Harmonic Highways

By Michael Abraham

IN 2004 THE VIRGINIA STATE LEGISLATURE issued a proclamation declaring a series of roads throughout the southwestern part of the state to be the Virginia Heritage Music Trail, to showcase the traditional Appalachian music whose roots permeated the culture. They nicknamed it The Crooked Road.
The music had been there since the arrival of the first European and African immigrants, but the initiative gave it a geographic focus. The Crooked Road has since become one of the nation’s most successful tourism initiatives, with visitors from around the world.
It took no legislative action to draw motorcyclists to The Crooked Road; motorcyclists love curves.
In Harmonic Highways, motorcycle enthusiast Michael Abraham takes us on a rollicking, exuberant journey with Mae, his classic 1981 Honda CBX, through the spiritual heart and soul of Appalachia, in search of musicians, luthiers, promoters, artists, athletes, coal miners, and playwrights. His journey, told with passion, poignancy, and humor, will delight every adventurer, whether on two wheels, four wheels, or a living room recliner.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pocahontas Press
• Release date: May 17, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465799289

Michael Abraham

I am an author and businessman in Blacksburg, Virginia. I have eight books in print (four fiction and four non-fiction), all about the region where I live.

Book preview

Harmonic Highways

Motorcycling Virginia’s Crooked Road

Michael Abraham

Copyright © 2011 by Michael Abraham

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Book design by the author

Cover design and art by Thong Le

ISBN 0-926487-58-2

Also by Michael Abraham

The Spine of the Virginias

Journeys along the border of Virginia and West Virginia

Union, WV

A novel of loss, healing, and redemption in contemporary Appalachia

The author can be reached by email at:

For updates and ordering information on the author’s books, excerpts, and sample chapters, please visit his website at:

http://bikemike.squarespace.com/

For other books published by Pocahontas Press:

http://www.pocahontaspress.com/

To Jane and Whitney Abraham,

the two most important people in my life...

And to the musicians, artists, and craftspeople of southwestern Virginia. By their everyday acts they exhibit exemplary talent, hospitality, and bounteousness. They personify that only with great music and art, can there be great civilizations.

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Acknowledgements

East

1 Franklin County

2 Floyd County

3 Patrick County

Central

4 Carroll County

5 City of Galax

6 Grayson County

7 Washington County

8 City of Bristol

West

9 Scott County

10 Wise County

11 Dickenson County

Homeward

The Crooked Road Major Venues

The Crooked Road Affiliated Partners

Preface

WHEN THE VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE put into law a designated Heritage Music Trail and nicknamed it The Crooked Road, its purpose was to build tourism by showcasing the rich heritage of traditional Appalachian music in Southwest Virginia. The music had always been there, from the earliest history of European-American and African-American settlements. Their goal was to give it a geographic focus.

Because motorcyclists love curves, giving it the name, The Crooked Road, made it irresistible. Writer Peter Egan wrote in Cycle World Magazine in April, 2006 in an article entitled, Ride a Crooked Road, If this road were a drug, I thought to myself, it would be illegal.¹

Mr. Egan, a Wisconsinite, rode his motorcycle from home and in short order had to turn around and return. Being a native and resident of Southwest Virginia, I had the luxury of not being in a hurry. I could travel The Crooked Road leisurely and take full advantage of its charms. In mid-summer, 2010, I decided to do just that.

This is the story of my journey from the eastern terminus in Rocky Mount to the western end in Breaks Interstate Park.

But first, I have a confession and a caveat.

I confess that while I did travel The Crooked Road in a continuous journey and this book is written as if I did, in fact I made several additional partial journeys. I quickly realized I couldn’t meet the people, explore the venues, and attend the events on my rapidly growing list in one fell swoop. Therefore, many communities I explored more than once, some several times. Please forgive this venial sin.

My caveat is this: as a reference book to the shops, music venues, restaurants, hotels, and parks, this book is insufficient. Joe Wilson, a co-founder of The Crooked Road, wrote A Guide to the Crooked Road ² which does an excellent job with that. This book presents a sampling of musicians and venues, and thus is not comprehensive as a guidebook. Rather it is a sensory adventure through a rich geographic and cultural region.

Oh, there’s one other thing. This book contains the thoughts of dozens of people I met along the way. While I assume what they told me is the truth, I have not verified anything factually. Reader discretion is advised.

