There are many discoveries to be made along the Blue Ridge Parkway, not least among which is a family at last seeing a part of its heritage selected from hundreds of photos for public display.
Photo Above: Children of Woodrow and Lavada Golding pose at the welcome sign at Rocky Knob Visitor Center, 2015. Left to right, oldest to youngest: Shirley Williams, Janet Breen, John Golding, Eula Walters, Ernie Golding, Kay Wood, Nancy Pharr and Allison Golding.
Photos Courtesy of Eula Golding Walters.
Next time you are enjoying a drive on the scenic Blue Ridge Parkway near Mabry Mill in Floyd County, Virginia, and decide to take a break or hike a trail, I hope you’ll make a stop at The Rocky Knob Visitor Center, located at milepost 169.
A rather large information display case stands near the entrance of the center. Enclosed behind the protective glass of the case are photos that represent life along the path of the parkway during its general construction era.
In one of the pictures a young woman, wearing a pretty dress, is perched on top of a haystack with a pitchfork in her hands, while a young man is using his own hay fork to lift the fresh cut and cured hay up to her.
The handmade wagon, hooked to the new, 1950 Farm-All Cub tractor, holds the hay. The woman is placing a forkful of hay around the center pole of the haystack, soon to tramp it down with her feet to keep the hay from shifting, causing the stack to lose its shape and become unbalanced.
That young couple stacking hay on a sunny Saturday morning is my parents, Woodrow and Lavada Golding. The tractor had recently been bought from the sale of their two work horses who had served them well for several years.
They owned a small farm near milepost 213, which is today a part of the Blue Ridge Music Center, six miles from the North Carolina state line. They and their then-four children worked the farm from daylight to dark, barely meeting their basic needs.
The parkway ran through the middle of our 65-acre farm. As we worked in the fields, we kids entertained ourselves by waving and yelling at the parkway visitors as they passed by. Most waved back and blew their horns at us. Some even stopped to chat and buy the chinquapins we had for sale, picked from the roadside bushes.
Those visitors often took pictures of us as we stuck out an arm to passing cars, holding the snuff glass full of chinquapins and yelling, “Chinquapins for sale… 10 cents a glass!” Others stopped and took pictures as we worked in the hay, hoed corn or picked up wagon loads of rocks from the fields.
That is how the 1951 photo on the information sign came about. On that late-summer Saturday morning, Mother and Daddy were dressed and ready to begin the 12-mile walk to Galax, the nearest town, hoping some kind soul would pick them up on the way.
Daddy, worried that it might rain on the freshly cured hay in the field, decided that they should put it up before they left for town. That’s how Mother came to be on top of a haystack in a dress.
She was mortified when a motorist stopped and took their picture. Although we watched for it, that picture never showed up in our mailbox as others often did. The incident was forgotten and life moved on.
The years passed and we children, who now numbered eight, grew up and scattered hither and yon, eager to begin our own lives and grow our own families. Mother and Daddy sold the farm in 1987, and spent the rest of their 64 years together hosting family get-togethers, traveling, sharing the bounty of their large garden and volunteering at the local Ruritan Club.
Years after they were gone, our youngest sister happened to make a stop at the Rocky Knob Visitor Center. It’s an understatement to say that she was both surprised and confused to realize that she was looking at the faces of her parents, in a photo taken 10 years before she was born. She took her own pictures of the photo to confirm with the rest of us that the young couple was indeed our parents. Of course each of us had to make the trip to Rocky Knob to see this iconic mystery for ourselves.
It was with great pride and pleasure to learn from parkway officials that the picture was chosen from the many hundreds that had been sent to them by various travelers on the parkway through the years. They had no information on the picture, so were pleased to learn who the husband/wife team was as well as the history behind it. They told me that it was the most popular photo in their files, and that they often wondered why the woman on the haystack was wearing a dress. Also mentioned was that many who saw it remarked about what a handsome couple they were, and that Mother looked like a queen on her throne. I certainly agree!
The next summer, 2015, 72 years after the picture was taken, the descendants of Woodrow and Lavada Golding met at Rocky Knob for our annual family picnic. It seemed only fitting that the 75 children, grand- and great-grandchildren and spouses should gather from far and near to remember and honor the two most important and influential people we would ever know and love. They were excellent examples of the Greatest Generation, and taught us well, setting the pathway for us all to become honest, generous, hardworking and productive citizens. I hope we made them proud.
The story above first appeared in our May / June 2024 issue.
