A Winter Walk

Tom and I awoke to another snowy day out here on Copper Ridge. Not inclined to drive anywhere (see previous post!) we decided to take a walk. Our destination was the old house in this picture which I posted last week. It was once home to Andrew and Alba Penley Ervin, who had a family of ten children in this little valley. Alba was a second cousin to my grandfather, John T. Penley, and a sister to Vick Penley, the grandmother of Doretta Templeton Peters, the wife of my Uncle Glen.

Since moving here, I've looked out so often on this old house, and was curious to see it closer. Yesterday, Tom got permission from the owner of the property, who comes daily to feed the cows pastured there, for us to walk down.

It snowed lightly most of the day, and we had a beautiful walk down the dirt road. In the picture below you can just see the back of our house and garage over the roof line. Andrew and Alba were married in 1898 and probably moved into this house shortly thereafter. It is typical of many of the old abandoned homes in Scott County, with two stories in the front, and one at the back. It was built of log with a stone foundation and stone chimney.

Not far from the house is this spring which comes right out of the mountainside. It is likely why this spot was chosen for a home.

Here you can see the logs underneath the wooden siding. In several of these houses we've seen, there are two rooms downstairs, and two rooms up. The kitchen is built onto the back with a separate fireplace.

The stone foundation is visible underneath the back porch.

As we were looking over the house, the cows came down to look us over. Very likely, they wondered if we were going to feed them. We ducked inside the house while the cows got used to the idea of us invading their territory. And pretty soon, they had encircled the whole house and we could hear them bellowing all around us. It was pretty wild!

Now, I don't consider myself a city girl, but I've never really lived in the country either. It's always been small towns for me. So to be suddenly surrounded by a small herd of cattle, was a new experience. And I got quite a shock when this big boy looked in the window at me.

Not anxious to wade right out into the middle of the herd, we decided to look around inside a little while, in hopes they might get bored and wander off a bit.

Here is a photo of the mantel and fireplace in the big room downstairs, with a closeup of the coal grate in the picture below. I want to find one of these to bring home and clean up. I loved the one at Aunt Monnie's house.

In one of the rooms there was a mattress stuffed with straw, pictured below.

Eventually, the cows moved off a little and Tom went out first, just in case some of the new mothers were a little protective of their calves. They all watched every move we made, wondering I suppose, just where in the heck we had their hay. Curiously, the big bull who looked in the window, stayed the furthest away from us, around the side of the house.

The others just watched us. The two below crossed to the salt lick.

This new mother looked around the side of the house, checking to see if it was safe for her little one.

She must have decided we posed no danger, as her calf soon came right up.

The one below was one of the first to come investigate us.

And as we walked back up the road, the herd followed along in the pasture, fussing at us the whole way. I got the impression they were annoyed that we got them all excited about dinner and then didn't feed them. The cows are very restful neighbors. They take each day as it comes, staying down in the ravine you can see above, till the sun comes out and warms the hillside. Then, they make their way up the paths to graze or just lie in the sun. When Ron comes to feed them, they go at a run to meet him, bellowing, "Hurry, hurry, we're hungry!" Like all young'uns, the calves scamper around in the sunshine or the snow, and then hurry back to Mama.

I'm glad they all came down to the old house to see us. I feel like I know them better now. And maybe they like watching us as much as we like watching them.

A Hard Rain Is Gonna Fall

Actually, hard rain did fall for several days the week before last, and everywhere we looked there was water. Where usually there is a trickle of water in the little stream beside Manville Road, waterfalls appeared, tumbling over mossy rocks, and echoing through the hills like a raging river. All of these photos were taken right along Manville Road and Copper Creek Road - well, we did make a quick trip up Double Ford Road so Lexi and Cait could have a look at their swimmng hole. It looked a lot different last week. Above, near Smith's Chapel

This is near the top of the bluff where Tom and I had our big snow adventure.

This is farther down the bluff

This is the stream that comes down from Peters Hollow and crosses under the road at the Gooseneck. Tom and I have hiked up here several times looking for the Peters-McDavid Cemetery with no luck so far. Next time we're going to attack it from another route.

This is the dam at Copper Creek at the bridge. Usually you can see about 4-5 feet of the dam itself. One day after all the rain, the creek was running level over the dam, and only the churning water showed the dam was there. This photo was taken a day or so after that.

We had never noticed the stream behind this pretty old barn on Copper Creek Road. The design on the barn is a quilting pattern, and lots of the barns in Scott County sport them.

This is the first ford on Double Ford Road and usually it's an easy little drive across Copper Creek at this point. But not on the day we took this picture. There are pictures in an earlier post of our Craley granddaughters tubing here in the summer.

I promised I'd tell you our Snowy Bluff Adventure......

