Where I Trace My Bloodline

 

"In the deep dark hills of eastern Kentucky, that's the place where I trace my bloodline..." That's the  opening line to Patty Loveless' You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive. A haunting bluegrass tribute to the coal mining communities around Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia. For this upcoming trip, my practice run for a much broader and far reaching motorcycle journey for the fall of 2022, I thought that line to be very fitting, and so I have used it for the title to this small journey in to the past, in search of my namesake. 

Growing up, I remember my father talking about living in Houston Hollow, Kentucky and stories of my grandparents and great grandparents time spent there. I could never find anything on the internet about Houston "Holler" and just assumed it to be a small village in a mountain setting that was absorbed in to a neighboring town or swallowed up by the pine trees and Rhododendron. But then one day, I found it! These days it is simply a road through the middle of the holler and...it's in Ohio! 

My father was born in 1948 in St. John's, Newfoundland and moved as a baby to Greenup, Kentucky. Now Greenup is important in this journey as most all other known members of my paternal family were born there, and there they lived until an opportunity to get out of the coal mines and in to the automotive industry would take them north, across the river to Lucasville, Ohio and...Houston Hollow. 

This trip will be ten days on the back of my new BMW F900XR. It will take me through Virginia and West Virginia, in to Greenup and up through Houston holler. It will take me to the place and places where I trace my bloodline. I look forward to finding out more about myself and sharing it here, with anyone who cares to join me...