I hope you enjoy taking this journey with me as much as I did.

Introduction

IRREFUTABLY AND UNWAVERINGLY, I love motorcycles, and from my first memories always have. They have an unparalleled ability, as inanimate objects, of turning a bad day good, of allowing riders to see the world in ways unseen by others, and inspiring an enthusiasm for adult life that can only be explained by the experience itself. Putting a motorcycle through its paces produces thrills that cannot be matched any other way. Nowhere is this more evident than on crooked roads. It seems arrogant to say and for that I apologize, but motorcyclists see the world in a different, more expansive way than non-riders.

I’ll be the first to admit, however, that motorcycles are fickle mistresses.

To many, motorcycles are death machines. Having an M imprinted on your driver’s license by the good folks at DMV is akin to having it state potential organ donor. Even amongst motorcyclists, there is a begrudging acknowledgement of an inevitable fate: motorcyclists come in two varieties, those who have fallen off and those who are going to fall off. Motorcycles have an inherent instability; they cannot move down the road without you. If you remove the driver and hold the throttle on a car in a fixed position, the car will go in a straight line indefinitely until it runs into something or runs out of gas. If you remove the rider and hold the throttle on a motorcycle in a fixed position, the motorcycle will go mere feet before crashing. Yet motorcycle riders find that staying upright is as natural and intuitive as walking across a room.

During recent years, I began to see my home area as one of the finest on the planet for riding a bike. I began to see the region of my birth in a new light, and better appreciate its indigenous cultural and geographic assets.

Partially, I had to learn this through the eyes of those who wished they lived here. I stayed with my brother years earlier when he lived in Chicago. On a cold winter day, he and I visited a motorcycle dealership where exotic bikes were sold. When a salesman learned my home was Southwest Virginia, his eyes lit up.

The riding is great there! he exclaimed.

Yes, I agreed sheepishly.

I don’t think you get it. I live in Chicago. We have a six-month riding season. After that, it’s too cold. I have to drive an hour to get away from traffic, 2 hours to find a curve, and 4 hours to find scenery.

Ah, I ride year-round. The seasons are generally mild and the transition seasons are long. Traffic is light most places and most country roads are lightly patrolled. My driveway has a curve, and scenery is everywhere.

Following that conversation, my appreciation for the roads in my greater neighborhood heightened.

Meanwhile, I have always been aware of how the passion and fervor I have about motorcycles was matched in the minds of many of my neighbors for traditional Appalachian music. Yet this music has been a mere background to my personal history. My father has no musical talent and my mother took only infrequent jabs at the living room piano. I played horns in the high school band, poorly and fruitlessly. I knew the difference between a treble clef and a bass clef, but could barely tell the difference between a violin and a viola. I can scarcely carry a tune and the only instrument I can play is the Jews harp. In my community, however, traditional music was always in the background.

Roanoke television stations such as WDBJ had many shows over the years featuring local musicians. Television host Irving Sharp’s ongoing endorsements made him known as Mr. Dr. Pepper as he hawked soft drinks while purveying Appalachian Music. He was one of many personalities who brought indigenous music over the television and radio airwaves.

Then I spoke with a musician at a bluegrass concert who was from Indiana. He said, I’ve never been to a place where the music was as widespread as in Southwest Virginia.

Music was being played somewhere in the region almost every day, and certainly in multiple places during the weekends. I always enjoyed the homegrown music of southwest Virginia, but I enjoyed many other types of music as well. I grew up with classic rock and with folk melodies of the 1960s and 1970s. I love New Age music and attend symphony orchestras and string quartet concerts whenever I can.

The Crooked Road was charted in 2004 by the General Assembly of Virginia as Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail: The Crooked Road to link several existing music and cultural venues, including The Blue Ridge Folklife Museum in Ferrum, the Floyd Country Store in Floyd, the Rex Theater in Galax, The Carter Fold near Hiltons, and the Ralph Stanley Museum in Clintwood (several others have been added to the lists since), and to acknowledge that region as the birthplace of traditional American music and recognize its astonishing depth and variety. The Crooked Road was not a single highway but a series of highways, more or less tying a string of asphalt through one of America’s richest musical heritage regions.

