VIENNA,Va, December 31, 2011 — Coming home from Kentucky to Northern Virginia after Christmas produced one of those “aha moments.” We’d driven the usual harried (and hurried) route down, I-68, I-79, I-71, I-275, etc. For our return trip, my husband decided to take old U.S. 50, one of the original cross-country highways before the interstate system came into being.
Robert Frost said it best in his 1919 poem, “The Road Less Traveled,” and we decided to take old 50, stop lights and all, more highway access, all the negatives we had conjured up. But as Frost said, “I took the road less traveled, and that has made all the difference.”
The speed limit was only 60 mph, “a real drag,” we thought, until we got into it. Sixty gives you time to see things, to notice all around you, and it was wonderful. There were few cars on the road and you had time to “look.”
We saw lots of farms with beautifully maintained barns as the road wound gently through Ohio, cows in the fields, and horses out grazing. In the distance down a country road far from even US 50 was an Amish horse and buggy, and we were tempted to go see it closer.
Along with the sights we learned a new vocabulary. In the past, our main reading materials were Exit, Gas, Food, Lodging, etc. Here we saw signs for Tranquility Pike, Unity Road, and even Burnt Cabin Road – all much more interesting than Exit.
Thinking back to our forebears who landed first in Nieuw Amsterdam, thence to Hackensack, N.J., then to Conewago in Pennsylvania and through the Cumberland Gap to Kentucky, it was easy to realize that this was their road, the Appalachian Highway. How many thousand people traveled it in those early days?
Robert Frost was right
One ancestor was in her cabin in Kentucky when Indians approached, killed her husband, tried to scalp her, and then burned the cabin, just like that road sign said. And yet those brave, sturdy people kept on, and made homes in the former wilderness.
Few motels still exist on old U.S. 50; there’s just not enough drivers to sustain the industry. And we still believe you could starve to death on that road in Ohio, as restaurants are very few and far between. The traveling public seems to determine what thrives and what dies, so the die is cast.
We finally had to return to the interstates in West Virginia, but our several hours on “the road less traveled” were good ones, and it gave us a new respect for life outside the beltway and big cities as well as for those who made the country so long ago.
Unfortunately this route did not bring us into any Civil War sites, but further research may turn one up.
As 2011 turns into 2012, it’s a good bet we’ll try that “road less traveled” again. Ironically when we arrived home, the speedometer showed that this slower route had also taken over 215 miles off the total trip! Another plus, thanks to Robert Frost’s famous poem.
Follow this column on Face Book or LinkedIn at Martha Boltz, and by email it’s MBoltz2846@aol.com
Read more of Martha’s columns on The Civil War at the Communities at the Washington Times.
This article is the copyrighted property of the writer and Communities @ WashingtonTimes.com. Written permission must be obtained before reprint in online or print media. REPRINTING TWTC CONTENT WITHOUT PERMISSION AND/OR PAYMENT IS THEFT AND PUNISHABLE BY LAW.
