Here's #7: Polka-dot Road Trip Through the Mountains
Natasha and Jean on fiddle,
Stacie on guitar,
Camping gear, too much non-perishable food for our own good, and a polka dot car:
The makings for a road trip! We went through the Crooked Road for 6 days and five nights in a tent fending off raccoons with pepper spray and an axe. (Well, not really, but we had the means.) This road, “Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail”, located in the Southwestern corner of Virginia, brags in its brochure and website, thecrookedroad.org, various towns offering old-time and bluegrass music jams. The brochure never shed light on WHEN these jams happened but we managed to play our instruments in the campgrounds nightly…. sometimes welcomed by fellow campers when they turned their own music off to listen…but one time we were told to “turn it in.” Tsk, tsk. Those crazy Chicago girls and their wild country songs. There are several music festivals in this region that, sadly, never coincided with our haphazard itinerary.
Our first major “Crooked Road” attraction was the Ralph Stanley Museum in Clintwood, VA. At this museum, we got some “Virgina directions” to the Stanley Family Cemetery way out in the mountains in McClure, VA.
“You can go left, you can go right, but you’re gonna wanna go straight up the hill.” And up the hills we went, while enjoying such country music lyrics as “I’d like to check you for tics” and “There’s nothing as pure as the kindness of an atheist.” (Thank you to the band, Freakwater.) White-knuckled, sweaty, and nauseated from the dips and turns of mountain roads for over an hour, my spirits were at an all-time low. But the polka-dot sputtered its way to probably it’s all-time high (in elevation.) This part of the country does not have strict laws on burials on their own property–the run-off issue has been skirted thus far– so we stumbled upon quite a few small family cemeteries, psyching ourselves out for the real deal Stanley grave. “Oh, Death,” indeed.
(The wrong cemetery but worth a look-see.)
Sure enough, we took a wrong turn, not following our Virginia directions, and stumbled upon our long sought after grave–clearly, no longer in a state of “constant sorrow.”
We drove up one final hill and promptly retrieved the instruments out of the back seat. None of us knew how to play any Stanley Brothers stuff so we just sat at the Stanley Family benches and played, well, pretty much whatever. It was twangy and old-timey enough for the Stanleys, I’m sure.
We continued winding down the road (part of it the scenic Blue Ridge Parkway)…and took a few steps on the Appalachian Trail…
..we saw the Carter Family Fold briefly, the artsy hippie dippie town of Floyd with it’s famous weekly Country store jamborees (which we, of course, missed), and finally Ferrum, VA, home of Ferrum College and the Blue Ridge Institute, housing various exhibits on local folk traditions. Being the end of the Crooked Road, we thought we should play one more time by the Crooked Road sign atop the polka dot car:
Lucky for us, some Institute staff heard our playing and came out to the parking lot to take their own pictures of the Chicago girls with their polka dot car in the mountains. Here’s hoping we make next year’s brochure–or at least the local paper this week. So…after a free Ferrum College cafeteria lunch from the Institute’s director, and stimulating folk music conversation, we were invited to our first live jam of the week: children’s summer camp at the farm museum across the street. Not kidding.
Stacie and I jumped in on the barn dance while Natasha flaunted her fiddling “Soldier’s Joy” best (seated in the very center) with the band. Hundreds of miles later, we were back in Chicago like nothing ever happened.
