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Excerpt: "The best place to live"


    "We live high up in the hills above Friendly, but hardly anybody knows where that is.  Friendly's near Sistersville, which is halfway between Wheeling and Parkersburg. Used to be, my daddy told me, Sistersville was one of the best places you could live in the whole state.  You ask me the best place to live, I'd say right where we are, a little four-room house with hills on three sides.
    "Afternoon is my second-best time to go up in the hills..., morning's the best, especially in summer.  Early, early morning.  On one morning I saw three kinds of animals, not counting cats, dogs, frogs, cows, and horses.  Saw a groundhog, saw a doe with two fawns, and saw a gray fox with a reddish head.  Bet his daddy was a gray fox and his ma was a red one.
    "My favorite place to walk is just across this rattly bridge where the road curves by the old Shiloh schoolhouse and follows the river.  River to one side, trees the other - sometimes a house or two."


Source: Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Shiloh (1991).