The River Blaine: A Story of Appalachia

By Don Adkins

The times and trials of a West Virginia coal miner and his family living in the Alleghany mountains along The River Blaine. The poverty in that area during the late 1950s and the daily dangers of working in the coal mines, along with the simplicity of the people, make this a compelling read. An unexpected beautiful love story develops of tremendous proportions""one you shall never forget.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644585696

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The River Blaine

A Story of Appalachia

Don Adkins

Copyright © 2019 by Don Adkins

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Start

Chapter 1

My name is Emily McLeod. I went to visit my grandfather John Adams today. He is now in his mid-nineties and is mostly bound to a wheelchair. The family is getting him ready to go into a nursing home. At first, he was very much opposed to the idea, but after time, he accepted the fact that it would probably be best for all concerned. I plan on spending the day with him by helping him sort out some of his personal belongings that he wants to keep.

He has led a very full life from entering the Air Force at a young age to becoming an iron worker on coast-to-coast projects. He’s been a farmer, cattle man, horse trainer, songwriter, musician, pastor, preacher, and Bible teacher. Since his retirement many years ago he has been living on his farm in Missouri. Often he has entertained us at family gatherings to everyone’s delight.

He asked me if I would go upstairs and bring some things down out of the attic, as there were two trunks and some other items he wanted. I brought the trunks down, which were quite large while one being very heavy and also a small wooden box bound with a strap.

He told me the lighter trunk was full of old family photos that the family could sort through and divide up as we chose to do so. The heavier trunk was full of family heirlooms from back in his mother’s and grandmother’s day. And we could divide those up sometime when all the family was present.

I asked him about the smaller wooden box with the strap on it as to what it contained. He gently took it in his gnarled, old hands and loosed the strap from it. Very carefully, he lifted the lid, and I saw a very beautiful young lady in a magnificent white wedding gown looking back at me. I asked him who she was, and he said, It’s a very long story, but I will tell it to you if you like.

This is the story as he told me. He said…

*****

It was in the winter of 1956 when I first met the folks who lived down in the valley along The River Blaine in West Virginia. I was a young lad, no more than nineteen years old. I was still in the Air Force when I decided to take a bus and visit a friend of mine I had met while in basic training. He lived way back in the far reaches of the Hoogalaw Mountain Range of the Alleghenies in West Virginia. He introduced me to some of his family. They were relatives of his on his mother’s side whom he had spoken often of while we were together on the same air base in Wichita Falls, Texas.

I never had the opportunity to travel as a kid growing up on a Midwest farm. After I went into the military, I kind of got the itch to go places and see things—places I had only read about. The eastern mountains always held a fascination for me, and I yearned to experience them and the people who lived there.

While traveling through the mountains on the bus, I was amazed at how crumpled up they appeared. It was almost as if the Lord had wadded them up and deposited them there. I mentioned this to my friend later on, and he told me that wasn’t true at all!

He said, The Lord laid out the flat land such as in the plain states because he was in a hurry, but he took time to sculpt each and every mountain in West Virginia!

Whatever the case was, I could see why the people loved these mountains so much. I had been in the Rocky Mountains, but they never had the same effect upon me as the Alleghenies of West Virginia. In the morning mist or in a fog, there was nothing as enchanting as the mountains of West Virginia. Early in the morning as one looked out over the landscape from a high peak, it looked like many islands floating upon a misty sea.

My friend Mark introduced me to the Haigline family. There was the dad, Hisel; Margery, their mother; and four daughters Karen, Calyann, Melody, and Cynthia, an older daughter who was married and lived in town. They also had two younger boys, Jimmy and David.

Hisel, I suppose, was in his early fifties with Margery being just a few years behind him. Each showed the signs of a life of hard work and hard times: a life of very few luxuries not destitute as some are but one certainly devoid of most worldly goods. Margery was the quietest one in the family—seldom talking much unless Hisel got her worked up about something which wasn’t often, but one would have to say more than seldom.

Karen was three years older than me being about twenty-two with a small child of just a few months of age. She was especially tall, I thought at the time, probably close to six feet. Calyann was two years younger than myself. She was seventeen, and Melody was four years younger. The two boys were quite a bit younger. I think Jimmy was perhaps about twelve and David around ten years old or so. They were your typical boys—friendly, energetic, and mischievous.

I didn’t hear why Karen and her child, a son, were living at home with her parents. They never talked about it, and I never asked. Since my friend had such a small house and mostly real small children, Hisel invited me to stay with them for the two weeks I planned on being there. During which time, he would show me around the mountains.

They lived in a very beautiful secluded valley on the banks of The River Blaine. A fast moving river, tumbling and roiling over the rocky bottom as it made its way through the valley. The valley for the most part was very narrow only being about a mile across at its widest point. A lot of places were barely wider than the river itself as it passed on its way through.

In times of intense rains, it became as wild and as unpredictable as an uncontrolled storm. It often overflowed its banks and spread out into the surrounding valley. The people of the valley were always concerned when heavy rains came as how much damage it would do to their fields, their farms, and their homes. But in the quiet times, the serenity of the valley with its cattle grazing in its green meadows and the sun shining on the fertile fields of hay and grain was as beautiful as any scene could be.

Several times a day, a coal train would come through the valley with its whistle screaming as it crossed the valley floor heading north with coal to Gordan Town, leaving only their echoes behind as they faded out of sight.

Hisel Haigline and I really hit it off. He was friendly and outgoing. I don’t know if he was hoping to get a daughter married off or what, but I was glad he invited me to stay with them. Throughout my stay, he was very kind and considerate of me.

He had a new 1956 Chevy 2-Door Hardtop that only had a very few miles on it. He took me out to the single car garage, opened the doors, and said, What do you think of that? I looked at it and thought it looked pretty good.

