Editor's Note: The following is the first installment of a new weekly column by local writer Lon Leatherland, who has written other articles for the newspaper in the past. Questions or comments on the column may be e-mailed to news@alleghanynews.com or sent to the newspaper office.

You may have read the introduction and skimmed this column a time or two; but right about now you're deciding whether to read on or skip to the want ads.

Hey, we're not talking about life or death decisions, folks, but maybe you should keep reading. Here's why:

This column's about you and perhaps your family's family, from times long past. It'll include things echoing the lengthy piece on Glade Valley School, and the light-hearted one about Alleghany's streets, roads and lanes. Some will be humorous; others, less so. You'll learn about places you've passed scores of times and always wondered about, but never discovered. You'll read of the way things were, once upon a time, and the folks who made them so. You'll meet interesting people – some who've lived here for generations and others who moved in last year, five years ago, or twice that long. But the driving force in this meandering column is you and Alleghany County.

My wife and I have pictures of our kids standing on the rocks atop Doughton Park a long, long time ago. They weren't even teenagers then. One now works with mothers-to-be and seriously ill children at Duke Medical Center. The other two are likewise career professionals, joyously married, and have kids of their own. But Alleghany's ridges and valleys bore my boot prints when our young ‘uns were just tots. The New River and I were friends when all the riverside houses in twenty winding miles could be counted on your ten fingers. Like the river, this county flows through my veins. Though not blood-kin to this wonderful land, I'm surely sewn to it by the heart.

My qualifications knapsack holds no college degrees, but it's stuffed with a love for stringing words together. This graying graduate from Chattanooga High School's Class of '61 finished 154 students short of dead last in a senior class of 500. That's nothing to brag about. It's just fact. Though licensed as a lay pastor by the folks at Sparta First Baptist Church, I've never sought ordination. A pulpit's not my place. That's where multitudinous preachers far more capable than me proclaim

God's word and hopes for His people. I've helped out a few times at funerals, but as often as not, it's been for total strangers.

A year or so from now, it'll be good to discover that some of you have read this piece on occasion and laughed a little, or thought deep thoughts about things that matter. Between now and then, though, you and I need to become friends. I'd like to hear y'all tell of your folks and their folks generations before we were born.

The long-gone residents of Basin Cove captured my heart like that three decades ago. I've heard the stories Edna Caudill told her granddaughter about growing up in Martin and Janie's cabin, and how the kids weren't allowed inside the house on scorching summer days because rattlesnakes slithered inside to escape the heat. I've laid my hands on Grandpa Harrison Caudill's living room chimney, and sat beside what's left of his kitchen fireplace, imagining him sitting in that very spot three-quarters of a century before, teaching what he'd learned to some of his 22 kids.

Alice Adams Caudill's grave near the old school/church building is decorated with short stacks of flat, round pebbles. The few small plastic flowers and a weathered American flag draw my footsteps as if I'd known her before the 1915 flood took her life. Lenny Famon Caudill, grandson of Alice's husband and Martin Caudill's great-grandson, makes regular trips to the Cove. He tells of similar emotions as he connects places to people he's met through the Caudill Family Reunion website.

However, he can't imagine a total stranger becoming so involved in the lives of people who aren't kin to him. One afternoon, Lenny called to ask if I knew of any old home sites atop Brooks Knob, just off the Parkway. A couple of weeks later, I went to see. In an area roughly the size of a football field, there was nothing but a rock fire circle and a faded, flattened beer can. The hike back up Doughton Park's steepest trail only added insult to injury.

You and I've passed on the street more times than we could count. We buy groceries together, bank together, speak to each other at the post office, pay our taxes, and pump high-priced gasoline into the tanks of thirsty cars. But we're still just neighborly strangers who sometimes greet each other like distant cousins.

Sparta's the friendliest place I've ever known, and that includes scores of cities in five states. My working-for-wages job draws me to local businesses, as well as an occasional trip off the mountain. A fondness for good barbecue does the same for my favorite spot just twenty minutes northwest of town.

We're fortunate to be astraddle of the line separating out-of-control commercialization from virtual obscurity. Our broad, rolling views bring a welcome peace for visitors who slow down long enough to enjoy them. But our county's delightful character will draw them back. That's the same character that'll make this column worth a slice of your reading time.