So what could be a better match than motorcycles and music? I would ride the Crooked Road from one end to the other, meet the musicians, promoters, instrument builders and enthusiasts, and give them a voice in their appreciation. I would also seek the writers, poets, playwrights, authors, businesspeople, and athletes. I wanted to know a place as well as a place can be known through the eyes of the people to whom the place is home.

My plan was to ride the Crooked Road – to linger awhile and hear the music hidden amongst the valleys, hollows, and ridges of these mountains. The point was to take the slow road, the crooked road, and do it from the openness of a motorcycle.

The day I loaded my luggage, hit the starter button and left my driveway in Blacksburg, the country was in a foul mood. Tea partiers were staging anger rallies everywhere. Crude oil was spewing from an open well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Global warming was in full swing with a summer poised to become the hottest on record. Gasoline was seemingly abundant and relatively moderately priced. It seemed like an opportune time to hit The Crooked Road.

Acknowledgements

I AM DEEPLY INDEBTED to many people who supported my effort. The people along The Crooked Road were unfailingly gracious, open, polite and helpful, making my job much easier. I appreciate the honesty, openness, intelligence, and candor I was shown.

Additionally, my editors worked countless hours (at recompense so meager that I’m embarrassed to admit it) to help me make my book readable, relevant, and grammatically correct.

Jane Abraham, Blacksburg, Virginia

Mary Ann Johnson, Blacksburg, Virginia

Charles Brown, Chicago, Illinois

Sally Shupe, Newport, Virginia

I give thanks to the following for special help, encouragement, information, and support:

Michael Gunther, Blacksburg, Virginia

Jack Hinshelwood, Shawsville, Virginia

Susan Stevens Huckle, Blacksburg, Virginia

Randy Marchany, Blacksburg, Virginia

Jonathan Romeo, Abingdon, Virginia

1

Franklin County

SURELY THIS IS A LAME CLICHÉ, but the first mile is always the hardest. Motorcycle touring has its pitfalls, to put it mildly. There’s limited space on a bike. Every item must be scrutinized for worth and purpose. Motorcyclists are exposed to weather, and weather in the mid-Appalachians, even in mid-summer, can change quickly. Summer storms can arise and turn a hot, sunny day into a raging torrent of rain. Most important, though, is the mental side, as death by motorcycle is a persistent background threat.

Although I ride a motorcycle for perhaps 250 days on an average year, typically my stomach is a knot of apprehension for the first few miles on longer, multi-day trips like this. Did I pack adequately? Did I take the appropriate weather gear? Did I ensure the motorcycle was in good condition and was properly prepared for the journey? Would I be able to fix something if it broke?

Being roughly 325 miles long, the entirety of The Crooked Road is not an especially long ride by motorcycle touring standards. It could all be done in a day, albeit a long one, if the situation demanded. But that would miss the point entirely.

Traditional Appalachian music, categorized into old-time, bluegrass, and mountain gospel, is one of America’s indigenous genres. It is widely assumed to be centered in and around this area of the little triangle or arrowhead of Southwestern Virginia.

There are interstate and interstate-quality highways in Southwest Virginia as there are throughout America. But only the first four miles of my journey were on one of them, which bypasses my hometown of Christiansburg. Christiansburg is one of the many towns and cities lying along one of Virginia’s and the nation’s most important transportation corridors. Originally an Indian path, this corridor hosted the Valley Pike, then US Highway 11, and now Interstate 81. The Crooked Road would rejoin this corridor for a short distance later in my trip from Abingdon to Bristol. Under a partly cloudy sky, I crossed US-11 and I-81 headed south towards Rocky Mount, The Crooked Road’s Eastern Gateway.

VIRGINIA HAS FIVE MAJOR GEOGRAPHIC AREAS: the Coastal Plain (or Tidewater), the Piedmont, the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Valley and Ridge, and the Appalachian Plateau regions. The Crooked Road takes in the latter four, whose borderlines run parallel from northeast to southwest. The Crooked Road begins in the Piedmont (linguistically, land at the base of the mountains) in Rocky Mount, then ascends the Blue Ridge to Floyd, then descends to Woolwine and Stuart, then re-ascends to Meadows of Dan, then stays in the Valley and Ridge region for over 200 miles to Big Stone Gap where it enters and remains in the Appalachian Plateau. Most of Virginia’s mountains, including the Blue Ridge, are folded mountains, generally comprised of limestones, formed from the continental crash between the American and African tectonic plates. The Allegheny Plateau was formed from sediments of the folded mountains and have since been dissected by various watercourses. The rock composition is typically sandstone, interspersed with significant coal seams.