He got in it, cranked it up, put it in reverse, floorboarded it, and out of the garage he came, throwing sand and gravel and whatever else there was. Barreling out into the yard, he cut it around. I hollered whoa! He slammed on the brakes and slid right into the tongue of a wood trailer he had sitting there. He hit it so hard the trailer tongue nearly poked a hole clear through the trunk lid and sent the trailer flying.

He got out smiling, looked at it, and said, That’s a long ways from the motor! He handed me the keys, saying, Here, take it, and blow the cobwebs out of it. I don’t get to drive it much. He was a coal miner and worked long and hard hours making a living for his family in the mines.

Karen was nice enough. Very tall and slender. She is not unbecoming but not what one would call real pretty. I suppose all three girls would be considered sort of plain, by many standards, as they never put on makeup nor wore lipstick. They were as God had made them—just mountain girls.

*****

Calyann was seventeen, sort of timid and quiet and seldom ever initiating a conversation but more than ready to respond if I lead the way. She was the middle one being a little shorter than I in height and being around five feet seven or so. Her looks were very appealing with her sparkling hazel eyes and medium-brown hair, and her manner, even more so.

Melody, at fourteen, was a little shorty about five feet tall but very athletic and trim. At the most, she only weighed around a hundred pounds. She was probably what one would call the cutest of the three girls because of her size and outgoing personality.

I had never heard of the name Calyann before. I thought it was a very unique name—a very fitting name, I would learn for such a unique young lady. I really came here to experience the Allegheny Mountains for a couple of weeks before moving on, but fate seemed to have a different plan.

Being nearer my age, Calyann and I became good friends, and we were together much of the time. She was good company and pleasant to be with. She had only gone to the eighth grade in school and since that time had pretty much stayed home not going out much, except with family members. But she certainly was not unintelligent. She had what people often referred to as natural intelligence when it came to understanding, especially things of the heart, things of life, and things of the mountains.

I guess it was her quiet, gentle nature and her lack of worldliness that made her so appealing to me. Her voice had almost a slight musical note to it when she spoke. Her speech sounded like a mixture of a little bit of old English, perhaps with a little Irish or Scottish added in and delivered with a soft, undulating eastern mountain accent. Something I had never heard before or since.

Her words were so soft, and her thoughts were so innocent and kind so much so that I never once ever thought about taking advantage of her in any way. But to the contrary, I felt it was my duty to honor and protect this unique, beautiful young lady I had met here in the mountains of West Virginia.

I was raised by old-fashioned parents who always taught us to do right and to live right. To be honest even if it hurt. To be a person of integrity in all of our actions and dealings with others. I was raised that way. My parents were that way. I was that way—that was who I was. Although such virtues seemed vastly outdated, that’s how I was. And it was important for me to remain that way.

*****

Her father, Hisel, liked his moonshine which could be acquired at the grocery store in the little town of Mud Creek. There was a well-worn path coming down off the mountain to the back of the store where the moonshiner or moonshiners brought their liquor to be sold.

I guess it must have been pretty powerful stuff for after a couple of drinks, in an hour or two, Hisel would become almost unmanageable. Not violent but as one having an intense nightmare of some kind. He would talk as one would in their sleep and have such fits that he would fall off of the couch or fall out of his recliner.

Calyann acted embarrassed by her father’s antics. But out of respect for him, I suppose, I never heard her speak a critical word to him about it, ever.

The Haiglines rented the place where they lived in the valley from a World War II veteran who was a friend of theirs. I believe Hisel and he, perhaps, had been in the war together. Occasionally, he would stop by to visit or to collect the rent and seemed like he always brought along a jar of moonshine.

After one such visit, Hisel was determined he was going way back over the other side of the mountain to buy groceries from a friend’s store where they used to live years before. It was already late in the evening with about a foot of snow on the ground and still snowing hard at the time. But nevertheless, he was bound to go and wanted Calyann to go with him.

Calyann came to me and told me of his plans and that she was afraid to go with him, especially since he had been drinking. Even though I would never have planned such a trip that late at night and especially snowing as it was, I agreed to go and drive, so she wouldn’t have to be with him by herself. He was hardly able to stand let alone drive.

There was no way I would have gone with him if he was driving nor was I comfortable with the thought of Calyann going with him by herself.

Before we left, Calyann asked the boys if they wanted her to bring them back some candy, and they both in unison said, We don’t want candy. We want some chewin’ tobacca.

She said, I’ll bring you back some candy. What kind do you want?

They again told her, We don’t want any candy. We want some chewin’ tobacca!

We got into Hisel’s near-new Chevy and started out. Him in the back seat while Calyann and I were in the front. As we pull out of the yard and onto the road, it is snowing hard, making it very difficult to see, and it is dark. After we’ve gone by Mud Creek, we’ll be on mountain roads that I have never been on before.

Driving through Mud Creek and continuing down the valley for several miles, we turn and start winding our way up through the mountains. It seemed like we drove for a long time. Everything is stark white. We are not going very fast: thirty five to forty miles per hour max.

Visibility is less than one hundred feet a lot of the time and less than fifty feet some of the time. The roads are steep and winding. I’m kept on edge guessing where the road is.

As we continue up the mountain, Hisel, in his moonshine nightmare, starts throwing a fit. First he’s too hot. We’ve got the heater doing all it can, trying to keep the windshield clear so I can see to drive. Then he complains he’s too cold.

Calyann discovers he’s got the window down, has his shoes off, and is planning on throwing them out the window. Leaning over the back of the seat talking to him, she finally gets him settled down as I continue to concentrate on the road.

After what