Shirley and I met in passing at work and Gray Stone Racket Club on Walker Rd. that's now a Off Track betting facility . The official answer is we met on a ski trip to Lake Placid.
That produces a drop mouth gasp of incredulous disbelief from the boys!.. Apparently it really stretched their envelope of reality. Two little boys growing up in North Alabama who had never seen snow. Have a hard time wrapping their heads around that Mom and Dad met skiing.When they had to beg for a trip to Chucky Cheese.
Way too exotic for the profile they developed on us You'd think the four pairs of skis collecting dust in the garage might add substance to the story. .
Our mutual interest, mine at least, was aroused on the way home while talking about what we were doing next week end. I think she was going to do laundry and I was going climbing at Seneca or the New river Gorge in West Virginia. That's when Shirley mentioned her grandparents lived in Clay, W.V. only forty five minutes from The New. A penitential shower and if not a bed at least a floor to sleep on near the New. Potential she had. Little did she know then in the near future she would at least belay 5.12.
This was late 80s or so . I've been going to the New since the mid 80s when it was still something of a adventure finding the way to the crag and a place to camp. There were Hotels which made a $400 dollar tent seem less cost effective and necessary. The campgrounds were run by the rafting companies and full of, ..well rafters. which the climbers and paddlers refer to as tourrons. The rafters usually spend the night having a kegger to celebrate a day bouncing down the river in over sized inner tubes ( I've done this ,it's fun ) plowing over kayakers who consider them selves real paddlers. Real paddlers only plow under fly fishers. " It takes precise skill" some of those guys are quick, even in waders!
Now Cheyenne told us that Hugh Herr told him, The New would never be a world class climbing area. To which we asked . " Why".. There's no coffee house. answered the pony tailed one.
This was in the dark ages before Starbucks and phonetic texting like WTF or OMG. so, our reply to Cheyenne and the future M.I.T. researcher http://http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Herr prediction. Was limited to: What in the wide world of sports does a coffee house have to do with climbing. More then you might think. Randy Travis warned us but at lass even I grind my own coffee and employ a French coffee press.
Now days Fayetteville has a coffee house, gear shops and one of Out Side magazines top 100 bars in the country. Back then it was the Pancake House and camping down in the Gorge under the bridge. Which is a pretty nice bridge . One of the largest single span bridges in the world. Rumored you can now even get quiche in town.
There's a official climbers campground. Which is nice to know, but we have family to stay with. And we did quite often.We would drive down Friday night and Saturday I would head for the New and Shirley would hit the yard sales with her grandmother. Sometimes a friend would come along to climb with me. They would be amazed by the view from Toodie and Horneys front porch. For miles, you can see the top of the ridges poking out of the morning mist. Like islands in a vast inland lake !
Shirley's grandparents Naomi aka Toodie and Earnest aka Horny lived in a small house high atop Triplet Ridge. Earnest was quick to tell you they called him Horny due to catching a Horned Chub when he was a child. Everyone was was welcome there . Shirley's parents would drive in and other members of the family too. Everyone was welcome and some week ends the house was pretty full.Now Mr. Rush , Horny was one of West Virginia's if not the countries great orators. He was also a dedicated conversationalist too. You could go to the restroom and he would stand out side the door and keep on talking. Just throw a yeah buddy his way now and then and he was happy.
Earnest enjoyed talking about thing when he was younger. One evening the subject turned to. If I ever skinned a cat when you were a kid. You know. Climb a tree and one of your friends cut it down. You take a ride down then as it falls!... Well... yeah, ....yes sir we did . Something like that.
I remember it well like it was yesterday, maybe it was? Kind of a coming of age thing . New Age maybe. Ed Bair, Jim Dailh and I were wondering along an overgrown road that starts at the northwest end of Spring Run and runs into the seasonal creek bed on the west side of the picnic woods. Jim and I would be starting 7th grade in the fall and Ed was a year behind us. Unknown to us then we were just like everyone else, killing time between kinder garden and social security . We thought we were on a mission of sorts. Or as our mothers would say. Looking for something to get into. More often than not we were successful at getting into something.
