I'm a back roads driver as often as I can be. This past Saturday, while driving home from Pikeville, Kentucky, I rolled the windows down, opened the sunroof, put some good bluegrass music in the cd player and wove my way around the scenic mountainsides of eastern Kentucky and southwest Virginia.
My GPS, named "Gertie", only made a few minor mistakes: a left turn that didn't exist, a gasoline station that was boarded up, a road that was closed. Those mistakes were easy enough ~ even satellites have a tricky time making sense of some of the winding switchbacks that make up the topography of that part of the world.
However, Gertie made one pretty significant mistake: as I was driving though Stopover, Kentucky (great name for a town with nothing but a Post Office...) she took me up the side of a steep mountain and right to the entrance of a coal mine. An operational coal mine. Where coal miners were coming out of a 2-mile deep mine with black faces and sooty clothes. As quick as I could I turned around and drove off, but not before picking up two pieces of raw coal for "show and tell." I figured it was predestined....
Once I got to the Virginia side of life, I got on Route 11 (even a back roads driver like me had had enough of the Kentucky switchbacks!) and headed north. When I pulled into the town of Glade Spring, about 10 miles south of Chilhowie, I could not believe my eyes.
You might recall that several weeks ago that part of southwest Virginia suffered horrific storms, which included several tornado touchdowns and 9 deaths. What I saw in Glade Spring astounded me ~ the hairs on my arms literally stood up. It was an eerie sensation. For miles in every direction, it looked like a bomb had gone off. The destruction was breathtaking in its horror. Beautiful old houses with roofs and porches ripped off like the lid of a can of tuna. Gasoline stations and fast food restaurants were gone; all that remained were their concrete foundations. Road crews were still cleaning up debris from the sides of roads.
But what stood out the most to me was Glade Spring Presbyterian Church. Glade Spring PC sits atop what appears to the one of the highest points of the town, right on Route 11. It is a beautiful brick church with the symbol of the PC(USA) emblazoned on its exterior wall. Impressive. Beside the church is the cemetery. I can tell it is normally a well-kept property.
When the tornadoes went through Glade Spring, the Presbyterian Church was not spared. The congregation had just put up a new steeple; it was gone, ripped from its roof. Iron railing was twisted like pipe cleaners; part of the roof was curled into itself; tombstones lay where no graves were, and large tree limbs sprinkled the cemetery, breaking some tombstones in half.
Two women were cleaning their family plots in the cemetery and I struck up a conversation with them. They cried as they told me of the horror of the tornadoes . Each of these women knew someone who had died in the storm. They couldn't make the memories of the storms go away, they said, but they could help by cleaning up part of the historic cemetery, well know in the area. The women told me that Washington County is the only county in Virginia that did not receive FEMA funding after the tornadoes. People are left to clean up their own properties and work with their insurance companies ("those who have insurance" one woman remarked).
Seeing something like this puts our own inconvenient building project into perspective. I say inconvenient because we've had issues with rain, then mud, no phones, no water, lots of noise, loss of easy access to bathrooms....We all knew we'd be inconvenienced by the process of demolition and construction, but you never fully appreciate the inconvenience until you're in full swing of the project.
But you know what? As inconvenient as our situation is, it's nothing compared to what residents of Glade Spring, Virginia are going through. And with no federal assistance, they're going through it pretty much alone. The two women told me they haven't seen much outside help at all. "It's as if the rest of the world doesn't know we're here or what's happened to us" they said.
Experiences like that put things in perspective, don't you think? Here are some pics of Glade Spring, Virginia.
My GPS, named "Gertie", only made a few minor mistakes: a left turn that didn't exist, a gasoline station that was boarded up, a road that was closed. Those mistakes were easy enough ~ even satellites have a tricky time making sense of some of the winding switchbacks that make up the topography of that part of the world.
However, Gertie made one pretty significant mistake: as I was driving though Stopover, Kentucky (great name for a town with nothing but a Post Office...) she took me up the side of a steep mountain and right to the entrance of a coal mine. An operational coal mine. Where coal miners were coming out of a 2-mile deep mine with black faces and sooty clothes. As quick as I could I turned around and drove off, but not before picking up two pieces of raw coal for "show and tell." I figured it was predestined....
Once I got to the Virginia side of life, I got on Route 11 (even a back roads driver like me had had enough of the Kentucky switchbacks!) and headed north. When I pulled into the town of Glade Spring, about 10 miles south of Chilhowie, I could not believe my eyes.
You might recall that several weeks ago that part of southwest Virginia suffered horrific storms, which included several tornado touchdowns and 9 deaths. What I saw in Glade Spring astounded me ~ the hairs on my arms literally stood up. It was an eerie sensation. For miles in every direction, it looked like a bomb had gone off. The destruction was breathtaking in its horror. Beautiful old houses with roofs and porches ripped off like the lid of a can of tuna. Gasoline stations and fast food restaurants were gone; all that remained were their concrete foundations. Road crews were still cleaning up debris from the sides of roads.
But what stood out the most to me was Glade Spring Presbyterian Church. Glade Spring PC sits atop what appears to the one of the highest points of the town, right on Route 11. It is a beautiful brick church with the symbol of the PC(USA) emblazoned on its exterior wall. Impressive. Beside the church is the cemetery. I can tell it is normally a well-kept property.
When the tornadoes went through Glade Spring, the Presbyterian Church was not spared. The congregation had just put up a new steeple; it was gone, ripped from its roof. Iron railing was twisted like pipe cleaners; part of the roof was curled into itself; tombstones lay where no graves were, and large tree limbs sprinkled the cemetery, breaking some tombstones in half.
Two women were cleaning their family plots in the cemetery and I struck up a conversation with them. They cried as they told me of the horror of the tornadoes . Each of these women knew someone who had died in the storm. They couldn't make the memories of the storms go away, they said, but they could help by cleaning up part of the historic cemetery, well know in the area. The women told me that Washington County is the only county in Virginia that did not receive FEMA funding after the tornadoes. People are left to clean up their own properties and work with their insurance companies ("those who have insurance" one woman remarked).
Seeing something like this puts our own inconvenient building project into perspective. I say inconvenient because we've had issues with rain, then mud, no phones, no water, lots of noise, loss of easy access to bathrooms....We all knew we'd be inconvenienced by the process of demolition and construction, but you never fully appreciate the inconvenience until you're in full swing of the project.
But you know what? As inconvenient as our situation is, it's nothing compared to what residents of Glade Spring, Virginia are going through. And with no federal assistance, they're going through it pretty much alone. The two women told me they haven't seen much outside help at all. "It's as if the rest of the world doesn't know we're here or what's happened to us" they said.
Experiences like that put things in perspective, don't you think? Here are some pics of Glade Spring, Virginia.
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| The 3rd floor of this old home was blown away. |
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| Lots of blue tarp and roof damage. |
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| This used to be a Wendy's fast food restaurant. |
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| Glad Spring Presbyteryain Church, minus its steeple. |
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| GSPC damage (but I just love the logo on the building!) |
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| GSPC, after some cleanup |
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| This is part of GSPC's cemetery... |
