"Fuzzy Little West Virginians"
We were up around Wheeling doing some shows...
The Wheeling Jamboree and a couple of county fairs.
An old singing partner, Tony Arbonaise,
came to one of the shows.
and he urged us to come and visit his home
in Gipsy, West Virginia.
He’s a hard guy to say no to.
We had a new Corvette and Tony insisted upon driving.
There were only two bucket seats,
so Misty was on my lap,
with her head bumping the roof all the way.
My legs went to sleep.
It was getting dark
and the narrow road was all ess-curves.
It was foggy and the pavement was wet,
but that didn’t stop Tony from driving like Super Dave.
His foot went back and forth from the gas pedal to the brake
trying to maintain 70 mph on the hairpin turns.
There was a woman front of us with kids in the car.
Tony was on their bumper, scaring them to death.
The kids horrified faces pleaded with us from their back window.
Tony didn’t seem to care.
That’s when I knew this side trip was a mistake,
and that he was nuts.
I got carsick and yelled at him until he stopped,
and I drove the rest of the way.
I don’t know how Misty fit into the little space behind the seats,
but she was not about to sit on his lap.
Gipsy WV was just a wide spot in the road,
where Tony and his wife owned a little grocery/convenience store.
We slept in an old brown bedroom up over the store.
The tightly wound stairway to the upper floor
had steps too small to handle a normal foot.
I called to Tony in the night:
“Hey, how do I get to the bathroom?’
He yelled back: “Take the stairs. I know you can do it.”
We couldn’t wait to escape from there,
but we did enjoy the return trip through the winding mountain roads,
in our sports car with the top off,
on a cool, crisp autumn afternoon.
Big fat woodchucks were on the sides of the roads.
Later,
I was telling an audience about it,
and forgot what they called those creatures.
I asked the people:
“What do they call those little animals
that sit up and grin at you from the side of the road?”
Some wise guy from the back of the crowd yelled:
"West Virginians".
© 2004 Jack Blanchard. All rights reserved.
