A Great Light has gone out...

The event that has brought me to write this evening is the passing of one of the great men of my lifetime. A lifelong academic, finances did not allow for this child of a West Virginia coal town to attend college. However, he rose above that and educated himself, reading everything he could - Cicero, world history, law, and the Bible - so well read in fact that he once quoted the entire detailed timeline of British monarchs to an English ambassador who had doubted an American's knowledge of the subject.

Some people will only know that he was once member of the Ku Klux Klan, briefly, but left the organization and regretted the decision for the rest of his life - calling it, "a horrible, horrible mistake". In his way, I quote Shakespeare - "the evil of men live after them - the good is often buried with their bones".

I will remember this man as a true champion of the people, as a scholar of the U.S. Constitution, and as a true Appalachian who never forgot where he came from. A child of the Great Depression, he married his wife Erma in 1937 (who passed away in March 2006) and they remained happily together for the rest of their lives.

He held more leadership positions in the U.S. Senate than any other member of Congress, and was the longest serving member, at 57 years. He was a prolific author, writing an autobiography as well as "Losing America" - a response to the arrogance of the G.W. Bush presidency. Never one to back down, he took on what he saw as unconstitutional bills and laws, which gave him the reputation as a champion for the underdog.

For example, in response to a question of gays in the military, he quoted academic works on the positive roles of homosexuals in ancient Rome - which caused some of his constituents to get angry red faces - but reportedly nearly caused Senator Ted Kennedy to have a giggling fit at the sheer strength of the argument.


While I never met him, I have seen his statue, which stands in the West Virginia Capital building.

He certainly did his best to "drag the state of West Virginia into the future kicking and screaming" - and while some things he did were unpopular, you have to admire his tenacity, his spunk, his intellect, and his ability to get things done. He didn't only give lipservice - he gave results. And that, my friends, is rare in anyone - and moreso in a politician. He could also play a mean fiddle, and did so on many occasions - most famously on Hee Haw when he performed "Will the Circle be Unbroken".

I like to think of him in my mother's words - as "the state Byrd". Well the skies in West Virginia are dark tonight, the fiddles are silent, and the future of our fair state is uncertain. All that remains is a thank you, Senator Byrd, and a solitary fiddle tune being carried on the wind ...

Senator Robert C. Byrd (Nov. 20, 1917 -June 28, 2010)

The Farm of My Childhood

Growing up in West Virginia, I've seen my share of snow. Some of that snow fell in skiffs that my mother referred to laughingly as "Mother Nature shakin' her feather tick", and others have come down in storms that make the latest February in Morgantown a paradise on Earth. I was actually born in the midst of a December snowstorm, and the windshield wipers on the car were broken - so my father drove 65 miles to the closest hospital, which was Davis Memorial in Elkins. However, one of the most violent snowstorms in my memory occured a few days before Christmas in 1984 - when we still lived on the farm in Germany Valley.

I didn't realize it then - and who does realize much when they're 8? However, the few years we spent on the farm formed a lot of who was to become later. My ties to my family history (my Granny grew up just down the road in a log cabin), my interests in ghosts (the house was haunted by 2), and other aspects of my life came to be during that time.

To my knowledge, there are (sadly) no photos of the farm during the time we lived there. I don't know why - I can only guess that we were too busy livin' to record our lives. However recently we have made several trips back to the old farm, which is now in derelict shape but still recognizable. And even though it is worn and I have grown, there is still a strong familiarity with the place. It still remembers me, and the things I love.

In the above photo, it doesn't look like much. The house is run down, the gardens are overgrown, the henhouse has collapsed, the road is gone, and the pond has vanished back into the holler. But when we lived there, the house was painted bright white, the roof was silver, and the gardens were always full of plants. The hills held flocks of sheep, a herd of beef cattle, and the occasional mountain lion - one of which was coal black.

The henhouse was full of chickens, geese, turkeys, guineas - and whatever other bird we brought back from the stock sale in Moorefield. On the back of the henhouse was the pigpen, where we had pigs. It's completely gone now. Above the tree to the left, a black willow, we had a dam built and it held back the mountain stream to make a small pond. There the ducks nested with the other waterfowl, sometimes preferring to roost in the black willow than in the henhouse.

This photo above captures a little of the beauty of the place. There was a giant sycamore to the right of the photo as well. It was torn up in the tornado that also blew down the barn in the north field. You can still see a bit of the fence that once surrounded the yard, which I remember being strewn with flowers my mother had planted, and at the one end was the swingset that took my uncles two days to put together - with several parts left over.

