[PRCo] UMW blamed for diesels

[D Brashear]

> Just one example to hammer it home.   In 1955 we left the grandparents in
> Marietta, Ohio about 9 a.m. one day and pulled into a model in Wytheville,
> Virginia around 7 p.m.   Wytheville is where US route 11 crossed US route
> 19.   Took the whole freaking day and by then they had a modern convenience
> called the West Virginia Turnpike.   Now the comparison.   The end of
> April, this year, I left Ed Lybarger's home in Washington County, Pa in the
> morning, passed through Wytheville after lunch and holed up at Bruce
> Bente's home in Hendersonville, NC for dinner.   That's close to 300 miles
> more than the long day in 1955 and I started the more recent trip on ice
> and snow!  Now the admission … we did pause on the 1955 trip to photograph
> the Powhattan Arrow coming through Bluefield as well as the Virginian's day
> local.  (Dad was easy to convince.)
>

Gwen and I drove to Asheville 2 weekends ago. Left Pittsburgh at 5. Had to
deal with outbound rush and an accident by Southpointe.  Dinner (tasty
pizza joint) just before 9 in Fayetteville WV ... thanks to the Appalachian
Development Highway System, we didn't have to go out of our way to
Charleston. Bedded down before midnight at a hotel in Wytheville. That was
no big deal. The trip back from Chattanooga(*) several days later was
straight through to Charleston for dinner via Kingsport and routes 23 and
119, then on home. Long, to be sure, but still nothing like the old days.

* We had dinner that Monday night by the Lookout Mountain incline. Closed
already. Tuesday we rode it. Like the Duquesne Incline, you can walk
beneath the boarding area and see the machinery... which was built in
Pittsburgh! Very different than Pittsburgh or Johnstown survivors which are
true planes, theirs follows the terrain.



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