Friday night we went to West Virginia to stay with my in-laws at their cabin near Romney. My Dad watched Winston ( thanks Dad!) and I took my Avon work with me, dropping off most deliveries in a mad dash on Friday night.

On Saturday we took a scenic rail trip on the Eagle Express. It goes from Romney along the side of a river ( which I never did catch the name of) through some hills into parts of Hampshire County that are not accesable except by canoe, rail, or foot. Consequently, there is a population of bald eagles that lives along the river which is actually clean enough for them to eat out of. Imagine that. All that tree hugger legislation that got passed during the Carter administration has actually done some good. Now, this part of West Virginia which badly needs all the help it can get economically speaking has a whole tourist train running up to see these birds and other sites along the river.

My father-in-law grew up in that area, which is just over the hill from the town where my dad grew up. ( My mother-in-law also lived nearby in her youth). As a result, The Hub and I feel with them a sort of push-me-pull-you kind of ambivilence about our "Hick" roots.

Western Maryland and the panhandle of West Virginia have not, in anybody's recent memory, ever been hot beds of economic growth. The people there are not fond of being told what they ought to do. West Virginia was loyal to the confederacy during the Civil War not because they were pro-slavery: nobody in that area was rich enough to own a slave and many of the farmers were barely keeping themselves alive. But they wanted things to stay the way they had always been, and to hang on to what they had and what they knew.

When our father's grew up in that area, in the '40's and early '50's, it was, in many ways, idyllic. It's a beautiful, beautiful place full of clear running streams, deep woods, sunlit meadows. My father-in-law had it best of all of them, since his dad had a good paying job, he had a house in town, and was an only child. The economic preasures of life in that area did not press upon him and his family the way they did on my father's people - though I must stop here and tip my hat to Pop-Pop from whom I seem to have gotten the "never stop working" gene. That man turned his hand to multiple projects while serving as the treasurer in his church and helping his brothers and half brothers until he was hit by alzhiemers disease. Building houses, plowing fields, working all days all shifts all hours at a factory, Christmas trees, bee keeping, helping take care of HIS father who died when he was 94. A man who worked that hard couldn't help but meet with some success, regardless of the fact that he didn't seem to have much "luck" and he brought his family up and along very well.

But by the time these boys were teenagers it was obvious that the land of their home was in steep economic decline. Hard work wasn't going to be enough to keep them moving steady into the mainstream of middle class-ness. Education was needed, but that education lead to the better opportunities....in places without endless cornfields, cool water, and trustworthy neighbors who might or might not have all their teeth.

Consequently, my dad wound up teaching school and living in the County which was a "quasi-rural" place even when I was a kid. The Hub's dad became an engineer and went all over the world while working for NASA. He and The Hub built the cabin together on a mountain near Romney- and I mean they, the two of them, did every bloomin' thing in this house which a family could comfortably live in year round.

The Hub and I would go up in that area to visit relatives....I'd see the stringy haired pregnant girls pushing grocery carts, the kids hanging out in front of houses that hadn't seen a coat of paint in decades....we'd drive past once neat little houses piled high with junk, cars up on blocks, pathetic little roadside stands where women in not-terribly-clean housedresses were selling tea towels with crocheted handles on them for $2.00 each. Rural poverty is NOT picturesque. We both, seperately thought the same thing "I'm glad I don't live here / I could have lived here." We both think of ourselves as both being "from" that area and "not from around there". It's like a hillbilly head trip. The Hub will laugh at almost any joke, but he doesn't find hillbilly jokes funny.

Besides the heart rendering natural beauty of the place, and in spite of how worrisome parts of it look now, we can't help but see it through our fathers' eyes as they tell their stories. The story of the lunch room guy in Cumberland who used to stretch out his arm, line it with hot dogs on buns and, with the other hand apply the toppings the customers asked for. ( "before there were all these health department regulations. You can bet he wasn't wearin' a hair net. But nobody ever got sick") The story of the mean old man "capturing" my aunt when they tricked him on Halloween. My dad was going to leave her there. The guy she eventually married had to organize her rescue. Stories of ballgames and long walks and accepting rides from strangers, baling hay and running all over the countryside with a dash of real adventure.

"I jumped off that bridge" My father-in-law remarked as we crossed the trestle over the river. We looked over the edge into the shallow water.

"That doesn't look terribly safe." I remarked.

"Safer than it woulda been- the train was comin'. Couldn't make it back in time. 'Course, the water was deeper then. Floods have changed things a lot through here."

"You were walking on the tracks and the train was coming?"

"What were you doing that for?" his wife asked.

"Everybody did it! It was how to get out to the fishing club, the only way to get out there."

"Didn't anybody check the train schedule first?" she asked, laughing.

"Don't know as there was much of a schedule." he said, a little irritably.

"I take it this was after you learned how to swim?" she said.

"Yeah. That was luck." he allowed. "me and my buddy looked at each other and said, 'it's time to jump' so we did."

"What were you thinking? Did your whole life flash before your eyes? How did you feel when you jumped off of that bridge?" My mother-in-law asked. Her eyes were merry. She teases him all the time, trying to get him to make some dramatic statement.

"No my life didn't flash before my eyes. And I felt relieved. I felt happy I didn't get hit by a train. It upset my mother, though, to hear about it." he said, thoughtfully, as if that were somewhat surprising to him.

"See that. It was smart of your father to jump otherwise you kids wouldn't be here." she smiled.

The Hub and his sister looked at their father, speechless.

And the train rolled on.