While most valleys are defined by the river that formed them, the Valley of Virginia is drained by several. In the north, tributaries of the Potomac flow northward, then eastward to the Chesapeake. In the middle, the James and Roanoke Rivers and their tributaries also flow eastward. In Southwest Virginia – the land of The Crooked Road – waters radiate away like the spokes of a wheel. In Franklin and Patrick Counties, waters flow eastward as tributaries of the Roanoke River, towards North Carolina’s Albemarle Sound. In Floyd, Carroll, and Grayson Counties, waters flow northward on the New River to the Ohio and eventually the Gulf of Mexico. Precipitation falling into Washington, Scott, and the southern part of Wise Counties drains westward on the Holston and Clinch Rivers, tributaries of the Tennessee. And in the rest of Wise County and Dickenson, waters flow northwestward on the Big Sandy, which, like the New, joins the Ohio.

Leaving Christiansburg heading due south on SR-615, I encountered patches of fog in the low-lying areas. My face-shield filled with droplets of moisture, which I wiped periodically with my gloved left hand. The fog hampered visibility and lowered my speed, and lent a mysterious, Gothic pall over the pervasively green landscape. The mid-Appalachians are typically choked with foliage. Plants spring to life in April, May, and June with a frantic, fecund zest, covering lawns, fields, and forests in emerald blankets. In landscapes never before touched by a plow or bulldozer, there was no bare ground to be seen.

I crossed Pilot Mountain, a molehill by local standards, but for the first time had a chance to test my motorcycle’s handling abilities.

My Honda CBX is a classic machine made in 1981. It has an air-cooled six-cylinder, transversely mounted engine. This means the pistons are all on a common crankshaft, pulsing up and down parallel to one another, across the frame from left to right. It has a five-speed transmission and I generally keep the engine spinning between 4000 and 6000-rpm. With the engine being wide and striking, I named my CBX Mae, after Mae West, a late actress and entertainer known for her buxom stature and bawdy expressions (e.g., An ounce of performance is worth pounds of promises.)

Traffic is a relative term around here. On SR-615 this morning, there were occasional oncoming cars and a farm truck or two, but none impeded my progress.

To soothe my anxiety jitters, I hummed Dueling Banjos, the theme to Deliverance in my head. It worked at a certain level, as the various notes went in and out of harmony with the revving of the engine. However, I was vexed by my inadequacies as a musical being, both in skill and knowledge. I can barely play a radio – and yet here I was on Mae, chasing themes, lyrics, and tunes of traditional Appalachian music. Having grown up in the area, the strains of fiddles, banjos, and guitars were as pervasive as the continuous backdrop of tree-clad mountains. I’ve heard it said that a fish doesn’t know it lives in water, a parable about the pervasiveness of native cultures. In urban areas and along major highways across America, there is a numbing generic-ness that has almost blinded us; we’ve lost the sense of how individualistic cultures used to be.

At the intersection with US-221, I turned east away from Floyd. I encountered my first sign directing travelers on the route of The Crooked Road. The Commonwealth uses a cheery graphic with a stick-figure banjo in the center, framed with bright colors of yellow, green, and orange. My path had me driving Shooting Creek Road over the Blue Ridge to Ferrum, then to Rocky Mount. That’s where I would officially begin, and then retrace my path back to Floyd.

Reaching the Blue Ridge Parkway I stopped at a stop-sign for a gaggle of Harley Davidson riders to thunder by. Their bikes and Mae are ostensibly of the same order: two-wheeled conveyance, i.e., motorcycle. The Harleys are of the family: cruiser. Genus: Harley. Species; Road King. Mae is of the family: sport-tourer. Genus: Honda. Species: CBX. Paradoxically, our experience is much the same yet different.

Regardless of the taxonomical order, motorcycles are not simply cars with fewer wheels. Cars are designed to convey passengers from one place to another with a minimal interaction with the world of weather, road conditions, insect collisions, and other aspects of transportation that may be deemed as intrusive. Auto-motoring is about the destination, about getting there. Motorcycles are about the journey, the messy, dangerous, cold, hot, wet, smelly, euphoric, unpredictable journey. Motorcycling is about the trip.

