Jersey City to Fort Worth ....Part THREE

We had decided to have Country Music tapes to accompany us on the long drives , but somehow we ended up listening to 'spoken book '' tapes . The first of these was '' Homers Odyessey '' on six hour long tapes .Oh ..no I thought ....but as it turned out because of the well known stories , the rhytm of the words and the soothing tone of the narrator it was a perfect accompanyment....Sooooo 'as dawns rose fingers touched the sky ' we set out on the Thurs, 2nd of July heading for Knoxville , Virginia .
We crossed from Maryland ( sorry Morryland ) into Virginia , West Virginia , ( Kentucky, Nth. Carolina , ?) , Tennessee, passing close to well known towns , such as Charlstown , Clarksburgh , Winston , Salem...and another surprise ...we took a side trip to The Blue Ridge Mountains , and the Shanandoah Valley. Once again I was wary of the hills which became mountains, sharp bends , looking out for wildlife in the wooded landscape ,(a deer ran right across our path on a bend ).
We travelled high up the mountain , with myself expecting the trailer to separate itself from the car at any moment . We stopped at a viewing point overlooking the Shanandoah Valley , and the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance . We were admiring a picturesque ranch-house nestled down in the valley and saying what a lovely place to live when we became conscious of a man about my own age standing close by , smoking a cigarette , and gazing , like ourselves down into the valley .It turned out that he was the owner of the ranch house we were admiring . His name was Paul Lester and he had lived there most of his life , he had spent some time abroad doing his national service in Europe and the far East ....his abiding memory of Paris was not the Eiffle Tower ( a pile of steel girders !) but the fact that people pi**ed in the street , presumably referring to the on-street urinals which were still in use there in the sixties . He told us about the local wild life , the ( deer )huntimg season ran (I think) from October to March , for the first part of the season , hunters were only allowed to use BOW and ARROWS , then old fashioned MUZZLE LOADERS , and only then were modern weapons , seemed to me a fair deal for the deer .However Paul then told us that HE shot deer with a .22 rifle from his porch , deer meat tasks great . He told us that his son was the local Deputy Sherriff. Although he had never been to Ireland , said he hoped to visit one day...he was very interested inthe European Union and the fact that the Euro was used in most European countries now .
As we said our goodbyes we looked down into the valley again and understood why people like Paul would have no incentive to travel anywhere from this peaceful setting....