"It's a real back road."
Indeed, it kind of is, and I wish there were more of them and I wish they were even more back roady--that is, less travelled.
I've only visited the place once, about a year ago, and enjoyed meeting Joe Bergamo, who, indeed, talked about disease in his family (if I remember correctly--and my memory is bad--both he and a son have similar serious illnesses), especially becasue I could easily empathize, as I told him, as my wife had died young a number of years ago, of leukemia.
I mean to go back again, of course.
That day I visited there, it may have been a January day, and we had had a light winter, not much real problem with weather. I live an hour away or so, and over a mountain. The forecast that day called for light rain and near freezing temperatures so I figured I might have some difficulty but the black topped roads from here to about a mile from his place had no ice. I was pleasantly surprised to find this so and was just as unpleasantly surprised, almost as soon as I got onto his gravel topped road, to find myself first on sheet ice and second totally out of control and sliding sideways and backwards rather fast I thought, with the cold and somber looking White River not too far away down a steep slope on my left (which was becoming my right as I spun). I fought that pickup truck and--probably not thanks to me--got out of the problem by just missing a deep culvert on the other side of the road and sliding into a stubble corn field filled with snow: no damage to me, no damage to the truck. I got out, put the hubs in, and drove out of the field, and decided I wouldn't stay too long at Joe's.
No adventure on the way home though.
The road is called the Peavine Road for a little railroad that used to run--maybe still does but I don't think so--there.
Northernsinger