Cherry Fork Road

Cherry Fork Road was the name of the road that I was raised on. We moved from a rented house in 1971 to the farm that Mom and Dad had purchased in the middle of winter. I was very young, only four years old at the time, but I remember parts of moving day. It was cold and snowy. I don't remember who I was riding with--probably my mom; but, we were riding behind my papaw who was helping us move, and he was driving a big red truck. His big red truck was what he hauled the school lunch food in; I don't know how he got that job, but sometimes we would get extra goodies if the lunch ladies counted the inventory wrong. My school lunches growing up were really good so I didn't mind eating school lunch food at home. It sure beat eating deer meat. Anyhow, we had stuffed a lot of our belongings on the back of this truck and lying across the top of everything was a big rolled up rug that went in the living room. You probably know what kind of rug I am talking about. I believe it's called a corded circular rug--everyone had one back in the day. I remember going down a hill on the way to Cherry Fork Road and our new lives down on the farm when the rug, which wasn't secured properly, came off the back of the truck. Papaw, who was probably lighting a cigar or talking at the time, didn't notice that his load had become considerably lighter and kept on going. The rug hit the road and bounced up and landed on the hood of mom's car and made us slide over into the ditch. And there we sat. There weren’t any cell phones in 1971 so we had to wait until Papaw realized that we weren't behind him any longer. I can't remember how long we were stranded because I fell asleep in the backseat. The next thing I remember was waking up in my bed, in a new house, on Cherry Fork Road.