Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 17, 1993 TAG: 9303170281
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: COPPER HILL LENGTH: Medium
RURAL FOLKS PLOW, SLED, COPE
SOME FOLKS in Western Virginia were just starting to dig their way out of the snow on Tuesday. But freezing temperatures kept the roads icy, so in Floyd County, people were doing their grocery shopping by horseback and sled.
Suzanne O'Connell went sledding Tuesday, but not for fun.
For groceries.
Oh, not that she didn't have fun skidding her way down snow-covered Pine Forest Road in Floyd County. She squealed and hollered just like a kid as she whooshed down the last frozen stretch, her dogs yapping all the way and her son leaping into a snowbank to avoid getting rammed by his mom's out-of-control sled.
But this was a business trip, and the business Tuesday was stocking up.
"We wanted to live in the country!" O'Connell said by way of explanation, as she stood gasping for breath.
She got her wish, all right. Floyd County is about as country as country gets.
She also got snowed in.
And Tuesday was the first day that many folks in rural and rugged sections of Western Virginia were able to dig their way out of the snow left by the blizzard of '93.
In some places Tuesday, the state road crews pushed their way through for the first time. But up on Bent Mountain - and no doubt countless other communities in rural Virginia - folks didn't wait for the government. They banded together to take care of themselves, and their neighbors.
"A lot of the back roads up here have been opened by local people with their own equipment," said Ray Smith, who runs Smith's Grocery and Hardware in Copper Hill along with his wife, Diann.
Of course, at least one dairy farmer at Copper Hill had a special incentive; the milk truck got stuck at his place on Friday and wasn't able to budge with its load until Monday.
Regardless of who opened the roads, what some people found Tuesday wasn't pretty: After the snowplows went through, the ice remained, so many country roads - especially those in shady spots - remained treacherous at best, impassable at worst.
For some hardy folks in Floyd County, that wasn't a problem. Smith's store hummed with customers, all clamoring for the three essentials of snowbound living - kerosene, bread and milk.
Some braved the roads in pickup trucks and four-wheel-drive vehicles. Other eased along on tractors.
"We even had two families ride in on horseback," said Diann Smith.
And then there was O'Connell, who had the most inventive solution.
She phoned in her grocery order to the Smiths, and then arranged for a neighbor, Eddie Conner, to pick it up and deliver it as far as he could in his battered '51 Ford pickup.
She agreed to sled the rest of the way and meet him.
In the dying light of Tuesday afternoon, the rendezvous took place, on a slushy corner of Copper Hill Road.
"They sold out of sausage," O'Connell shouted in mock horror as she sorted through the box of groceries. "My menu went to hell!"
The inspection completed, she plopped down in a snowbank to rest and popped a beer to fortify herself for the mile-plus sledding trip back home. She figures it will be enough food to last two or three more days of snowbound weather.
Her neighbor tried to console her that things weren't so bad.
"This used to be a way of life in Floyd County 'til the last two or three years, when we haven't had any snow," Conner said. "We used to have to do this all the time. Back in the '60s, we had so much snow they had to tunnel under it to get the vehicles through."