We moved into our new house on a Saturday in early December. My cousin, Randy Penley, and his wife, Linda, came to help us. A light snow was falling, and after two trips the men called a halt, as the road was getting covered. Randy and Linda headed for home, and Tom and I watched the snow falling. We saw three V-DOT trucks go by spreading salt, cinders or stone, and the road in front of our house looked pretty good.

Now the Gate City Christmas Parade was scheduled for that night at 7 o'clock, and I had my heart set on going. Nothing daunts Tom, and as we knew the trucks had been working on the road, we ventured forth in the van. There was some snow on the road, nothing too bad, and we made it at least five miles, almost to Smith's Chapel, without any trouble at all. Right below the church we passed a couple walking down the bluff.

"Did you come up the bluff?" the man asked incredulously. "Yes," we said. "Did you have any trouble," he asked. "No, none at all," we said. "Well, they're not gonna let you go any further, there's a state police car over the bank," he said. "Uh-oh," we said.

Sure enough, a few yards further on, there were people in the road with flashing lights, and we could see a state police car standing almost perpendicular with its front end down in the little ravine at the first waterfall picture above. (We learned later that the police car was on top of another car that had already gone over the bank. Guess he was coming to, ahem, help...)

So now we were stopped in the middle of a snowy road on a pretty good incline with no place to go but back down. Tom put the car in reverse and at that moment, we spun around 180 degrees so we were suddenly facing down the hill. "I tried that," Tom said. I think I said, "Oh boy."

We passed the folks who were walking and offered them a ride. "No thanks," said the man. "I've lived here my whole life, and I'd just as soon walk down the bluff in weather like this." This time I know I said, "Oh boy."

Having no choice, we began to inch our way back down the bluff, knowing that going down was going to be trickier than going up. Thankfully, we got past the point where there is no guardrail, which is a good thing, because just about as soon as we were at the guardrail, we spun around again smashing into the guardrail, and ended up with our back bumper stuck on the guardrail. We slid a few more feet, scraping all the way.

At this point Tom (my hero) told me to get out of the car as he was going to try to get it off of the guardrail. My first thought was, no way, if we go down, honey, we're going down together! But then I came to my senses. The drop was not more than maybe 30 ft., lots of trees to stop the car, he had a seatbelt and an airbag, and chances are he wouldn't be hurt even if the van did crash trough the guardrail.

And, I would be standing safely in the road, ready to scream for help. So, with one last lingering look at my brave, brave boy, I climbed out.

A few more feet of scraping, and Tom had yanked that old bumper free. It was even still attached to the car. Whew.

I climbed back in and we inched our way along, trying to stay in the rough right beside the guardrail. We stopped to collect ourselves and plan our strategy before attempting the gooseneck which curves sharply to the right.

Tom smoked a pipe. I took deep breaths. And, thank the Lord, a V-Dot truck came by, spreading cinders. We followed him down through the gooseneck without any trouble and slowly made our way home.

Naturally, as we told this story, the natives thought we were crazy to attempt the bluff in the snow. But, we were innocent! We were naive! We didn't know the perils of the bluff. We saw V-Dot trucks and thought, naturally, that all must be well.

But now we know. At the first snowflake we look at each other and say, "Guess we're not going anywhere today!" And so we sit and watch the flurries fall, maybe tip-toeing out on the front walk with a broom, but no further. It'll be a cold day in December before we venture out towards the bluff again on a snowy day. We've learned our lesson. Lost our innocence. And now we know to stay home when it snows on the mountain.

And, of course, the parade was cancelled.

A Craley Christmas

As usual, this is long overdue.

The Craley Clan came down to spend our first Christmas in our new house with us, and we did some pretty neat stuff! On Christmas night we went to the Bristol Motor Speedway which sponsors a light display to benefit children's charities. Naturally, most of the pics are blurry, but I'll post a couple to give you the idea. The best part of this is that you get to drive a lap on the speedway itself - the fastest half-mile in racing! It was very cool. The Craleys on the track...... There is a Christmas Village in the center (or pit area) of the track. We had funnel cake and hot chocolate and the kids bought a huge bag of popcorn which Tom and I are still eating. They had rides for little kids and a couple of fun houses with big slides at the end. You should have seen me....no, on second thought, it's better you didn't.

All of the displays were really neat, like this volcano and palm tree, which was right next to the dinosaur and just above the giant shopping cart, which was my favorite. Highly recommended! I'm sure we'll have to go every year just so Tom can drive on the track.

We all spent a lot of time in jammies, reading, and doing not much of anything. The girls are into the Twilight books by Stephanie Meyer, so one afternoon all the girls raced to Abingdon to see the movie. It was great, and I expect the highpoint of the whole trip for Lexi!

