Some Random Thoughts - Ghost Towns From Back Home

What is it you think of when you see the term "ghost town"?  Nine chances out of ten, what probably comes to mind is some rickety old prospector town somewhere out in the Southwest buried by desert sand and assaulted with roaming spheres of tumbleweeds and guarded by saguaro cactus sentries.  If that is what you perceive as a ghost town, I have this to say - you have probably been watching too many "Bugs Bunny" cartoons on the Boomerang channel.  In reality, many parts of the country have these little places, and my home state of West Virginia is no exception to that.   Now, I want to introduce you to some of those places.

The Fairfax Stone as it appears today

About 14 miles north of my hometown of Hendricks, where western Maryland comes to a sharp point like an arrowhead separating the shoulder of the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia from the rest of the state, the mighty Potomac River has its birthplace.  Near its headwaters is the famous historical marker called the Fairfax Stone, which was the place that Lord Thomas Fairfax, who originally owned much of the region as his personal fiefdom, marked the frontier of a territory that later came to be known as Augusta County, which at one time covered an area from the northern neck of Virginia to eastern Indiana.  It is from the headwaters of the Potomac that many of these little ghost towns start to appear, although they also can be found elsewhere in the region too.  By the time I came along as a child, many of these places were long abandoned, save the occasional farmhouse that some local family came into ownership of and by then was in that particular family for many generations.  However, at the dawn of the 20th century, many of these places were once prosperous communities.  I feel a historical booklet on the subject written in 1998 called Ghost Towns of the Upper Potomac (Parsons, WV:  McClain Printing) as compiled by the Garrett County (MD) Historical Society says it best as quoted from page 1 of the small book:

Most of these ghost towns can be identified, when one finally reaches their locations, by ruins of old buildings amid the brush, cement foundations of former bridges, other structures, and remains of coal tipples.  The real tombstones, however, are the large gob piles, partially hidden by tangled brush and scrub trees on the hillsides, that mark the coal mines taht once gave economic life to so many of these old towns.

Our trek to these old ghost towns is rather sad and we want to find where they were and by what names they were called.  For what purpose did they exist and what companies created them while mining the coal seams along this meandering river?  We look at these collapsed pit mouths and we wonder the price of human life paid to dig the coal that once poured from them into the railroad cars. 

Gorman, MD/Gormania, WV - one of the Upper Potomac ghost towns that is still a living community today

Douglas, WV, a mining ghost town just south of Thomas, 14 miles north of my hometown of Hendricks

Jenningston, WV - this is up SR 72, south of my hometown of Hendricks, and also near where my maternal grandmother was born. In its heyday, it was a lumber town.

Kempton, MD - near the headwaters of the Potomac about 3 miles from Thomas, WV.  My step-grandfather, Alonzo Lipscomb, was born here.

As a kid, Mom loved going on Sunday drives with our late Granny Turner, and often on those drives we visited some of these places while Mom played Gospel music by the Chuck Wagon Gang or one of those other great old Southern Gospel groups on the radio or tape deck, and from an early age I developed an enchantment with these places - there was a mystique about them I cannot quite describe in words, but can feel when visiting them.  I still have that today when I visit back home, and there are days I really miss those Sunday drives, as the cares and stress of the city often try to stifle the fond feelings of my youth with all this hustle and bustle - while I feel like sinning by swearing at traffic on the infamous Howard Franklin Bridge that spans Tampa Bay as the minions of hell we call "morning traffic" here make us late to work, etc., it is nice to know that there are places where the roads only have two lanes and "heavy traffic" consists of twelve cars passing by in one day.  However, a bit of sadness is there too, as now many of the communities that were vibrant when I was young are now dying - Hendricks, my home town, is little more than a few people now compared to the vibrant community it was some 30 years ago.  It reminds me, along with staring in the mirror at the increasing silver creeping over my head, that I too am aging.   The recent recession, the crises in the Middle East, and other craziness (such as hearing more than we should about Lindsay Lohan's criminal hijinks or that Bieber twirp's girlish hair on national television 24/7 - enough already with that crap, please!!) has made me think about those days even more when life was a little simpler.  We cannot live in the past though obviously, as the past is now gone, but the best parts of it live in us.  

Pierce, WV - a tiny hamlet about a mile northwest of Thomas, once settled by Italians who came to work in the mines and on the railroad

There is also another dimension to all this as well, and it is purely West Virginia in mindset - we call it "sense of place."  What that means is that we place a strong emotional bond on our native soil, and what we call home means something to us.   Many people today, caught up in their worldly lifestyles and the futile pursuit of more wealth (like many of the corporate yahoos I work with, for example) don't understand that - they eschew and devalue their past and roots at great loss to themselves, and this is unfortunate.  I think the American workplace, especially these god-awful places called cities, could benefit from encouraging people to reconnect to their roots and remember where they come from.  Too many forget, and as a result a generation will lose something very precious.  What a shame too.

Anyway, I have rambled on too much tonight, so I will take leave for this week.  Remember though, if you have that annoying co-worker that seems to be more interested in your work rather than doing their own, or if you have that corporate manager in your office who has his head you-know-where and disrespects you and your co-workers, you have much to be thankful for and proud of.  I know I do, and I wouldn't trade my Appalachian/Potomac Highland roots for the world.  Hopefully this inspires some of you too, and if so, feel free to share.  Thanks, and God bless; we'll see you next visit.

