Sunday, April 02, 2006
driving miss emma (31 march)
G’ma suggested this title, since I drove us again out of one state and into the next. After breakfast with Genna, we left around 8:30 and headed out of North Carolina. We passed Pilot Mountation, which my cousin, Rob, has mountainbiked down.
I drove us up into Virginia onto I-81, where we exited onto memory lane in Christiansburg, Virginia. Christiansburg is where my g’ma lived after graduating from college; she moved there in 1949. She worked as an extension agent and lived in different places in the area. She met Blair D. Brugh that year and married him in the Presbyterian church in December of 1950.
We switched drivers at a rest stop back on I-81, and G’ma drove us to the Brugh Store to get gas and then further into Botetourt County where my grandfather had been raised.
This quilt top hangs in the Brugh Store and is signed by relatives.
I saw the land where the first house my g'pa lived in had stood, and the brick house where the family later moved.
The Mill Creek Baptist church is where my grandfather, my great grandparents, and many Brughs, Wicklines, and other ancestors are buried.
We stopped for dinner (Ever’s Family Restaurant, a buffet with the cleanest bathroom and most beautiful decor) and then later at Patchwork Place, where we spent about 45 minutes looking at fabric before heading back on the road. We switched drivers after leaving the town and before crossing the state line into West Virginia. These backroads were some of the saddest and most beautiful parts of the country I saw on this trip. Many old farmhouses have been abandoned, and I couldn’t figure out what was holding them up. Still others looked aged, but hadn’t lost their usefulness, function, and beauty.
We arrived in Wiley Ford, West Virginia around 5 pm, and I told my g’ma despite how much I love her and how much I enjoyed the trip, I was so happy to be getting out the car.
I drove us up into Virginia onto I-81, where we exited onto memory lane in Christiansburg, Virginia. Christiansburg is where my g’ma lived after graduating from college; she moved there in 1949. She worked as an extension agent and lived in different places in the area. She met Blair D. Brugh that year and married him in the Presbyterian church in December of 1950.
We switched drivers at a rest stop back on I-81, and G’ma drove us to the Brugh Store to get gas and then further into Botetourt County where my grandfather had been raised.
This quilt top hangs in the Brugh Store and is signed by relatives.
I saw the land where the first house my g'pa lived in had stood, and the brick house where the family later moved.
The Mill Creek Baptist church is where my grandfather, my great grandparents, and many Brughs, Wicklines, and other ancestors are buried.
We stopped for dinner (Ever’s Family Restaurant, a buffet with the cleanest bathroom and most beautiful decor) and then later at Patchwork Place, where we spent about 45 minutes looking at fabric before heading back on the road. We switched drivers after leaving the town and before crossing the state line into West Virginia. These backroads were some of the saddest and most beautiful parts of the country I saw on this trip. Many old farmhouses have been abandoned, and I couldn’t figure out what was holding them up. Still others looked aged, but hadn’t lost their usefulness, function, and beauty.
We arrived in Wiley Ford, West Virginia around 5 pm, and I told my g’ma despite how much I love her and how much I enjoyed the trip, I was so happy to be getting out the car.
# posted by tracylee @ 5:43 PM 
