[caption id="attachment_230" align="alignright" width="270"] Photo Credit: John Hamill[/caption]
The Blue Ridge Parkway turns 75 year. For those raised near this canopied roadway, it's hard to imagine life before it. Where did you take Sunday drives? Hike? Make out?
Originally a public works project during the Great Depression, the 355 mile Parkway has become the gateway to the Blue Ridge for millions of visitors and an easy retreat for locals.
I have a few favorite Parkway memories. I bet you do too. Please post a comment telling us all about them.

In Appalachia, we cherish our national parks -- Great Smoky Mountains and Shenandoah -- but they came at a cost. Families were moved, homesteads taken, and communities broken when the parks were created. The Knoxville News Sentinel shares the perspective of two elderly cousins on all of this -- Alie Newman Maples, 89, and Cleo Newman, 91:
"'They always talk about the little children who gave their nickels and dimes to build the park. What about the little children who cried because they left? I cried,' says Maples."

I just discovered two great clips from the North Carolina Language and Life Project. One illustrates Cherokee language; the other focuses on the dialect of neighboring whites.
The differences are interesting, but watch for similarities -- the accents, the clothes, a passion for home, and, in both clips, an express preference to be with their own people.
Also, there's a thrilling occurrence of "peckerwood," which may be the funniest word in all of English.
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