West - by God - Virginia: Appalachia Reflections

By Dan Light

West - by God - Virginia is a homestyle patchwork of tales and recollections that vividly celebrate and embrace the people and culture of West Virginia and Appalachia.

It’s not just the geophysical challenges, the nuance of the dialect, the value system, or the social aspects of human contact that create the culture of Appalachia. Instead, it is all that and much more. Like most of the Appalachian region, West Virginia’s heart beats with a rhythm of unassuming, practical, and country-fried character just waiting to be appreciated and celebrated.

Within a compilation of stories shared for both hill-bred natives and furriners, Dan Light reflects the savoir-fare of Appalachia-in-the-heart while providing an entertaining overview of life in West Virginia. Through the intriguing personalities and places of West Virginia and Appalachia, others will experience a snake-handling church service, confront various local legendary monsters, venture into the coal mines, enjoy a ramp feed, attempt to escape a backwoods panther, run from an approaching train in a railroad tunnel, and travel with a circuit riding preacher.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781532083341

Dan Light

Dan Light was born and raised in West Virginia and has served as a pastor and university professor. He and his wife, Jenny, have been married for fifty-six years and have three children and nine grandchildren. Although Dan’s travels have taken him to thirty-two countries and around the United States, his favorite trips have been to sites in his home state. Dan is also the author of Ten Fresh Takes.

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Copyright © 2019 Dan Light.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-8335-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-8334-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019915154

iUniverse rev. date: 10/17/2019

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter 1 Ginger

Chapter 2 Unincorporated

Chapter 3 Lard

Chapter 4 Capitol Street

Chapter 5 Peeing on the Campfire

Chapter 6 Monsters That Never Die

Chapter 7 Soul Brothers and the Kid

Chapter 8 The Dam Name

Chapter 9 The Puke Trail

Chapter 10 The Best Way to Get There

Chapter 11 Dark as a Dungeon

Chapter 12 The Circuit Rider

Chapter 13 Marrying the Mountain

Chapter 14 Too Much Cob

Chapter 15 The George Washington Handshake

Chapter 16 State Capitol Guide

Chapter 17 Panther Tales

Chapter 18 The Carnival’s in Town

Chapter 19 Snake Handling

Chapter 20 Lickskillet

Chapter 21 Swinging Bridges

Chapter 22 Mountain Mama

Chapter 23 Pour Coffee on my Grave

Chapter 24 Big Deck, Little Deck, and Slim Deck

Chapter 25 Close Call Copperheads

Chapter 26 Snipe Hunts and Indian Turnips

Chapter 27 The Best Language in the World

Chapter 28 Chili, Slaw, and Onions

Chapter 29 Boots and Buster

Chapter 30 Fels-Naptha Therapy

Chapter 31 Black Lung

Chapter 32 The Great-Great Blue and Gray

Chapter 33 ‘Shine

Chapter 34 A Street

Chapter 35 Potlucks

Chapter 36 Ramps

Chapter 37 The St. Albans Tunnel

Chapter 38 The C&O

Chapter 39 Mud River

Chapter 40 Parades: Hometown Style

Chapter 41 Morgan’s Museum

Chapter 42 Lovers Leap

Chapter 43 Rock Canyon

Chapter 44 Dead Man’s Curve

Chapter 45 Taps

Notes

Photo Credits

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

T he heart of West-By God-Virginia would not come through to the reader without the gifts of several people who contributed to the book’s completion in a gracious and helpful way. First, loving thanks to my wife Jenny, who encouraged me to get the book written. She gave her sensitive but no-holds-barred constructive criticism as the manuscript developed and to its final edit. To my cousin and accomplished author Judy Light Ayyildiz who read and gave generous guidance to my efforts at composing the book’s contents I convey my profound gratitude. I also express appreciation to James Thompson, Rick Williams, A.J. Leftwich, Brock Loftus, bugler of V.F.W. Post 5578, Madison, West Virginia, and especially my granddaughters Adelaide and Ruby Butler for appearing in the book’s photos. I am indebted to members of my family and friends, living or deceased, who are mentioned in the book and have given it a priceless touch of reality.

FOREWORD

I f you have never set foot in my home state and we happen to make one another’s acquaintance, perhaps on a plane or in a national park or while standing in line at Disneyworld, and I tell you I’m from West Virginia, please don’t ask me if I live near Richmond. Don’t inform me, Oh, I have a friend whose hometown is Newport News. Many of you who are reading this book are probably aware of what I’m about to say, but I’ll say it anyway. If you have ever hung your hat in the Mountain State a sense of duty springs up within you, when the occasion calls for it, to inform anybody, or everybody—tactfully and politely, of course—there is a WEST— by God — Virginia.

Having been born and bred in Almost Heaven, I have an affinity for anecdotes, tales, recollections, and historic narratives about West Virginia and the Appalachian/Alleghany region where she lies among the hills and hollers. What you will experience page by page through this volume is an assortment of stories that comment on people, places and things that relate to the culture and common interest of what mountaineers grew up with. You’ll enjoy articles punctuated with doses of nostalgia, thought provoking observations and a touch of laughs.

WEST-BY GOD-VIRGINIA as a choice for the book’s title, is not meant to be misunderstood as taking the Lord’s name in vain, any more than the phrase Almost Heaven. The expression simply emphasizes the heartfelt insistence of most Mountain State residents that our identity should be set apart from the neighboring Commonwealth of Virginia.

