My Old Kentucky Home

So I decided to take my grandma down to Vanceburg, Kentucky this week because she hadn’t been there in over a year.  My grandma and her whole family right up thru my dad, aunt and uncle were all born in Vanceburg and were raised there until moving to Morris so my dad and uncle could have better medical care to treat their hemophilia.

We have a cabin there that grandma and my aunt go to every year…usually several times a year.  So grandma was going through withdrawals and I had the Rollin fundraiser dance I was going to on Friday so I decided to extend the trip and take her to the cabin first.

We left Wednesday morning…early…and drove the 8 hours to Vanceburg.  We got gas for $2.39 at the first exit in Ohio and that was the cheapest we saw it the entire trip down.  We stopped at a Ponderosa for lunch in Maysville, Kentucky in an effort for me to get a country fried steak that I’ve been craving for a good while now.  No country fried steak and the food wasn’t very good anyway.  Booooooooo to the Maysville, Kentucky Ponderosa.  We get into Vanceburg and go to the cabin first.  We weren’t going to stay at the cabin because we didn’t want to have to get the water and phone turned back on and open up everything for just a couple of nights and then have to rewinterize everything when we left.  We just wanted to see how bad of shape it was in after no one being there for a year.

We couldn’t even pull into the yard.  When you don’t mow the lawn in over a year, it gets bad.  Real bad.  Children of the Corn bad:

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Here is a view of just the cabin without the supersized scary looking guy standing in front of it blocking the view:

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We stopped by the neighbors and worked out a deal for them to get the lawn mowed since they had a bushhog to get it done with instead of just a regular mower.

It was then on to make a couple of visits and then in to the lone motel in all of Vanceburg…The Stone Haven Inn.  It was actually better than I thought it was going to be.  Cable television.  I was able to watch Hulk Hogan’s Celebrity Championship Wrestling.  Very entertaining.  I was shocked.  It was very loud since it was right off the highway and then someone checked in at 4 am and kept hitting the lock button on their key gimmick and setting the horn off several times. 

Thursday was quite the busy day.  We went all over the place.  First we went up into Stone Branch Holler to where my dad and grandpa was born.  We didn’t go up into the holler because evidently the law is looking for the guy that lives on the property we have to go thru in order to get up to our farm and grandma didn’t trust going up in there and not getting shot at by the cops or the people they were looking for.  Time for Redneck Dictionary…Holler is the Kentucky folks way of saying "Hollow" in the Old English/Middle English days meaning:  The noun sense of "lowland, valley, basin."  So basically it means wilderness, forest, woods that are blocked off from everywhere else because they are surrounded by mountains and hills.  We then went into the Twin Branch Holler where my grandma was born and raised.  It is the next holler over from Stone Branch so that is how she met my grandpa.  Here is a picture of grandma outside of the house she grew up in (her nephew lives there now…the house has been remodeled since my grandma lived there 65 years ago):

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On our way through the hills and up to grandma’s sister’s house, we saw 7 deer and 16 wild turkeys.  It was sad driving around and seeing how "dry as a chip" all the "cricks" (you might know them better as creeks) were that I used to swim in when I was a kid.  I couldn’t even get my toes wet in them anymore.  We got to her sister’s house and I got to hear some more good Kentucky sayings.

"1 shit and 2 farts" instead of "I don’t give a shit"…"stupidstitious" instead of superstitious and the one I heard most often "go as a crow flies" when giving directions even though every road is nothing but curves…the crow must be drunk.  I was also unable to see if any of the crows that I did see flying were Sting.

Anyway, I got to drive a 4 wheeler for the first time in my life.  We went up the mountain across from the house.  I was a huge risk taker and I got the 4 wheeler up to 16 MPH at one point before deciding to SLOW DOWN.  I was averaging a quick 2 MPH on the way down the mountain as the rocks were bouncing us all over the place and I didn’t want to go over the dropoff of the mountain on the one side of the road.  That was danger personified and I think it was good warmup for my impending date of swimming with sharks in Hawaii in a couple of weeks. 

I went on a cattle feeding and also drove on a wagon road…a road built back in the days when wagons were the vehicles of choice.  That means it was meant for one wagon to be traveling.  Now it is a two lane road…wide enough for one car to comfortably navigate the twists and turns up and down the mountain.  I closed my eyes around every curve because not so much as a motorcycle would have been added to pass me without scraping paint.  Since I’m here typing this…you can figure out that I survived the wagon road but it cut about 40 minutes off the trip to Louisville by going that way.

I got into Louisville and went and picked up Maniwa & Jess.  We got into our costumes and headed over to the Rollin Fundraiser.  There weren’t many people there and the ones that were there we didn’t know except for Mike Miller.  Luckily The Mayor showed up with his wife and step son later on and we had someone at our table to talk to.  His stepson was the life of the party.  8 year old kid breakdancing on the floor, flashing gang signs and putting the moves on every lady in attendance.  Great stuff.

If you’ve read any of the recent blogs…you know that I am Nacho Libre this Halloween season.  Maniwa was the Sweet & Sour Macho Man and Jess was Sensational Sherri.  Here we are as a tag team managed by Jess in a promo picture courtesy of Mike Miller:

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We then decided that as founding members of the Tracy Smothers Mafia that it would only be natural and fitting for us to turn on Sensational Jess because that’s what Tracy would do:

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The highlight of the trip though was getting to see Mitch and Rollin.  I went over to Rollin and visited for a couple of hours before heading back to Vanceburg.  He is home but still has a lot of fighting left to do.  We watched some television and chatted and just had a good time.  I think Rollin was happy to see us.  I know I was happy to see him.  Stay strong brother.  We love you and hopefully I’ll be able to get back down there again before too much longer and we can do it again.

I got back to the Vanceburg and grandma was ready to go home but I wasn’t ready to drive 8 hours after just driving 3 the day before and 3 earlier that day after having drove the 8 hours down.

We got back last night.

Overall a good trip.  I was hoping to see Bull but that didn’t work out.  I was hoping to see James Christopher but he was a cranky dude after getting his allergy shots and Patti didn’t think it would be a good idea for us to come over and see him.  But he’s moving up here soon so I’ll be seeing him soon.

Hope you enjoyed the redneck dictionary lessons and the pictures.

Remember…if you want to help Rollin and have the ability to do so, you can send donations by going to www.paypal.com and sending to rottenwife@aol.com


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