Light On Dark Water

A Tour of Greenbrier

I’m not sure how well this is going to work, but let’s give it a try. I discovered a week or two ago that Google Maps Street View now includes Greenbrier (when I looked a year or so ago it didn’t). The image below is the view from heart of downtown Greenbrier: the center (more or less) of the intersection of County Road 10 and Greenbrier Road. You’re looking due east. If you click repeatedly on either the left or the right arrow in that directional circle in the upper left of the picture, you’ll turn yourself all the way around without moving from that spot, and get a look at the entire place. When you get back to the due-east position and proceed forward along that road, the first driveway on the right that you get to will be that of the house that I’ve been referring to as my grandparents’ house. (When I was 9 we moved there, but that part of the story is yet to come. One of my sisters and her husband live there now.) You’ll have to click a lot, as the driveway is about a quarter of a mile (.4km) down the road. The next driveway is the house that belonged to the aunt and uncle with whom I was mostly living at this point in the story.

Since the view is limited to what could be photographed from a car on the road, you can’t really see the houses, or much of the farm. But if you stand in the crossroads and go straight south on Greenbrier Road, everything on your left for a mile or so (1.6km) belongs to the family farm.

Clicking on the “View Larger Map” button takes you to Google Maps, where you can get a bigger view. That might be a good idea anyway, as I think navigation may be faster there.

Unfortunately the images are sort of dim and blurry. But this is really not dramatically different from the way the place looked in the 1950s and ’60s. Some things are different, and there is more pavement, but a time traveller from 1960 would recognize it.

View Larger Map

Maclin Horton

10 responses to “A Tour of Greenbrier”

  1. Janet

    Boy, I never knew you could get carsick sitting at your desk.
    AMDG

    Reply
  2. Dale Nelson

    It’s so flat, and with the trees looking like shelter belts/windbreaks, that really it looks like scenes around here in east central North Dakota.

    Reply
  3. Mac

    You know, Dale, I thought earlier that ND (or SD) might be a better comparison. And thank you for the word “windbreak”–I kept thinking there was a word for those clumps of trees and just couldn’t bring it to mind. I better finish this book before old age takes my ability to do so.

    Reply
  4. Mac

    That’s really sad, Janet. You’re in the league with Karen.

    Reply
  5. Janet Cupo

    Well, at least I’m in good company. I don’t generally get carsick in the car, though.
    AMDG

    Reply
  6. Janet

    That link is really aggressive. It wants to be front and center all the time.
    AMDG

    Reply
  7. Louise

    It reminds me of the Hay Plain (in NSW). We don’t really have much in the way of plains here in Tasmania.

    Reply
  8. Anne-Marie

    I had never thought of the South as flat.

    Reply
  9. Mac

    Yes, most of the South below Tennessee is really pretty flat. Most of Alabama, especially south of Birmingham, at least half of Georgia, most of Mississippi, most of Louisiana, all of Florida (geographically if not culturally south), much of east Texas…. The area I’m talking about here is very close to the Tennessee-Alabama border, within a few miles of the Tennessee river (quite a large river), and on what was once its flood plain. The foothills of the Appalachians are actually pretty close, and can be seen from my old home, though maybe not in these images.

    Reply
  10. me

    Texas. only have 30 seconds. bye

    Reply

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