What would you expect. For instance. How did Jim get from Dry Run To Spring Run? His mother dropped him of at the store (Bairs). No calling ahead. He would hook up with Ed or me or walk home.
Having no set plan we improvised and started climbing trees. Experiments in gravity. Having more small trees than large we gravitated toward bending them over. Then jumping off. Some of them were one kid trees other all three us had to climb as near the top we could and swing back and forth. Sometimes the trees would sway gently to the ground or at least close enough to jump now and then one would snap and drop us in a pile. Not knowing if and when one would snap added to the fun.
In every sample lot there's a few anomalies. Not that we new anything about anomalies or outliers. At the time we would fiquare there's one in every bunch.
Jim climbed up what appeared to be a puny little tree. Barely had any effect. I climbed up and bowed it a little. Ed joined us. With Eds added weight the tree bowed , well loaded might be more accurate or went to full draw.
Our science education so far had been Dean Fetterman and Star Trek. We thought cosmological physics had something to do with too much make up. Stephen Hawking could still walk back then. This little tree must occupied at least two planes of existence. On one of the planes it was a catapult or rocket launcher.
The angle of the trunk was too steep for us to climb back up. We were also dangling on the down slope side. Too far to comfortably drop to the ground. It became kind of obvious our ability to maintain position was limited. Being men or at least boys of action. Group consensus, actually at the time we never came to a consensus . But we did agree.
It seemed better to drop in a controlled fashion then to fall screaming one by one. Lemmings of the world concur. So on the count of three we would all let go and drop, most likely in a pile. Some times the line between self rescue and self destruction blurs.
We need to step aside for a second and discuss common knowledge. Knowledge common to you. You my believe it to be common to everybody. Both Ed and I were about to be surprised by Jimmeys lacking in common Knowledge .The plan: count to three, and on three let go. Well , who doesn't know when the let go command is three. To avoid personal injury you let go on two. Both Ed and I knew this. There appeared to be a gap in Jimmys education.
Our focus had been picking out a spot to land and trying to avoid a major pile up under the tree. The first moment or so we were each occupied with personal systems check. After assuring our own arms and legs were intact. we turned our attention to each other. If not immediately, Well soon after a couple quick head counts we noticed Jimmey was missing.
Jim had disappeared. He wasn't up the tree or in the surrounding corn field. He vanished. Now days it would have been a obvious case of alien abduction. If the History Channel had only been around to teach us about them. We did hear a faint scream in the distance. Only later did we realise it had been Jimmy.
Ed and I had a set protocol for situations like this. Vanish and purge all knowledge of Jim and deny we even new of him or his where abouts. And hope for the best . At least for us ! Maybe Jim would turn up OK too. Seemed like a logical coarse of action. A coarse our side trips seemed to steer towards. A lot.
Jim actually did turn up a week later at the picnic. ( If you're from PV you know the picnic. If not you've been missing it.) While tossing ping pong balls at colored gold fish bowls Jim filled us in on his flight home. The tree had flung him in a low trajectory in the direction of Dry Run. His skipping rolling skidding landing started in the corn field behind Egolfs and ended bouncing off the backstop on the ball field behind the Fire Hall. He had survived pretty much unscathed. Most the skid marks were in his underware.
Well nothing ever goes unnoticed in Path Valley. Some times there are a lasting and unfore seen consequences. Jims low altitude flight went right over the Stolfuz farm. While the children were playing in the yard. Abey (4 ) the youngest was found later that evening hiding under his bed. For a week or two later Mrs Stolfuz had to watch for the older boys trying to jump off the porch roof. " Trying to fly like the inglish boy. Even now the Amish in the Valley use the story of the Flying Inglishmahn to scare the kids back in line.
