The Glomawr Bridge
THE GLOMAWR BRIDGE
by
Doug Epperson
I recently received a picture of the Glomawr Bridge that took me back in time. Just looking at the picture of the old bridge with the North Fork of the Kentucky River flowing underneath and the green mountains towering above it brought back a lot of pleasant memories for me. I was born and grew up less than a quarter mile from the bridge.
I have noticed on my recent trips to Perry County that the structure of the bridge has undergone some changes. When I lived there in the 1940�s and 1950�s, the bridge had what resembled a concrete fence on both sides at each end. This �fence� is gone now, but was once a favorite sitting spot on both ends of the bridge. At one end of the bridge was the road that led to Fourseam and on the other end the road to Glomawr. Galley Collins�s grocery store was located on the Fourseam end and Homer Hatfield�s store on the Glomawr end. Men and boys would travel from both Fourseam and Glomawr and surrounding communities and sit on the concrete ends of the bridge. This was a �male� thing, so girls and women did not participate. This was a favorite gathering spot for folks to spend a �lazy� Sunday afternoon. Just talking and telling jokes as they watched the �world� go by, up and down old Hwy 15. You�ve got to remember, this was before television was available in most homes in that part of the country and there wasn�t a lot to do for entertainment.
When I lived there, I attended Cornett Hill Grade School, so I had to walk across the bridge twice a day. There was no pedestrian walkway on the bridge, so you actually had to walk on the highway with the cars and trucks. You always made sure that you walked facing the traffic so nothing could �sneak� up on you. It was scary when you were young and had to cross the bridge by yourself. You had the cars on one side and you were looking way down on the river below on the other side. Back then drivers seemed to slow down when there was someone walking on the bridge and that probably avoided a lot of accidents. One of my memories of the bridge was when the old steam engines used to run on the railroad tracks underneath one end of the bridge. When a train was passing underneath, cars had to stop because the drivers could not see for the smoke and cinders flying up. If we were walking to or from school and saw a train coming, we would run onto the bridge, cover our eyes to keep the cinders out, and let the smoke just billow up around us.
The old bridge is still in operation even though the new highway 15 has passed it by. A lot of things have changed in the 47 years since I last lived in Perry County. It used to be quite a trip on the old Highway 15 from Hazard to Vicco. It was a 13 mile trek back then on a slow �twisty� and �curvy� two lane highway. Now the trip from Vicco to Hazard is much faster but the building of the new road has done away with a lot of landmarks that I once knew. One of these was the house where I was born and grew up.
Sometimes when I am visiting the area and I am driving from Vicco or Jeff back to Hazard, when I get to the Glomawr Bridge I just make a right turn and go over the bridge. This seems to me as if I am going back in time to the days of my childhood. As I drive across the bridge, I slow down and slowly climb the hill over on the other side, pass the site of the old Cornett Hill School at the top of the hill, slowly drive through Christopher, then Lothair, and on into Hazard. Traveling this quiet stretch of road that once was part of highway 15, where very little has changed over the years and is still very familiar to me, gives me a good feeling that I am truly back home again.
As we age we have a tendency to look at things differently than we did when we were younger. I now see the Glomawr Bridge as not just a structure made of concrete and steel providing a means to cross over the river but rather as a familiar object connecting me to memories of the past.
-Doug Epperson-
Page by Lynda Combs Gipson
Sept 2007