I’m tellin’ you, boys, there ain’t nuthin’ like a river……

My grandpa had a little farm out on Leatherwood crick…well, Leatherwood Creek ackshully, but ‘crick’ is what we called it back in the day…

Leatherwood ‘ud go dry ever’ summer but most creeks back there do the same…

Leatherwood ran into Schultz Creek which pretty much kept at least a little water until real late in the summer…

Schultz ran into Tygart Creek which wuz durn near a river, only missing that status by a mile or so…

Tygart ran down into the Ohio River which is a sizeable body of water.  The Ohio River is the border for Kentucky ’n the State of Ohio but the river itself belongs to Kentucky…

I never quite figured that out but then I only got m’self a high school education…well, some college back in the mountains but I don't hardly count that...

The high school I went to wuz the largest school in the County at that time…

It wudn’t what you’d call a first-rate school nor even a second-rate but it had aspirations ’n I figure the education I got there is ever’ bit as good as what most college students get t’day….well, cept for all the social studies ’n stuff they got t’day…

One of the things we had at our school wuz Miz Harper…she was a tall, lean, knife-edge kind of woman, didn’t brook no nonsense at all…drove a big, black Cadillac sedan all her long life…think maybe it might’a been the same one but I don’t know that for sure…..

Driving wuz a big deal when I wuz a boy…turning 16 wuz a red-letter day cuz it meant I c’ud get a drivers license…took off from school ’n Daddy drove me up to the County seat ’n I took a test ’n got my license….think it cost Daddy two dollars….

When Daddy got his license ‘way back when he wuz a boy, it cost him 25 cents ’n he had to send off to Frankfurt to get it…

Didn’t ackshully need a license back then but he just wanted one, he wuz that crazy for driving…when he went blind late in life, it ticked him off somethin’ fierce that he cudn’t drive anymore…

After Momma died, he went back to Kentucky…

He got with a cousin of mine who let him drive her car while she told him where to go…

He like to busted a gut laughing when he told me about it...

Life ain’t never what it ought’a be, it’s always just what it is ’n you got to deal with what is c’uz you ain’t got no other choice…..if life wuz what it ought’a be, ever’body ‘ud have a warm, dry place to sleep ’n 3 or 4 meals a day on the table…we’d all be fat ’n happy ’n just lay around procreatin’ c’uz that’s what people do best…..

Heck fire!  When I wuz a boy, this county had half as many people as we got today…back then, we all smoked ’n drank ’n we had lots of wars ’n calamitous times but we still managed to procreate so well that we more’n doubled our population…there ain’t a doubt in my mind that that’s what anybody ‘ud call a success story….