By: John Silva – August 2024
It’s about time you called. We have been waiting for over two weeks for your call which actually isn’t too bad… considering. Momma wants you to take her for a ride. Its been over fifteen years since she visited with her kin down in the holler, and she wants to see everyone before she passes. She wants to hear about all of the things they’ve been a doing. And, who did what and why. And how all the kids have grown, and do they have a job, and how many kids they have, and if their kids have kids and what they all been a doing.
And, of course, she has got to hold all of the babies and tell them how beautiful they are, and what life was like when she was growing up in the holler. But, all you gotta do is wait at each house for her to say hello and get all the news she’s missed. How many relatives does she have? Don’t know for sure, probably fifty or sixty.
Does she have directions? Well of course she does! But, they don’t have street signs in the holler since everyone knows where everybody else lives so her directions are just turn right and then left and two more rights, and stuff like that. But, it is pretty simple. When you get off the highway you go a ways and then turn right onto the gravel road at the big oak tree. That’s a bit tricky cause there’s a slew of big oak trees on that road. I think its the fifth or sixth one. After a while you’ll get to this huge rock and you turn left onto the single lane dirt road. You do have four wheel drive, don’t you?
Going up and down the hills can be a bit tricky… especially, when the storms come through and wash out parts of the road. And, you do have to be careful not to slip off the road. It’s a long way down to the bottom, and there’s a mess of bushes and trees on the way down and don’t get stuck in the mud or the quicksand. Also, it would take at least a week or two to get a tow truck to haul you out, and by then you might have run out of food and have to hunt yourself a possum or something.