Lawrence Haley and I spent an hour or so driving around Ashland looking at many of the sites where Ed had lived in town. Not one single residence was still standing. As we visited each site, I noticed that the Haley residences seemed to have been in poor areas of town…although I didn’t suggest this to Lawrence.

     “They never did own a home,” Lawrence said of his parents. “They always rented. About eight different places in Ashland and one in Catlettsburg that I can remember.”

     In 1933, according to city directories, Ed and Ella lived at 805 45th Street. The next year, Ella received a postcard at 1030 45t Street. The 45th Street area of Ashland — renamed Blackburn Avenue in recent years — was a long street situated to the back of town, with schools and churches intermixed occasionally with small residences. It was the longest street in town.

     Lawrence guided me to 37th Street, also known as Ward Hollow, where the Haleys settled around 1937-38. Ward Hollow, I discovered, was recently cleared entirely of homes and filled with dirt as part of some planned business development. It was nothing like Lawrence or Curly Wellman remembered it.

     “This was a two-lane road at that time,” Lawrence said, looking up the hollow where he once lived. “And they was a bunch of houses sat up on the bank. There wasn’t too many trees up through there. About twelve to fifteen houses — small homes, twenty-five or thirty foot long. We lived in a three-bedroom house. I was just a kid then.”

     In 1944, the Haleys moved downtown to 105 17th Street, the spot where Haley made his home recordings. From this location, presently occupied by a dull gas building and a partially empty lot near the floodwall, Haley could easily walk up 17th Street past City Hall to the post office or Central Park.

     In 1947, the Haleys were briefly at 5210 45th Street, before settling at 1040 Greenup Avenue. Two years later, Ella was listed in city directories at 932 45th Street. Today, this spot is almost wiped out, although a Little Caesar’s pizza is on the corner of a modern building at 933 45^th Street.

     Around 1950, the Haleys lived at 2144 Greenup Avenue. This spot, where Ed Haley died in 1951, is the current site of a Boyd County Ford parking lot and Pathways, Inc. “They’ve got a mental health center there where Pop died,” Lawrence said.

     In 1952, Ella lived at 932 45th Street.

     As Lawrence and I made our way around town, I suggested going to see his older brother Noah who had recently moved back to town.

     “Well that’ll be fine John, but if he’s playing cards I ain’t even gonna go around him because that’s one of his vices,” he said. “He used to go down there to Covington, Kentucky, some and lose his shirt. Two or three shady people have been after him to collect his debts.”

     It seemed as if each of the Haley children had some kind of a major hang-up, which kept me thinking about Milt Haley’s genetics — as well as Ed’s. I asked Lawrence if Noah was a drinker and he said, “He doesn’t drink any more. I think he’s got to the point where drinking aggravates his system too much.” There was also the restlessness. Milt Haley came to Harts Creek from “over the mountain” — probably the Tug Valley — and married a local girl. After the trouble with Al Brumfield, he hid out in Kentucky. Ed Haley, perhaps taking a genetic cue from his father, left Harts Creek at a young age and roamed throughout West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. Even after marrying and settling down in Ashland, it was a Haley ritual to always be on the go — moving through town or taking off on a season-long jaunt. Lawrence Haley did not seem to “inherit” that desire, preferring to live the quiet life of a laborer and postman in Ashland. But his half-brother Ralph had went overseas during World War II and then on to live in Cincinnati. His brother Clyde had been all over the United States — everywhere from Alaska to New Orleans. Likewise, Jack had moved away to Cleveland and Mona had been in different cities in Ohio.

     Noah, a veteran of the Pacific Theater and longtime resident of Cleveland, was apparently a roamer, too. “He moves around,” Lawrence said. “The last place he lived was up on Winchester Avenue in an apartment out over a garage. He’s getting ready to go out to California, I guess. He’s about 71.”