Green, green hills of home......

“Wheels are made for rollin’, mules are made to pack, I’ve never seen a sight that didn’t look better lookin’ back.”

Pig Phillips told me once that he’d been all over this country and he’d never seen a prettier place than Greenup County, Kentucky. ‘Course, Pig was born in South Shore and he’s never lived anywhere else in his life.....’n he don’t want to live anywhere else.
Jack Craycraft agrees with him. Jack told me one time that he’d never lived more than a half mile from the Ohio River and had no intention of living anywhere else.
I was on the phone with Gerald Boyles, oh...a lot of years ago, ‘n Gerald said, “Them old hills are sure green this year.”
I was born ‘n raised in South Shore ‘n the hills are always green in the summertime....’n brown ‘n grey and kind of lifeless-looking in the wintertime ‘cept when they’re covered with snow ‘n being so close to the river, snow-covered hills are pretty rare.....’Course, now ‘n then, there’ll be an ice storm followed by bright sunshine and the hill’s get so bright you can’t hardly look at them.....’Course, ice storms break a lot of branches and power lines and do some serious damage....but somehow, the hills are always pretty....There was a book I read years ago that had a wonderful title.....”The Enduring Hills”........I don’t recall much about the book, I think it was about a family that was forced to leave Kentucky for other pastures.....Kentucky Route 23, which has come to be known as the ‘Country Music Highway’ was one of the routes out of those enduring hills....it took thousands of Kentuckians to Detroit and Chicago....and brought ‘em back every long weekend that they could get away.....’Course, the hills ain’t home to the children and grandchildren of the refugee ‘hillbillies’ and they don’t come back so often anymore but the green hills are still there.....they still endure.
Jesse Stuart wrote, “When you’ve tasted the lonesome water of the hills, you’re bound to return.”
Sometimes, more often when you get old, you get to thinking of ‘home’....’n home, no matter where you live or how long you’ve lived there, is always where you grew up, it’s always the place you go in your dreams and it don’t matter that home was never really the way you remember ‘cause, like it or not, everyone’s childhood becomes a fantasy and fantasies are nice places to visit but no one can live there.

“Home is made for comin’ from, for dreams of goin’ to.
Which with any luck will never come true.”