It was pretty nice while they were here, so we seized the opportunity to get Lexi on the swinging bridge across the Clinch River. Last summer when they were here, we encountered bees and only Cait, Mike and I made it up on the bridge that time. The scenery is not quite as pretty in the winter as in the summer, but it's fun crossing these old bridges any time.

Three generations of bridge walkers....

Another day we took a hike. I had wanted to try to find the house Aunt Doretta Peters lived in when she was young, so we parked at the switchback on Manville Road and walked down to the cemetery where Robert and Minerva Penley are buried. Their house is just down over the hill, so we visited that, and then hiked up the road to Aunt Doretta's house. That's another post -- but here's a picture from that day. The little orange dot is Caiti's hat.

I hope they had as much fun as I did!

Anderson Family Photo Shoot

Jen's husband, Matt, works at the York Daily Record newspaper in York, PA. Every Christmas one of the photographers does a photo shoot for employees and their families. Here are a few shots of Matt, Jen and the girls. Two smiles and two half-smiles. Not bad!

The littlest member of the family - Ella Nicole Anderson

A shot of Jen with Chloe, who got a little shy.....

I hope the bad photographer who made this little elf cry, got coal in his stocking. But I have to admit, it's a cute picture!

Gone to a Better Place

I'm sorry to report that John Fred Penley, son of John T. and Cynthia Jane "Jennie" Forbes Penley passed away on November 10, 2008. He had been a patient at Holston Manor Nursing and Rehab Center since April. He returned to Kingsport from Abbottstown, Pennsylvania after being diagnosed with cancer.

We all miss him. Above, Uncle Fred is pictured with Bertha Collins Forbes, who is the sister of Fred's late wife, Betty. She is the widow of Simon Fanning Forbes Jr., the youngest son of Simon and Margaret Morgan Forbes, and the half-brother of my grandmother, Jennie Forbes Penley. Bertha lives in Kingsport. This photo was taken in September 2008.

Sgt. John Fred Penley

A memorial service was held in the atrium at Holston Manor. A bluegrass band played a few songs, Tom Landis and Vicki Byington sang "You Are My Sunshine," and military honors were performed . Below, the flag is presented to Randy Penley.

An interesting coincidence....

Fred died on November 10, which is my birthday.

My Dad, Roy, died on December 25, which is the birthday of Fred's daughter and my cousin, Jane.

Gravely Road

Just wanted to share these two photos for anyone who is interested in the Penley family history. My cousin, Randy Penley, found this photo of my Dad, Roy J. Penley, in a box of old pictures that his Dad, J. Fred Penley, had. The photo was taken in front of the family home on Gravely Road, Kingsport, TN. In the spring, my Uncle Fred and I went to visit the same house. As you can see, it's been fixed up some, but is still easily recognizable. I was so thrilled to have this picture of Daddy in front of the house, so we can see just what it looked like when the Penleys lived there. Uncle Fred remembered when this house was built and told us about it. There is a previous post with more info.

Let's Hear It For the Boys

I posted lots of pictures of girls, and the boys have got to be feeling neglected. My niece, Sarah, sent a photo of her two boys, Aidan and Kieran, in a Christmas card, and I was struck by how much Aidan looks like my Dad, his great-grandfather, Roy J. Penley. So I pulled a few pictures of Daddy, and you can compare them to Sarah's photo at the bottom.

I don't know who this girl is.....if anybody else knows, please send an email and let me know!

Aidan and Keiran Christmas, sons of Sarah and Geoff Christmas. Sarah is the daughter of Connie Rebecca Penley (she now goes by Rebecca Forbes), and granddaughter of Roy and Zella (Peters) Penley.

Growing Up

I just wanted to post a few of my favorite photos from my visit to Pennsylvania in October. I hadn't seen Chloe since April, and then she wouldn't even let anyone hold her, except for Matt and Jen. But they grow so fast those first few years, and six months makes a lot of difference.
Now she lets everybody hold her....well, she did in October. Now that she's really walking, I don't think she sits still long enough for anybody to hold her. We were reading books and she grabbed my glasses off my face and put them on. Yes, she really did that all by herself. And Matt got the shot. Hats off to Matt! This is one of my most favorite favorites!

In the shot above, Chloe is really just beginning to fuss, but you can't really tell. Poor Jen looks so tired....and she probably will for a little while longer, as Ella is not a good sleeper. Hang in there, Jen!

Chloe loves books - though lately she's not been sitting still for those either, according to Jen's blog. But, here she did.

She was a little late walking, and when I was there she was just learning to push this toy around and walk with it by herself. Doesn't she look proud?

Is there anything cuter than a baby in the bath? I don't think so. Here are two shots of Chloe all snuggly and warm after her bath.

And, here's the one her Mom will use to keep her in line when she's 16. "Shape up kiddo, or the boyfriend sees the Mohawk!"

Hee, hee!!