Like most of the Appalachian region, West Virginia possesses a reasonably significant share of urban/suburban sophistication that isn’t all that hard to find, but its heart beats with a rhythm of unassuming, practical, country-fried character that can be positively appreciated and celebrated. As a reader of WEST-BY GOD-VIRGINIA, you will participate in a snake-handling church service, confront various local legendary monsters, venture into the coal mines, enjoy a ramp feed, or try to escape a backwoods panther. While you run from an approaching train in a railroad tunnel, travel with a circuit riding preacher, and experience life with a few intriguing West Virginia personalities, extraordinary and ordinary, it is my hope that finishing each chapter will bring on a hankering to move on to the next.

INTRODUCTION

W hen Spanish explorer, Hernando DeSoto rode into the first mountains he confronted in North America in 1541, he is purported to have named them after the Apalachee tribe of northern Florida. He mistakenly thought the tribe to be the main culture of the entire southeast. Most of the Apalachee probably had little or no clue about the huge range of mountains north of them stretching from today’s northeastern corner of Mississippi northward to southern New York, but the name Appalachia stuck. Geographically and culturally dissimilar from the source of its enduring name, as it is from much of the rest of America, Appalachia is generally typified and portrayed in less than complimentary viewpoints and portrayals. If there is a backside of our nation’s society, the minds of most of Americans would lean in the direction of the Blue Ridge, Smokies, Clinch, Cumberlands and Alleghenies as the locale of lesser sophistication, economic leverage, and respect. Aware of our shortcomings—both obvious and not so apparent—yet appreciative of the best of our culture, those of us who hail from Appalachia have an endearing sense of relationship with our roots framed in the hills that nurture them

The mountains were his masters, wrote Thomas Wolfe in Look Homeward, Angel. They rimmed in life. They were the cup of reality, beyond growth, beyond struggle and death. They were his absolute unity in the midst of eternal change.¹ How true that is for most of us who have been born and raised in West Virginia, or the mountainous parts of neighboring states. The delectable taste from a hillside spring lingers in our recall, and the enchanting vista of smoke-like fog lying so unassuming on or just below a summit stirs us beyond description. Feeling the sweet stroke of a mountain breeze on the cheek I watch it tease the leaves of the pines and the poplars and feed my soul. I’ve often heard the adage You can take the boy out of the mountains, but you can’t take the mountains out of the boy. I second the motion. All in favor say Aye.

Putting your finger on the one dynamic that makes the culture of Appalachia what it is would be like deducing the single component that makes an airplane fly. To suggest that either the wings or the engine or the ailerons individually are the single, necessary requisite that cause a plane to fly is absurd. Putting a 747 in the air, keeping it there, and landing it involves a fusion of indispensable parts. So, it is with understanding Appalachia. It’s not the geophysical challenges of mountains themselves, nor the nuance of the dialect, nor the way in which people perceive, interpret, and understand the world around them. It isn’t just the value system transmitted through generations for the inner well-being of human beings, expressed through language and actions, nor is it the social aspects of human contact, including the give-and-take of socialization, negotiation, and protocol. It’s all that and a lot more thrown in together that defines the Appalachian culture and enables both the hill-bred natives as well as the furriners to come anywhere near comprehending it. The patchwork quilt of stories you will read in this volume are intended to reflect the savoir-fare of Appalachia-in-the-heart. It is mostly set in the West Virginia of the author but framed in the wider embrace of all the territory and populace of mountaineer identity. The gravesites of my ancestors and the fondest of my memories are situated on Appalachian hilltops and hillsides, and in them are stories told and still yet to tell.

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The worn chair in which he rocked away the summer afternoons was situated too far back from the railing.

1

GINGER

W hy Ginger leaned so far forward to spit his tobacco juice into the yard was a curiosity to me. The worn wicker chair in which he rocked away the summer afternoons was situated too far back from the railing. The chance of clearing the top of the porch banister was less than one in a hundred. Besides, Ginger had been blind for the last twenty of his seventy-some years.

Ginger wasn’t his real name. Friends had tagged him with that moniker on some forgotten occasion in his boyhood. I could never bring myself to call him by his nickname. Maybe it was because I was so young and he was so old Ginger did not sound like a granddad kind of name. That was another thing—Ginger was my best friend’s granddad. Before he went blind, as some expressed it, Ginger had been a sign painter. During the years in which he had practiced the trade, many of the signs in our town were his handiwork. A few of them were still around, having survived the ravages of time and weather.

You know the big ‘ICE’ on the icehouse up on ‘B’ Street? he would ask without waiting for a reply. I did that one.

ICE, in huge blue letters decorated with icicles hanging down, seemed to be his proudest accomplishment. It covered half the outside wall facing the street. He had also done the Coulter Feeds sign and CLEARANCE 11’ 10 on the Third Street underpass. If he told us once, he told us a dozen times or more about the locations of his craftsmanship. His grandson and I would always look at each other and roll our eyes when Ginger rehashed the same account for the umpteenth time, but we never stopped him. The eye-rolling was at least some compensation for our suffering, I suppose. No harm in it, anyhow. He couldn’t see our eyes.

The dark curtain that had fallen across the old man’s world had abruptly ended his working days, and now, in the sunset of his life, he stationed himself with predictable regularity on his front porch in the summer and in front of the fireplace in the winter. There he’d chew his Union Workman or puff his pipe, and those who listened—and a few who didn’t—would find themselves regaled with Grandpa’s yarns.

Somewhere along the way Ginger had developed a love affair for the flat-top guitar, managing enough skill to pick a few tunes. His well-worn instrument with its fret board grooved from years of fingering the chords to tunes such as Red River Valley and Wildwood Flower was always handy.

Mandy, where’s that git-fiddle?, Ginger would yell through the house. He knew exactly where it was but that expression was about the closest he ever got to politely asking his wife for anything. She never answered. Simply repeating a longstanding ritual, she appeared in a minute