THE ROAD WATERFALL

waterfall road, the back side

If your computer will do video, here is a drive down Waterfall Road from where the pavement ends at the top of the mountain to the stop sign at the bottom. It's the unpaved part of the road. About the same distance is paved. That's the part I live on. It used to be the most beautiful road I'd ever seen anyplace. They paved it and it's like any highway. My dog took naps in the road 30 years ago. It's no longer safe to have pets. Any time one of the remaining cats, Tapo or Caterpillar, is outside I'm pleading with them in my mind to stay out of the road. They know to, but I still am concerned. The unpaved part of the road is much better that it was back then. Then, I couldn't have driven down it with only one hand on the steering wheel.

When they paved the populated half of the road, they smoothed the back part of the road, which is the old wagon road to Air Bellows, for the people with new cars at Deer Track. The road has gone back to about like it was before, rutted by rain that toward the bottom makes a torrent that eats canyons out of the road and the side ditch. Toward the bottom you can see how the road is 4-5 feet below ground level. Ruts the wagons made in the mud must have flowed like a firehose by the time the rain water reached the bottom. Every year was at least one gullywasher rain. We haven't had one in several years. It must have been a river at the bottom of the road where it washed away. all that earth.

Tom Pruitt told me the name of the road was Waterfall Road. He called that back part of the road The Waterfall. The road had a number then, 1131. In the time when the county roads were given names, Louise Farmer told me the road had 3 possible names under consideration, one of them Tom Pruitt Road. At the time I was thinking it will be different in a few years when nobody at Air Bellows remembers who Tom Pruitt was. I suggested the name Tom had told me was the road's name, and it took. I've regretted sticking my nose into it many times since then. it identifies where the waterfalls are and my parking space at home a public parking lot like it's a state park. I don't mind it to a point.

A few years ago it got so out of hand with Chamber of Commerce and b&bs sending people there. There would be a dozen cars on weekends. It was still ok until it started turning into a teenage hangout place. Things came up missing around here, so I had to put a stop to it. I was advised by people I knew who had a place on the beach at Jacksonville. Their yard, their driveway, their water hose, were all public property. They told me there comes a time when it will be so far out of hand it's too late to stop it or slow it down. It's picking back up again, but it's not objectionable. I've often thought it would have been better to leave it as they had it. At the time I was thinking about the beauty of the name, not for identification to make my home a state park.

I've messed everything up. I tried to upload a video of driving down Waterfall Road, but it didn't take, An "error" of some sort. Now I can't get a single picture up because the video thing is still running for some reason, though it didn't take. Whatever. It thinks it's uploading a video. This could go on all night. I'm at a loss for what to do, so I'll do nothing. Will go read for awhile and come back in a little bit to see if the computer has stopped whatever it is doing that has me blocked were getting an image is concerned.

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