06/20/2004
Random Notes About West Virginia
EVER since Abraham Lincoln created West Virginia in the heat of America’s worst tragedy, the Civil War, strong feelings have stirred residents of this rugged mountain land.
Napoleon said, “Mountaineers always love their country,” and West Virginians know what he meant. The jumbled landscape and closeness of nature sink into each native’s psyche.
In the Mountain State, you are never far from a shady ravine, a winding trail, a looming hillside, a gurgling creek. Deer, raccoons and other creatures are frequent visitors. The rugged topography resists development, so green privacy is ever-present, soothing the soul. It’s one of the state’s prized features.
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“Summon every energy of your mind and heart and strength, and let the traitors who desecrate our borders see, and let history in all time record it, there was one green spot — one Swiss canton — one Scottish highland — one county of Kent — one province of Vendee — where unyielding patriotism rallied, and gathered, and stood, and won a noble triumph.” — Wheeling Intelligencer, April 30, 1861, editor Archibald Campbell, urging mountaineers to split from seceding Virginia and remain loyal to the North
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“This was no land for lily-fingered men, who bowed and scraped and danced a neat quadrille. ... Our state was whelped in time of strife, and cut its teeth upon a cannonball.” — from Rhymes of a Mountaineer by Roy Lee Harmon, West Virginia poet laureate
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“Rippling mountain streams that glisten in my dreams / Peaceful valleys that I used to roam / When the dusk is falling, I hear the bob-white calling / in my West Virginia home. / Green hills in the spring, a bluejay on the wing / rhododendron blooming everywhere / Gentle folks who greet you like old friends when they meet you / There’s no place that can compare.” — from “West Virginia’s Home to Me,” a song by former Daily Mail publisher Lyell Clay
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“Whether or not mountaineers were always free, they were almost always poor.” — John Alexander Williams, West Virginia, 1976
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“Rough mountains rise all about, beautiful in their bleak ugliness. ... Yet they have their moods. On gray days they lie heavy and sullen, but on sunny mornings they are dizzy with color. ... They are gashed everywhere with watercourses, roaring rivers, bubbling creeks. Along these you plod, a crawling midge, while ever the towering mountains shut you in. Now and then you top a ridge and look about. Miles and miles of billowing peaks, miles and miles of color softly melting into color. ...” — James M. Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, writing in 1923 in The Nation as he covered the West Virginia mine war
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“This is a desolate place — steep hills dotted with tiny shacks and rows of coke ovens, rising straight from the wicked, wicked river, full of rapids.” — poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, letter to her husband as she traveled to Charleston during a 1924 reading tour
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“Where the mountain river flows / and the rhododendron grows / is the land of all the lands. ...” — from Hill Daughter by Louise McNeill Pease, West Virginia poet laureate
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“Here is hard-core unemployment, widespread and chronic; here is a region of shacks and hovels for housing; here are cliffs and ravines without standing room for a cow or chickens. In this region of steep mountains, a person is exceptionally fortunate if he is able to hack out two or three 10-foot rows of land for potatoes or beans.” — Erskine Caldwell, describing Mingo, McDowell and Wyoming counties in Around About America, 1964
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“Oh the green rolling hills of West Virginia / are the nearest thing to heaven that I know. / Tho’ the times are sad and drear, and I cannot linger here / They will keep me and never let me go.” — from “The Green Rolling Hills of West Virginia,” a song by Utah Phillips
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“A place where all you need to be is what you are ... A past that in the present somehow makes you feel secure.” — “Leaving West Virginia,” a Kathy Mattea song
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“On the map, my state is probably the funniest-looking state in the Union; it resembles a pork chop with the narrow end splayed.” — John Knowles, in the West Virginia volume of Holiday magazine’s “American Panorama” series, 1960
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“The state is one of the most mountainous in the country; sometimes it is called the ‘little Switzerland’ of America, and I once heard an irreverent local citizen call it the ‘Afghanistan of the United States.’ ” — John Gunther, describing West Virginia in Inside USA, 1947
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“Almost heaven, West Virginia ... I hear her voice, in the morning hours she calls me. Radio reminds me of my home far away. Driving down the road, I get a feeling that I should have been home yesterday ...” — from “Country Roads,” by Bill and Tammy Danoff
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“You might be considered a West Virginian if ... (1) Your front porch collapses and more than six dogs are killed ... (2) Less than half the cars you own actually run ... (3) Your diploma contains the words ‘Trucking Institute’ ... (4) Your wife’s hairdo has ever been caught in a ceiling fan ... (5) You have a rag for a gas cap ... (6) Your brother-in-law is also your uncle.” — the late Gazette columnist James Dent
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“O the West Virginia Hills, how majestic and how grand, with their summits bathed in glory ...” — from “The West Virginia Hills,” one of three official state songs
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“There is music in the flashing streams / and joy in the fields of daffodils / And laughter through the happy valleys / of my home among the hills.” — from “My Home Among the Hills,” another official state song
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“The population of this vast mountain region is divided into two distinct classes, as far removed in character and environment as it is possible for people to be. First, there are those who live in fertile valleys along the rivers and the railways, with the very best religious and educational advantages, and who are equal in intelligence and refinement to any people in America. [People of the second group] do not live in these favored valleys, but far back from the main lines of travel in small clearings by the watercourses, almost entirely removed from the outside world, with few advantages for learning and few opportunities for improvement. The extreme poor live ‘back of beyond,’ beyond the towering mountains, locked in narrow coves, without teachers, without physicians, without comforts and conveniences.” — the Rev. Homer McMillan, Unfinished Tasks of the Southern Presbyterian Church, 1922
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“Mountain communities share other features besides the obvious topographic ones. For one thing, they often have a second-class status that keeps them at the margin of national agendas. Terms like ‘hillbilly’ aren’t limited to Appalachia. Thai hill tribes and Ecuadorian highlanders, among others, face the same prejudice. Infrastructural improvements like roads, not to mention communications, lag in mountain areas, and so do investments in education and jobs. Still, flatlanders appropriate mountain resources in the name of everyone, as in, ‘Mountain forests and streams and energy belong to everyone.’” — Atlantic Monthly, May 2000
© 2004 The Charleston Gazette
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