Fortieth & Plum

Man, that's way out in the country.

Back in the Dark Ages when I was a kid of nine or ten, we lived out on Savage Branch (now called Merritts Creek, by virtue of a mistake by the State Road Commission.) Our house was a board and batten of four rooms sitting on the hillside above the sand and mud road that wound up the hollow for about a mile and a half or two miles. Heat was by two coal heating stoves and a small wood burning cookstove in the kitchen. There was no insulation, and the bathroom was a privy on the hillside out the back door.

We got electricity in about 1947 or 1948, telephone ( a twenty-five or so party line) in 1955, a drilled well that never provided much water in 1954 (prior to that and after that we used a dug well about eighty feet deep that was located out back on the path to the backhouse,) and a television in 1951 or 1952 (we were the first family up the hollow to get one.)

We did not have an automobile until my brother graduated from high school in 1956 and got a job in town. After he bought his car, our father decided to go ahead and get one too. He bought a six year old Ford sedan, eight cylinder, automatic--and learned again how to drive. He had driven when he was a young man, but had not done so for over twenty-five years.

Up until then, we rode shank's mare whenever we wanted to go somewhere. Or got a ride with a neighbor, or thumbed a ride down on the highway, or rode the Logan bus (Consolidated Bus Lines, or Trailways Bus Lines, or a Greyhound - for about a month.) The bus was really pretty cheap - for an adult, about forty cents one way to Huntington, for a kid up to twelve about a quarter. Fortunately, the busses ran about every hour and a half during the day and then there were three night runs - about 9 pm, midnight, and 3 am. But that was when it was Consolidated. When it moved to Trailways, it was about every two hours during the day and two runs at night - about 9 pm and midnight. At the end when it was a Greyhound route, we had two inbound daytime runs and two outbound daytime runs and no night service.

Yeah. We lived out in the country.

Now we live seven miles closer to town, and still consider ourselves to live in the country. But it aint like back then. We still live eight miles from town center (Courthouse), but the Interstate is only four miles one way and three miles the other way. There are four separate entrance ramps we can, and do, use when we are going on trips, or from one end of town to the other, or to Ohio or Kentucky.

But, when we go to see one of our kids, we say we are going out in the country, just as we did when we visited my inlaws before they died. They all live or lived out near Salt Rock, one about two miles from where I grew up and the other just up on Tyler Creek on the other side of Salt Rock.

And the really funny thing is that when we were young and living at Savage Branch, we thought trips to Hickory Ridge and Heath Creek were 'out in the country.' And if we were going up Madison Creek or over on Bowen Creek or up Raccoon Creek, that was really going out in the country.

It's all a matter of your current perspective, I reckon. I tell my friends that I live just south of Melissa, and no one knows where I live. I tell them that I live on Route 10 just south of the intersection of 10 and Alt 10, and they can pinpoint my home with real precision. I have even directed people in to my house from as far away as Princeton here in WV, and they never had a problem finding the place, and they had only been in Cabell County once before in their life.

So maybe being way out in the country isn't way out in the country anymore.

But I still like that old song about "...way out in the country, at Fortieth and Plum."

And for those of you who still don't understand, that is, forty miles from town and plum back in the sticks.