Kentucky

Dear Plotnikkies, The Great Plotnik has discovered there is Wireless and there is WireLess, or Wireless Lite. Here in Somerset, Ky., once sleepy and now starting to boom (the home across the street from Auntie Melba's, seen above, is now on the market for $95,000, but the guy says he'll take $85K -- he bought it at a tax auction last year for $26K)(that was not a misprint), Plotnik found a delicious cranberry scone and double latte this morning and feels like he is starting to wake up. But there is no editing software available, and blogs do not post accurately, and everything takes a very long time, so until return to SP, the red-eye has to stay. SOON there will be lovely pictures and a real accounting of Erin's beautiful wedding.



In the meantime, Plot and Duck Slept Lite at Auntie Melba's last night. 'Sleeping' in that back bedroom has been a family joke for years, but things have improved since the Coca-Cola plant moved. Auntie M, Duck's Mom's only sister, is delightful as always, but she had the misfortune to go to a hospital for an MRI a few years ago, and ended up with a Staph infection that hospitalized her for months and just about destroyed her health. She has that iron will, still, but she is very short of breath and is about to go in for dialysis. So things move slower than they used to.

Driving in the rented Chevy from Chattanooga yesterday, Plot and Duck realized you could drive from Miami to Alaska, and if you were to stay on the Interstate you’d get there in a hurry and see nothing. But get off and drive on the old highways, usually paralleling the Interstate, and you begin to get a taste of the country you’ve been driving over, under and around.

So yesterday afternoon, when the Plots took Auntie Melba to visit the old relatives in several local cemeteries, including laying white roses from Erin's bouquet on Duck's parents graves, Plotnik took the Old Old road. Instead of well-paved and graded Route 27, which is filled with Burger Kings and Hardee’s and Krystal Burgers, or the parallel Old Route 27, where the asphalt is a bit more bumpy, where you see Luke’s Auto Repair and Roberson’s BBQ stand and Hair by Cheryl, Auntie Melba directed the little gray Chev a quarter mile beyond that to Old Old Route 27, which was probably an Indian path once and is where the old country cemeteries are, amidst well-mown fields and beat-up blacktop passing over ridges and in and out of hollows.

Antie M showed off the Somerset she knows so well -- like the house her mother, Duck’s Grandmother, rented for 65 years. Yes, Vera Cross Crabtree paid rent on the same small house in Somerset, Kentucky, for 65 years. Plotnik asked Auntie Melba if she knew how much the rent was when Mother Crabtree first rented it and how much it was when she died.

“Well, Honey,” said Auntie Melba, “when she first rented the apartment she gave twelve dollars and a half a month. When she died it was twenty six dollars.”

Aunt Melba says "hafe" for half and "full as a tick" and lots of Kentuckyisms, but her son Jimmy Murphy, the fabled Murph of Murph's Speed Shop and Off-Road (ask to see the t-shirts), stayed up with Plot and Duck last night talking about hunting for turkeys, and his lilting voice and his long stories about -- well, turkeys, usually -- made Plot want to pick up a camera and head right out into the turkey blind with him. If he'd asked, Plot would have gone.

But back to Mother Crabtree's house -- yes, the landlord raised the rent a TOTAL of $13.50 a month in almost seven decades. Oh, those rapacious landlords.



Yesterday afternoon was spent showing Melba Baby I photos. “I have nay-ver seen such eyes,” Melba says, and neither Duck nor Plot could disagree.