I crossed the Parkway. The air had a humid, heavy feel, not hot but not cold, fragrant with substance and import. The fog was heavy. The visibility was limited, although strangely better when surrounded by trees than when out in the open, as the trees lent a frame to the otherwise borderless, ethereal white sky. The shapes of black cows emerged from the mist in fields flanking the road. On pasture hillsides, level paths marked the movement of the cows like cartographer-drawn contour lines.

The road transitioned from smooth pavement to chip-and-seal, a surface that hides traction-robbing gravel. A temporary sign reads, Loose Gravel, and I wondered if there is any other type. I reduced my speed to what seemed like a walking pace, but felt my wheels drift loosely and unnervingly atop the pebbles.

I entered a forest and realized that I was losing elevation continuously and rapidly. Almost imperceptibly I had crossed the Blue Ridge and was descending into the Piedmont. The forests completely overlapped the road and I had the feeling I was in a green, misty tunnel. My sphere of sense became confined to my bike’s dashboard, low windshield, and the enveloping trees. This is Shooting Creek Road and the images that colorful name conjures danced in my head. Interestingly, it was not named for any nefarious activity, but instead for the sound of its rapidly rushing waters.

In my mind’s ear, I heard fiddles wailing and cloggers tapping. I saw abandoned wood-frame houses partially hidden in the forests. I saw old men in bib overalls sitting as ghosts on rotted porches, strumming air-mandolins. I felt lightheaded and weightless. Onward I descended through thick, featureless forests. Shooting Creek Road is a curvy, mountain road. Riding the big CBX demanded my attention, with limited sight distances, uneven pavement, gravel, and tight turns.

After several miles, the road leveled and I saw habitations appear in the mist. They had a rustic, sylvan look, with many abandoned rusting cars on cinder blocks. The temperature rose and the mist became less enveloping. The road elevated slightly and I turned left on SR-40, a legendary motorcycling road. It is wonderfully curvy, and with its smooth asphalt, it is more confidence-inspiring than Shooting Creek Road. I kept Mae’s revs high, giving me more control with engine-braking and more instant power for acceleration out of the many uphill curves. The bike felt frisky and cheery like a horse just set out from the stable. Through the hamlet of Endicott, the road straightens and signs of the Piedmont appear. More buildings are made of brick here. Wherever the soil has been broken, it seems slow to heal, showing red dirt scars. There are many abandoned tobacco curing sheds of rough-hewn logs.

I MOTORED THROUGH FERRUM and stopped at the Dairy Queen on the outskirts of Rocky Mount, my first official Crooked Road venue. The parking lot was jammed. I propped my helmet on the right-side rear-view mirror and entered a side dining room. In my black mesh riding gear I felt as if I was garnering as much attention as Matt Dillon entering a Wild West saloon. A bluegrass band with an upright bass, banjo, mandolin, and guitar, held court. The musicians looked to be in their 60s or 70s. The banjo player had a denim shirt with a Crooked Road logo on it. Audience members – men in flannel shirts and baseball-style caps, many with patriotic emblems or farm equipment manufacturer logos, and women in bright blouses – swayed to the music. A woman in her 60s welcomed me, and invited me to sit near her in a vacant seat. The table tops are red linoleum, and chairs have red upholstered seats with white metal cane backs. DQ coffee cups populate every tabletop. A huge, boldly colored mural fills the back wall, featuring delectable foods, presumably available at DQ, and it was brightly lit by the opposite wall of picture windows.

The band finished a song and the woman, Dot Webb, introduced herself and others nearby. Everyone was all smiles; hospitality was endemic.

The band started another number and a 90-something man dressed stylishly in a dark shirt and grey vest scoured the audience to find a woman who would flat-foot with him in the narrow aisle. He is bald, with mottled brown eyeglasses and a broad, incomplete smile. He took the hands of a woman thirty years his junior and grinned happily, twisting her gently to and fro. He exuded the self-satisfied giddiness that must come from badly beating the actuarial tables.

