Tennis Anyone? Treasuring the People You Meet

I met them at Big Stone Gap’s “Home Crafts Days” – two affable, middle-aged ladies. They talked about their love of Southwest Virginia, good food and old-time mountain music.
Libby Bondurant and Betty Skeens also had a dream: They wanted to compile a book of recipes and stories along The Crooked Road: Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail.
And they wanted to get to know people, all along the way.
Myself, included.
See, I began writing about The Crooked Road, even before the road was established in 2004. And, for three months, while compiling our newspaper’s 2007 Progress Edition, I got to know more than just a few ins-and-outs of the road and the music it celebrated.
I also got to hear a lot of gossip.
But, that was not what these ladies wanted.
Politics did not matter.
They just liked to cook.
And work together.
These women had met through church and the friendship of their daughters. They worked in a United Methodist Women’s Circle. They liked to collect antiques.
So it must have seemed natural, too, that they would want to collect recipes, like “Apple Dumplings” from Eloise Buckles of Meadowview.
Jim and Annette Goode at Green Cove’s Buchanan Inn gave them a “Crabbies” concoction while Green Cove’s Mary Blevins tossed in a couple of recipes for parsnips. Sheila and Frank McMurray of Abingdon contributed “Butterscotch Pie.” Tammy Martin of Emory pitched in a recipe for “Chicken Salad Casserole.”
Clearly, now, the music mattered. Both women loved to talk about how they loved to hear a fiddle or a banjo. Still, while they chatted, it was clear the recipes – the food – would be the real tie that wrapped up their journey of “Grazing Along the Crooked Road.”
Finally, that became the title of their self-published project – a $24.95 book that appeared late last year.
To my surprise, I flipped through a copy and found that they had actually used what they had begged me to send them - my own recipe to cook the bluegill that I love to catch on Hidden Valley Lake.
Then on Monday came another surprise: Libby Bondurant sent me an e-mail, saying, “Betty suffered a massive stroke late Thursday night and passed away Friday.”
I continued to read, but with a shiver.
The funeral was planned for Tuesday in Martinsville, Va.
“My heart is breaking, I have lost my good friend (more like a sister), my partner, my travel buddy, and my daily confidant,” Bondurant wrote.
Then, I sat in silence – stunned, once again reminded of the fragility of life.
A moment later, I flipped open their book. And I nearly cried, as I read what they had promised readers on one of the first few pages.
Yes, their cookbook dream had arrived.
But they would never turn the page on the afterword – “to be the most entertaining two old people in the nursing home with anecdotes and tales of mishaps on the road.”