One of the ghosts, the Purple Lady, as we called her - spent many days watching out the upstairs window to the right. She once held a conversation with my aunt, and she was never terrifying. To the contrary, she was like a member of the family - and I will say you could never ask for a better burglar alarm than a ghost in the house to protect you. Another ghost, Capt. Daugherty (US Civil War Captain- he had a peg leg) would walk the stairs every night and often during the day, depending on his temperament.

The porchswing hung on the far right side of the porch, and it was there we were sitting when we heard my brother screaming for help. The bull that he had taunted for months had finally cornered him - in the henhouse. The bull didn't try to attack him, but it wouldn't let him leave the building until my father went and shooed the bull away.

It was in this once grand henhouse that my brother was trapped by the bull. You would not know it to look at it now, but many mornings we gathered eggs by the bucketfuls from this building!

This is the back porch of the house - and the door led into the kitchen. There was a pump there once, but it never worked even when we lived there. We had water, gravity fed from the spring up on the mountain. When we lived there this porch was a favorite place for our passel of 17 cats, the geneaology of them all we knew clear down from their grandmother Charlotte. Charlotte's daughter, Sylvester, had four daughters - Mouse, Rat, Calico, and Sylvester Jr. They in turn had kittens whose names I've forgotten, but in all there were 17!

This wide overgrown space is the former garden. The fence line to the left was the upper fence, and there is a lower fence just out of the frame. From one end to the other there was corn, potatoes, rhubarb, tomatoes, beans, and whatever else we could plant. Many days we would have gone hungry if it weren't for the "garden suppers" as Mom called them. It was at one end of this garden, near the kitchen door, that we had a Christmas dinner on the picnic table - it was 73 degrees outside! Of course that was a novelty for us, so we got to rampaging around the yard and too many of us stood on the picnic table and it collapsed.

The hill above the garden is not only a field for the sheep and cows, but there is a small cemetery on the top of the hill. Dad built a fence around it while we lived there, and it is still there today, although you can barely see the stones it surrounds. That is also the hill we went sledding on - using the hood of a truck. There was a guide wire at the bottom of the hill that we all ducked to miss - except my aunt Patsy. When we said "duck!" she stuck her head up and said "what?" and was knocked off the sled, but unharmed.

We had a lot of fun on the farm. It was a tough travel in and out, which was a half mile on a dirt road, and was even worse in winter. The worst winter, as I said, was in 84. We walked out, unknowingly, in the middle of a blizzard. About half way out we were nearly frozen, and abandoned the Christmas gifts at the side of the road to make it out on foot to the car parked at the main road. Once we children were all safe in the vehicle, our parents warmed back up - left us in the care of our aunt Tamela, and went back to get the gifts. They found all of them, despite the wind having blown them around except for one. It was later found in the spring lying under a small cedar tree. Late Christmas? I think so.

After that horrifying experience, my father moved us off the farm in the autumn of 85 and up onto the mountain where they live now. It was a good move since it made it easier to get out in winter, but it took us away from the farm, the animals, the gardens - and the ghosts. Or so we thought. In a small way all these things still exist in my world.

I have two cats - Franklin and Julius. My house is full of family mementos - including the horseshoe from over the kitchen door of the farmhouse (I took it on one of my recent trips back as a souvenir). And ghosts? Well, those who know me know there are still ghosts in my life.

Although It's been a great while (has it been 25 years?) since we left the farm, I will never forget it. It helped to make me who I am - and I hope it did a good job.

A Question at Dinner

Sitting in a restaurant last night, there was an interesting conversation. John, Arlie, and I were discussing the US Civil War. Arlie is a true millenial - meaning the generation that grew up with electronics, the internet, and have no aspiration to research anything because they can "google" it.

Here's how the conversation went:

John: "So how long was the Civil War?"
Arlie: "Um... ten years?"
Me: "No, it only lasted four."
Me: "Who was president during the civil war?"
Arlie: "Abraham Lincoln"
John: "Well at least you know that."

Then the waitress comes by, herself the ripe old age of 23. John quizzed her too.
John: "Do you know how many years the Civil War lasted?"
Waitress: "Um... I dunno. 7?"
John: "Actually it lasted four years from 1861 to 1865"
Waitress: "Really? I had no idea I'm a communications/journalism major so I don't do much in the way of history"

A little later the waitress returns from the kitchen with something, and said:
Waitress: "I asked the people in the kitchen how long the civil war lasted. None of them knew but the one guy pulled out his phone and said he could 'look it up'."

Sigh. What are they teaching in schools these days? How to Google questions on your iPhone? I would give the benefit of the doubt if I didn't have this conversation daily with different students on different subjects. I once had a conversation with a student and told them that I wanted to visit Italy. His reply was, "Is there anything to see in Italy?"