenagers to a guy and his family that looked remarkably like my eighth-grade science teacher.
Now, I don’t think I look all that weird or anything. At least, I don’t *here*. (I did not, in other words, drive to Virginia in full-on goth regalia, or have my hair dreadded to kingdom come.) Sure, I’m all in black, but I’m always all in black, and it’s just a button-up shirt and jeans and heels. Not all that out of the ordinary. I have no lobsters growing out of the third eye on my forehead.
But seriously? Conversation STOPPED. Had I theme music, I’d have cued it here.
“Can I…help you?” the waitress asked, not moving from her hunched perch against the counter.
“Do you happen to take plastic?”
To her credit, any urge she had to laugh and/or roll her eyes was quelled. “Nope.”
“Is there an ATM anywhere around here?”
She gave in. Rolled her eyes. Still without moving the rest of her body, she jerked her head to the left. “Ayup. About five miles down the road thatway…”, she paused, jerking her head to the right. “And about five miles down the road thataway.”
I mumbled a thank you, and heard conversation restart as I shut the screen door more gently on the way out.
Hooboy.
* * *
A bit rattled from the experience (and wondering if I had any unfortunate moles that I’d never noticed before), I noticed that the phone was connecting just fine from the top of the hill in Rocky Mount. I pulled up the maps to get from Ferrum to Floyd, and was pleased to find that the iPhone map cut almost forty-five minutes off the other map. There’s a section of the Crooked Road that dips south and jaggedly turns back north, presumably to go around some kind of something, but adds a ton of time onto the relatively short trip from one to the other.
Ah, technology.
What the phone failed to tell me, however, is that I had to leave the relative comfort of the two-lane road for something that was…uh…kinda two lanes. There were beautiful views along Runnet Bag Road, like this:
Meandring streams, sun-dappled asphalt. Gorgeous. I praised technology again.
Until the two lanes turned into one lane.
And further, the one lane turned sharply right into…one lane of GRAVEL. Sparse gravel, even. Gravel that hadn’t seen human tires in a good long time.
I tried finding a place to turn around, or at least to find how long I still had to go, but the phone was telling me there was No Service available, and my little blue HERE YOU ARE dot had been long-gone. I backed up for a quarter mile (in reverse — the road was too narrow to turn around and there were sharp drop-offs on both sides of the “road”.) to the last spot with asphalt, and turned around.
So now, here I was, in the middle of nowhere with no maps, no lists, no books with me (they were all on the phone), no food or water, and NO CLUE where I was. Not. A. Clue. Briefly, I saw the headlines: Iowa Woman Found Mummified In Truck On Runnet Bag, Victim of Exposure. Truck was out of gas, ten miles from civilization.
Luckily, I found (through divine intervention, I’m sure) my way back to the original highway. I figured that if I just kept going on the original highway, I’d eventually find something that sounded familiar, or possibly run into an area with phone service so I could get my bearings. And there WAS a Crooked Road sign not far ahead, so I was definitely on the right way.
It was the only Crooked Road sign, however. And when I veered back north in an attempt to accidentally bumble into Floyd, apparently, I turned too soon. There was a very long stretch of road with no turn-offs (around two hours’ worth of road, actually), before I got a few seconds of phone service here:
You can’t make this stuff up, people. I got phone service at Shortts Knob. (*snort*. I may look like an adult, but I’m really a fifteen-year-old boy, apparently.)
Turns out that I’d turned onto the Blue Ridge Parkway — another road I’d always wanted to drive down at some point, just not today. And not for seventy miles out of my way, today.
*facepalm*
With vistas like this one, however:
….I was okay with the diversion from the path.
Eventually, I found my way to Floyd (to find the Country Store closed on Mondays…DOH.), and decided (probably wisely) to come back to Greensboro for the night. I’d toyed with the idea of staying there once I was up on the Road, but after the utter failure of my Inner Planner and the humbling of my arrogant reliance on technology, it seemed like a little tabula rasa was in order. (Plus, my meeting today has to take place, and while I could do that with just my phone, I need to know the phone’ll *work* when it’s time. Go figure.)
I’m resuming the trip on Wednesday, with the Floyd Country Store, and heading west with FINE PAPER MAPS. It does mean that the audio bits might be more rare — I need my phone for them — but I’ll upload when I can.
And I’m totally designing some Runnet Bag socks. It’s gratitude for not dying there alone.
Oops.
I so hate it when people post test posts.
But this is kind of a test post. A test of the emergency blogcasting system, so to speak. Were this a real blog post, the tone you just heard would have been followed by useful and/or entertaining content.
I’m also testing this:
Which is audio content (also a test, sorry), to see if AudioBoo (which is awesome, by the way, if you have an iPhone) will pick up the feed.
I’m just testin’ stuff all over the place.
My original start date of today has been pushed back to Thursday whilst the content undergoes…well…creation. As some of you know, code/markup makes my eyes spontaneously spurt blood, so this is going a bit slower than I thought it would. No problem. The project’s got no shelf date thusfar.
Testing a picture here:
This is one of the upcoming patterns, inspired by the Crooked Road and its denizens. I’ll be posting some links in the sidebar to Crooked Road/bluegrass resources, and pictures of the patterns-in-progress for those of you wishing to get a jump on your ordering glee.
There will also be a page over there in the sidebar with a list of all the patterns and how the project’s working, a page with links to all the audio content, video content (if I can make the software go), and interviews, etc. It’s a one-stop shop, that sidebar.
The compilation book, filled with resources, stories, and knitting patterns, will be out by the end of August. Anushka Press is publishing the paper version, and the digital edition will be right here on the site. Stay tuned.
I think that’s about all the actual *news* I have. Thursday, the adventure begins!
