Hardened Arteries USA

Just got back from visiting relatives in Jonesville, Virginia (motto: If you can fry it, you can eat it!). Boy, are my guts tired! The little woman and myself decided kind of last minute to head south to see my relatives on my father's side this past weekend. The weekend was kind of a perfect storm for artiosclorosis. We had my Uncle Tom's 86th birthday, Sandy's and my anniversary, Father's Day and Friday the 13th, not necessarily in that order. Jonesville is a small town tucked away in the southwestern tip of the great Commonwealth of Virginia in country as beautiful as it gets. It's a damn good thing, because there is very little else to do there but eat, look at the scenery and buy land.

We set out for Jonesville early Thursday morning and stopped somewhere in West Virginia to have a couple of burgers and french fries at Wendy's. This was the healthiest meal we had until the following Tuesday. The weekend for us essentially boiled down to the cholesterolic equivalent of staying home and sucking lard from a 50 gallon drum. But then again we would have missed the opportunity of visiting with some slightly eccentric relatives and it wouldn't have tasted nearly as good.

We decided to take the scenic route rather than fight the traffic on I 71 and 75 so we moseyed through towns with names out of a Faulkner novel. Pikeville, Big Stone Gap, Stickleyville, Pound and Wise all came and went under the humming tires of our little Civic. Taking this route is essentially the same as riding "The Beast" at King's Island, only MORE frightening. You climb straight up the face of several Appalachian mountains and then you plummet like a stone down the other side, and to make things interesting, your friendly, lunatic highway engineers gleefully threw about 800 "S" curves on the downhill slope so that you feel as though you are being tested for space travel and being pushed and tugged by more G force than Buzz Aldrin ever dreamed of! Throw in the odd deer or varmint venturing onto the roadway and well let's just put it this way. The old saying "There are no atheists in foxholes" can also include any vehicle traveling at breakneck speed down the side of a Kentucky mountain, twisting and curving until suddenly..."Oh look dear, someone put in a stop light! How #$%# thoughtful of them!" I kid you not. You can be traveling 75 miles an hour on a supposed freeway and BANG! There it is, a traffic light specifically programmed to make sure the vehicle traveling the fastest catches the red. My compliments to the brake makers at Honda!

The scenery was incredible and despite my best efforts to keep my eyes on the road, I couldn't resist an occaisional glance at the vast, beautiful expanse that lay before us and wonder "How is it the government hasn't figured out a way to totally screw up this beautiful landscape yet?" I'm sure it is not for lack of effort, I have faith in our leaders. We snaked our way through the mountains and foothills until at last we were there. Jonesville. A moniker obviously thought up by one of her more creative founding fathers. My Uncle Tom, who lives on the land that had been owned by my grandparents, was doing what he always does, what with all the cultural activities available in southwest Virginia, sitting in an easy chair on his front porch (now enclosed, the 21st century hits Jonesville) and waving to passing locals. He is now 86 years old and after having spent roughly 85 of those years working on granddad's farm, I guess he's entitled to take it easy these days. His days of retirement now consist of walking to the newish golf course about a mile up the "golf course road" and tending a small garden in which he raises corn, tomatoes, lettuce and several other obnoxious veggies that I can't remember. I use the term "raises" loosely as the actual soil composition in this area is approximately 1% actual dirt, 20% weeds and 99% layered rock whose only use is that it makes a dandy headstone. I know that adds up to more than 100% but, you get the idea.

When we got out of the Civic to greet my uncle, the heat hit us like a slap in the face. One of the topographical "advantages of this part of Virginia is that it lies in the middle of what is called the Cumberland Gap, and as I said previously, the countryside is magnificent. However, being in the "gap" essentially means the sun's ability to bake every living thing in sight is at its peak. It seems that the area is kind of like a huge bowl in an even larger microvwave oven. And, because any cool summer breezes that might have been headed to the area is cut off by the mountains on either side of the gap by about 10 minutes after dawn you could be forgiven for thinking you were in Death Valley. And of course, this year summer made its annual onslaught a little early to coincide with our arrival. How nice!

So, during daylight hours very little outdoor activity so the only thing left for anyone to do (at least at our age) is engage in activities in air conditioned places which in Jonesville meant eating. The following is a list of our culinary exploits:

Day One - Dinner at KFC - Buffet - All the deep fried tofurkey you can eat!

Day Two - This was Friday the 13th and also Uncle Tom's 86th birthday. This meant something special! Lunch at a place in Pennington Gap named Ruby's - deep fried fish, deep fried chicken fingers and deep fried Caeser salad for the health conscious. Dinner? We ate in at my Aunt Betty's house and cooked hamburgers and Nathan's hot dogs (with chili, of course) on the grill (Hey Junior, put another angioplasty on the barbie, mate)!