The band ended their concert promptly at 10 a.m. and the crowd quickly dispersed. I lingered and spoke with one of the musicians, James Guilliams, and the restaurant owner, Deborah Russell. James, the bass player, has a broad face with a grey mustache. He told me that this same group of musicians has been playing every Thursday morning for many years, long before The Crooked Road was ever planned. He said the crowd has many of the same faces from week to week. "We have guests come from time to time, but it is largely the same crowd. We have had people here from New York and Illinois, and as far as England and Ireland. They hear about The Crooked Road and this is one of the listed venues.

"There are lots and lots of musicians in this area, perhaps more per square mile than any other place in the world. Even for me as a musician, I didn’t realize all the people who play. Once The Crooked Road was established, they seemed to come out of the woodwork. There were people I’d known my whole life who were musicians and I never knew it. Most of the musicians I know do it solely for fun.

It is a fun, happy music. It was brought over from the Old Country, primarily the British Isles, by the ancestors. This music was their entertainment. What Deborah has facilitated here at the Dairy Queen is much like what may have happened decades ago in the country stores, where people got together to play and enjoy music. Since The Crooked Road has come about, there are many more venues to play. Where before two or three musicians may have gathered at a private home, now ten or twelve musicians may get together at public venues and draw larger audiences.

James said he is not part of a musical family. "I didn’t start playing until I was in my late 20s. I struggled and worked hard to be a musician. Very few people who play traditional Appalachian music have received any formal training. I had no family music heritage, only a community heritage. I sang in church. My mother had a pump organ and she’d play some tunes by memory and I’d sing. That was the only family heritage I’ve had.

People here don’t really know what they have. They’re only now beginning to realize what an incredible wealth of talent is here. New people are gravitating to the music. People here take it for granted. A young couple just moved here from Kentucky. The man said to me, ‘Kentucky has nothing like the music heritage we found here.’

James said he was particularly taken by the comments from European visitors, and especially those from the British Isles. They are delighted that the music that originated there is so healthy and vital here.

Deborah wore a blue button-down shirt, dark slacks, and a heart necklace. She seconded James’ comments. We’re so used to having this music around, we forget to appreciate it like the visitors do.

James and Deborah were born and raised nearby. James continued, Most people in this community really care about other people. Fund-raising events for people in need happen regularly. Let me tell you one of my favorite stories. There is a community nearby called Callaway. One of the residents there helped start the fire department and the rescue squad. He got cancer. He was in terrible financial shape. Residents put on a fund-raiser. They had music and various activities. They had a bake sale, an auction, intended to raise money. The first cake auctioned brought $220. The man who bought that cake wrote his check and picked up his cake. He showed it to his family and friends, and then took it right back to the table so it could be auctioned off again. That auction brought in over $16,000. It was unreal. Pies were bringing $150. People weren’t really interested in the bakery goods themselves, although eventually everything got bought and eaten. What they were interested in was the fun of the process and the giving to a needy man. The beneficiary is a proud man. If you’d walked up to him and offered a check for $220, he would have turned it down. So this was a way for the people to give to him without wounding his pride. It was really heartwarming.

Franklin County is widely known for its active moonshining past. Moonshine, so named because it was always made clandestinely, by the light of the moon, is an llegal, small-scale alcoholic beverage production. It is known in these parts by many names, including White Lightning, Sinking Creek Kool-Aid, Bootleg, Rot Gut, and Tax-free. When I asked about its reputation, James says, If everyone in this county was honest about it, they’d admit that virtually every family was involved in some way or at some level.

Deborah added, My dad had a store and he sold sugar to the moonshiners. He also hauled the stuff.

Everybody was connected or complicit, even the police departments, said James. It was a way to make a living.

Bill Jefferson owns the local Bluegrass AM radio station. He stopped by the restaurant. Bill is bald and bespectacled, dressed in a crisp white shirt, a red tie, and a grey suit. He is in his 80s and semi-retired. He said, "This is where bluegrass music originated. This has always been a hotbed of Bluegrass and old-time traditional music. Families have always gotten together on Saturday nights to pick and sing.

"The Crooked Road has brought attention to the musical activities that have always been here. It has brought lots of tourists. It’s great for the economy, which is pretty bad around here. All the furniture and knitting factories have all closed. The music, to some extent, helps people deal with these losses.

