Pete Seeger – "Way Down Yonder in the Paw Paw Patch" (1959)

Where, oh where, is pretty little Susie?

Way down yonder in the pawpaw patch

On the first two days of my recent three-day guided bike tour, I and my ten fellow bikers rode on the Great Allegheny Passage or “GAP” trail – an unpaved but relatively smooth rail trail that begins in Pittsburgh, PA, and ends in Cumberland, MD.

On day three, we rode the westernmost 30 miles of the C&O Canal towpath – which was bumpier and, in places, muddier.

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We left our Cumberland hotel and hit the C&O bright and early on a gorgeous September day.  Unfortunately, there were several major mudholes on the towpath, and a couple of our group’s members took a tumble as a result.

The C&O Canal towpath

The trail was drier and a little smoother after the first ten miles, but it was still a slower ride than the day before – that’s because the part of the GAP Trail that we had ridden on the previous day features a 1.5% downhill grade, while the C&O towpath is purt near level.

Factor in the fatigue that we were all feeling after riding 75 miles in our first two days, and you can understand why we were happy to get the damned ride over with.

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Our guides laid out lunch just before the towpath passed through the Paw Paw Tunnel, which was by far the most interesting thing we saw on our day three ride.

The Paw Paw Tunnel is a 0.6-mile-long structure that was built to bypass a series of five horseshoe bends along the Potomac River.  If the towpath had followed the twists and turns of the Potomac rather than going through the tunnel, it would have added more than five miles to the length of a canal trip.

The western entrance to the Paw Paw Tunnel

Work on the tunnel began in 1836, and it was supposed to take two years to complete.  In fact, it took 14 years to finish and cost almost 20 times as much as it was supposed to.  

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The towpath within the Paw Paw Tunnel is extremely narrow, and the tunnel isn’t lighted.  I had a headlight for my bike, but it was what a Louisiana friend of mine would call a piss-po’ headlight.

I rode a short distance within the tunnel just to say I had, then walked the rest of the way.

Inside the Paw Paw Tunnel

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If you’re wondering where the Paw Paw Tunnel’s name comes from, it comes from the pawpaw tree, which is native to eastern North America.

In 1541, Spanish explorers reported that native Americans cultivated the pawpaw tree for its fruit, which has a very soft texture and tastes vaguely like a banana.  (Maybe that’s why it’s also called the Indian Banana, the West Virginia Banana, the Hoosier Banana, the Appalachian Banana, the Ozark Banana, etc.)   

Chilled pawpaws were a favorite dessert of George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson grew pawpaw trees at Monticello.  

Our guide gathered a few pawpaw fruits from trees growing between the C&O towpath and the Potomac, and sliced them up for us to sample:  

To be perfectly honest, the pawpaw doesn’t do much for me.   

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After our pawpaw-tasting session was over, the guides loaded our bikes on to the roof of our van.  We then loaded ourselves in the van and settled back for the hour-and-a-half drive back to Ohiopyle, PA, where we had parked our cars at the beginning of our trip.

We said our goodbyes and hit the road to drive to our respective homes in Colorado, Oklahoma, Tennessee, New Jersey, and Maryland.

In my case, I hit the Falls City Pub and had one for the road first.  (Yes, I said one – not that it’s any of your business.)

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“Way Down Yonder in the Paw Paw Patch” is an American folk song that’s over 100 years old.

Click here to listen a 1959 recording by the legendary folksinger Pete Seeger, his daughter Mika, and the Rev. Larry Eisenberg.

Click on the link below to buy a recording of the song by Burl Ives from Amazon: