My (Family’s) New Kentucky Home

Enough ranting. Back to travellng.

Leaving Atlanta, I headed north to visit my brother and his wife, their daughter, her husband and five kids in Kentucky. My family, all Californians for generations, packed up and moved to the hills!

I knew I was heading toward a different way of life when I stopped at McDonald’s in Jellico, Tennessee, and the young woman behind the counter called me “Sweetie.” That doesn’t really happen here. And the terrain changed. Just north of Knoxville, it started to look like this:

I looked at that thin layer of soil on top of those slabs of rock and knew, despite the abundant forests all around me, that the people who survived here had to be some kind of tough.

I left the interstate in southeastern Kentucky and bombed along country roads, looking in vain for a spot to pull over and let the FedEx truck off my tail. No luck. This is the road to my brother’s house:

Ok, that’s the short way. There’s a longer way, with a leeetle wider road.

My brother and his wife live on 35 acres. My niece and her family got 85, including part of a mountain.

with a pond

They took me on an ATV up to the top of the mountain. It’s steep and I felt my age as I prayed that I wasn’t killed doing some foolishness on a Kentucky mountainside, but seeing how pretty it was made it all worthwhile.

No close-ups of the family, even though they are darling – I try not to social media-ize my people too much, because some of them are shy. They do exist and they are just the finest kind of people. I’m so glad I got to go see where they live and hang out with them.

I found out a favorite Kentucky pastime – sitting on the porch. It turns out that I might be good at this.

We made lasagna and my brother baked bread and my SIL made no-bake cheesecakes and spice muffins and we talked and laughed and it was far too short. I’m already dreaming of going back.