Day Three - Our 33rd anniversary (I think) so of course we had to pig out. We decided to drive to a town called Tazewell, Tennessee for lunch at the "Dew Drop Inn" and so my Aunt Faye, our host for the weekend, could visit a store called Hammer's which is essentially a Dollar Store only tackier. My aunt loves these places and so we browsed and then went up to a Lake Norris (also in Tennessee) to walk off our lunch of burgers and fries (which were excellent and I would highly recommend to anyone visiting Tazewell or just looking for the fast track to major heart surgery).

For dinner we drove to Middlesboro, Kentucky a major attraction for the local folk and went to a Chinese, all the MSG you can eat, buffet. I don't know what the hell all I ate, but again it was excellent. Evening exercise consisted of strolling around the mall and looking at all the extras from the movie "Deliverance."

Day Four - Deciding it was pointless to worry about cholesterol and fat now, we greeted the day with my Aunt Betty's homemade breakfast of... sausage gravy, George Jones sausage, scrambled eggs and low fat, low carb country biscuits. Just kidding about the biscuits, the only thing we ate on this trip that was low fat or low carb was a stick of peppermint gum, and I had my doubts about that! For dinner we had barbecued chicken, some potato salad and water melon. And because my wife saw it on Oprah, a doctor, who has since had his license revoked said everyone should preface their meals with a slice of whole wheat bread dipped in olive oil. Yeah, sure, that'll be a big help.

Day Five - Departure, we decided to take Uncle Tom to breakfast at his favorite breakfast spot, Hardee's for their sumptuous steak (chicken fried) on a biscuit. Now that's good eatin'! After we finished we drove Tom home after a stop at the only place on the face of the earth that sells a flour coating mix in case Sandy and I survived to have more fried food at home. The mix is called Runyan's and it is produced nowhere else that I know of, except Jonesville. It is to die for. I'd bread my Snicker's bars with it! Part of Uncle Tom's land consists of the family cemetary and he uses it as a landmark for out of towners by telling them that we need to turn at "the place where the dead people live." If you knew Uncle Tom this would make perfect sense.

Lest you believe Sandy and I did nothing but eat in Virginia you would be wrong. Barely. We did of course sit around and talk about the family and the bigger issues involving the world, gas prices, the war and the relative merits of the various area garage sales. To be fair we did exercise some each day. We hiked a nature trail that is part of an Indian War settlement park as the first hikers of the day (I decided to try and get some infra red photographs of the countryside and wanted early morning light) and I can tell you that being first we of course were confronted with the after effects of what must have been a spider convention. Evidently, during the night a favorite arachnid pastime is making webs and stretching them across the paths of hiking trails to enjoy what must be the hysterical (for the spiders) of some moron stumbling along clawing mysteriously at the air in front of him for some unknown reason. But the spider's know the reason. The had spent the previous night engaged in a contest of "let's see how many billions of webs we can build by daylight!" Ha Ha, who would have known those creepy, ugly and disgusting creatures could have devised such a devilish prank. So, with the walk, the flailing wildly in a vain attempt to clear the path of webs and the constant wiping of webs from everywhere on my body, I had quite a workout. Sandy, who normally takes a walk like a maniac, had sensibly and much to her mirthful satisfaction enjoyed walking behind me for once. I would have asked her to walk ahead for awhile but of course, with her being well over four feet tall, I would have still ended up with several mouthfuls of webbing. I think I've seen my last Spiderman flick!

Another workout consisted of a trek up the side of small mountain across the road from my Aunt Betty's to get a different view of the landscape. I think the mountain is named Everest or something like that. When coupled with humidity of around 3,000% and temps in the 90's you can imagine what great fun the family had. The excuse for making this hike, was ostensibly to take a look at a piece of property that my Aunt Faye was thinking of buying, which is her favorite pastime next to buying anything that isn't nailed down at any available dollar store. She owns several acres of land in different places scattered throughout Lee County, Virginia, for no apparent reason. I must say, that the hike was worth it, not only in terms of the tonnage loss from the workout, but for the unbelievable view of the Cumberland Gap that we beaten over the head with, when we reached the top. OK, halfway to the top. OK, OK, maybe a quarter of the way to the top. Sheeesh. Pick, pick pick. I've posted a picture of the view at the top of this post but it absolutely does not do it justice.

If weren't for the fact that in summer you might as well live in a furnace, that in a matter of days your arterial system would look like an ad for the Portland Cement Company and that the nearest medical facility is in Minneapolis, I think I might like living there.

Well, I better get going, I want to beat Sandy to that unopened can of Crisco in kitchen.

Love

Dad