Waterloo
©1986 Lori Lorenz
The hills of Southern Ohio and West Virginia are full of little communities, places that have escaped the hustle and bustle of larger cities and towns, and still retain the simple charm that they had 100 or more years ago. The winding roads follow the Scioto River South to the Ohio. Chesapeake and Huntington look across the river at one another, and at the thousands of people who travel back and forth between them.
My family has roots all over Southern Ohio and WVa. I live in Columbus, and I love it. But there is no better feeling for me than to travel down 23, or 104, and feel the way the sky opens up to show me the places I knew as a child. One of those places is Waterloo. My grandparents, who were originally from Logan, West Virginia, lived there in the late 60's and early 70's, when I was in grade school. Mom and dad would pile my brothers, my sister, and me in the car on Fridays when Dad got off work, and we would drive down to see Mom's family. She had sisters in Jackson, Chesapeake, and Big Creek, WVa, and a brother in Huntington. Her other brothers lived in Illinois and Pennsylvania. Grandma and grandma had a house on a dusty road at Waterloo, in Lawrence County, Ohio. The house looked very much, at least to my childhood recollection, like the house at the top of the page. I remember being fascinated by it, and everything in it. I love the old antique furniture, the way the quilts and blankets smelled, my grandma's chicken and dumplings. I remember that my siblings and my cousins would be allowed to go up to the attic, but I wasn't, and it bitterly disappointed me. They also had the run of the barn across the road, which they told me was haunted. I totally believed them. Everything there felt haunted to me, a 6 or 7 year old girl with buck teeth and wire rimmed glasses who would rather stay inside with the adults than go outside with the other kids. I wanted to hear the stories, and the music that inevitably came forth when any 2 or more were gathered in the kitchen, the living room, around the table. I wanted to look at the ancient photos on the wall, like the huge one of my grandma when she was a baby, standing in a rickety wooden walker with wheels. It was in an oval frame, and the glass over it was domed like a big bubble, giving the picture an almost 3D effect. It seemed like all the sepia toned photos had been drawn on. What looked like black marker outlining eyes and hair. I wasn't allowed to draw on photos at home, and I drew on EVERYTHING. I couldn't figure out how whoever did that to grandma's picture didn't get in big trouble.
Big trouble meant a hairbrush to your backside. Or worse, a switch. People today would call it child abuse, but I don't. The thought of grandpa telling me to go get one off a tree so he could swat one of us was enough to keep us all on the spotless road to Glory.
Of course it was hard to find time to get in trouble because there was food. Lots and lots of food. Chicken. Taters. Gravy. Hot rolls. Green beans. Banana puddin. Cold Orange Crush and Co'cola. Sometimes Yoo Hoo's. And the best ice cream I ever had, served up in a pretty little china bowl with flowers on it. It was pure Heaven at grandma and grandpa's house. Except for the outhouse and chamber pots. That's another story for another time.
I wrote Waterloo about these weekend trips, where we left home on Friday and came home Sunday night so dad could go to work. The trips were too short then, and too long ago now that my long wavy hair is short and gray. I look more like my grandma every day. And the memories of those weekends, laying in the backseat while dad maneuvered the car around hilly hairpin roads in the dark, are more and more precious to me with every passing day. I go back often in my mind. My heart is still there, probably one of the ghosts that live in the barn.
"It was a big gray house with a big gray barn,
And a light on a pole where the bats flew around
I keep a treasured picture of it in my heart
And every road in my memory leads me to
A place called Waterloo"
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