I was born in Pittsylvania County. I’ve been here in Franklin County for over 50 years. My daughter runs the radio station now. Our programming is unlike any other, with traditional country music. We don’t program old-time claw-hammer stuff. Every fourth number is bluegrass, with the rest contemporary country (music). We are about the only station left with this type of programming. Years ago, listeners were more vocal and were more likely to call the station and tell us what they thought. Our demographic is an older audience, people over fifty. We have some college-age listeners, but most are older. Listeners are more sophisticated now.

I mentioned I was still on my way to Rocky Mount, where I wanted to find the Eastern Terminus of The Crooked Road. Before I left, Dot Webb told me her husband, James, was a fiddle maker. James said, After you make your rounds in Rocky Mount, stop by my place on your way west. We live near Callaway. I’ll show you my workshop.

I DEPARTED THE DAIRY QUEEN and performed the routine I undergo every time I start a motorcycle ride, donning my mesh riding pants, jacket, helmet, and gloves. I ride 99.9 percent of my miles with full gear, with the memory still fresh of the two long-past spills, and how my protective gear minimally saved lots of skin and perhaps my life. I rode the short distance into downtown and parked behind the office of the Franklin News-Post, thinking nobody would have a feel for the community like a journalist. I walked inside and met Morris Stephenson, who proved my theory amply.

Morris is a senior reporter for The Franklin News-Post, the thrice-weekly newspaper in Rocky Mount. He is a short man like me, slight, with a grizzled, outdoorsy look, a grey goatee, and a gravelly voice. He set aside the article he was working on, which faced a tight deadline, to visit with me. We hit it off so well, he ended up escorting me several places around town.

Morris echoed that Franklin County is the moonshine capital of the world. "At one time, it was the major way people had to make a living. During the 1920s and 1930s there was more liquor coming out of here than any place in the country. I just read a newspaper clipping where it was reported that the owner of Franklin Grocery and Grain sold over a half-million pounds of sugar in a year. There was a trial called the Great Moonshine Conspiracy Trial of 1935. The Commonwealth’s Attorney was involved (in moonshining). The sheriff and all the deputies were involved. Almost everybody in the community was involved in either the production, distribution, or services related to moonshine.

"The Commonwealth’s Attorney supposedly had the whole illegal operation set up. The sheriff was under him. The deputies were under the sheriff. They provided protection for the operators of all the stills. They protected the producers but once the delivery guys got to the county line, moonshine runners were on their own. I believe there was at least one murder of a witness. Eventually, the government got convictions on just about everybody except the Commonwealth’s Attorney.

"This county was the perfect place for moonshining. The western part of the county is mountainous and there are uncountable numbers of concealed hollows where stills can be hidden. There is also lots of natural running water flowing off the slopes of these Blue Ridge Mountains. Early on, people used wood to fire the stills, but eventually people began to use propane gas. People used to use corn to make corn liquor. Later on, people used sugar to make sugar liquor. Chances are, if you go to a private outdoor party around here even now, there will be hooch.

"In the late 1990s, after much investigation, federal agents came in here and began to track people and use wiretapping. It was called Operation Lightning Strike. In those days, thousands of gallons were being shipped out of here to the markets of DC, Baltimore, and New York. The federal agents confiscated barns and houses, and sold them at auction. They basically dried up all the production in the county. But you can still find moonshine around here. It is just being produced on a much smaller scale. I have an old, large picture of twenty-four 800-gallon stills all connected together.

I came here 46 years ago with the plan to get the experience I needed to move upwards to a larger market and a daily newspaper. When the opportunity came for me to go, I turned it down. Our county has a lake on each end (Smith Mountain to the northeast and Philpott to the south). It’s as pretty here as anywhere in the state. But the people make it different. They don’t embrace you the first time you meet them. They’re loyal, sincere, truthful, and ironically, law-abiding.

I protested. How can people this religious be categorically and unrepentantly breaking the law?

"To them, moonshining is not breaking the law! It wasn’t illegal in their minds, or shouldn’t have been. A man might be in front of a judge after being arrested. He’d say, ‘Gee, I’m sorry judge; I just needed the money.’ He’d stand there in his best bib overalls. He’d have two pair, one for the week and one for church on Sunday. And the judge would deal with him.

"On many occasions, I’ve written stories about people who are sick or otherwise in need.