My Thoughts This Week

I have been doing a lot of thinking this week, and as I do, I have those pangs of my past that I miss on occasion.  Granted, my childhood wasn't rosy, and even my high school and college years, as well as early married life, had their challenges as well, but they had a lot of good moments too.  I started this particular discussion site to talk some about those experiences, to share aspects of those memories, and to just somehow relive some of the best moments of my past through those things.  It is so easy often to think about how "good" the "good ol' days" were, and indeed in many cases they were, but a large part of that is how we perceive those earlier times too.  Were they really better?  Only God knows that, and what got me thinking about it yesterday was when our parish priest, Fr. John Poole, mentioned that often it is indeed our idealistic vision of the past that makes the "good ol' days" better than they probably were.  That of course doesn't mean we don't cherish the good of our past, but it also means we need to grow from some of the stinky fertilizer (the bad experiences) life spread on us in the past too.  By looking at it that way, the "bad" in essence may actually make us better!  Now, that is a thought, isn't it??

Over the past 10 or so years, I have made it a point to reconnect with many things from my past, and through all that I have learned much about myself - I have kept a consistent journal for 15 years, been working on my personal memoirs for about 10 years, and have been doing my genealogical research since my high school days.  Those three things in themselves have provided a pretty comprehensive picture, and with the help of the internet and other miracles of modern technology, I have even been able to revisit some things I haven't thought possible.  And, I would not trade any of that for the world, to be honest.   I have noticed though that three dominant things have surfaced as stimuli in my life in regard to establishing the identity I have myself, and all three of them play a very interesting role for some weird reasons.  They are:

1.  Food and cooking
2.  Music
3.  Religion

Most everything many of you have read about me has centered on one or more of these three things, and I suppose they probably do define me more than I realize.   I am not going to spend a specific amount of time discussing any of those here, because I feel much of what I have written to this point pretty much spells the connections out.  However, sufficive to say, those who know me also know I have unique tastes in all three areas, and all three provide creative expression bringing out the true essence of who David Thrower is.  of course, there are other things as well, but for some reason everything else gravitates back to one or more of those three things.   And, as for food, in recent years my midriff shows that too, as the dreaded "middle age spread" caught up with me in my mid-20's, and at 41 now, it shows my age along with my bum leg, my gray hair, and so many other things the body degenerates into as it gets older.  But, despite the flaws and imperfections, I am a being created in the image of my God, and therefore that is something to be thankful for.

I also credit the three things mentioned above as God's way of protecting me when I was young from many of the ills that plagued my generation.   Many of my generation, for instance, listened to some sort of rock music, but I never did - never had a desire to actually.   Also, many of my generation, when we were all kids, thought that church was something boring, but from the time I accepted the Lord as my Savior at age 16, I have loved being involved in the church in some capacity.  And, even before that, church was something that my folks taught me was a good thing, and my mother made me dress up for church even when she refused to go (it has been almost 20 years since Mom stepped foot into a house of worship) and I knew Bible stories before I was in 5th grade from memory.  As for food, I have always identified certain food (like certain music) with a certain identity, and some things I didn't eat or hated to eat I associated with the negative - certain condiments for instance were to me dirty, nasty, and their stinkiness denoted something bad.  I know that probably sounds bizarre, but that is how my mind works.  For instance, I won't eat a hamburger or any sandwich or salad, but have no problem eating kangaroo steak or shishkabobed curried monkey tenderloin - go figure, right??  As for religion too, I generally eschew the latest Evangelical fads and opt instead to be more of a conservative traditionalist - I am at home with either a pipe organ or a Hammond in a church setting, but not a CCM praise band; there is something almost sacrelegious about the latter,   My own religious music collection contains Ethiopian liturgical chant as well as vintage Blackwood Brothers records, and I am blessed equally.  But, you will not find any "religious Top 40" music in my Christian music collection.  Way I figure it is like this - I didn't listen to rock music before I was a Christian, so why would I lower my tastes and standards as a Christian??  To me, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to embrace something that you are personally repulsed by just because it is tagged with a "Christian" label.  DC Squawk to me is as repulsive as is AC/DC, and to me there is no difference, sorry.  No offense intended to my friends who enjoy CCM, but personally I want nothing to do with it.  However, I will be addressing the issues of CCM more in my Sacramental Present Truths site, so stay tuned there in the future.

Anyway, I didn't mean to sermonize about my personal tastes, but just felt like sharing some thoughts.  I will be back again next week perhaps with more concrete stuff to talk about, so will see you all back here then.

The Old General Store!

Many of you I am sure have watched or remembered the old TV program The Waltons, and its quaint setting in rural Virginia.  Ironically it looks very similar to the community I grew up in also, and a dear friend and relative and I were talking about that the other day as she is a fan of The Waltons.  Her enchantment with the show manefested recently in an email we got from her which I thought was cute - she addressed it to "Dear Ike and Cora Beth" (myself and Barb, respectively) and signed it "Yours, Olivia."  Of course, if another person read that, said person would think that all three of us were a few apples short of a bushel, but we all understand each other and it's a fun diversion from the drudgery of city life and its insanity.  Anyway, in the course of that conversation, we got to talking about the old general stores from years ago, and interesting enough a couple of my co-workers and I had a similar discussion the next day (one guy I work with, a cratchety but likeable fellow named Jerry, is an old Ozark hillbilly from Missouri, so we have much in common as well!).  The short of the story is that it got me thinking about the general stores I grew up with in West Virginia, and I wanted to talk a little about that today.

Nellie Cox's old store in Kirby, WV - looks like I remember it!

As some who know me - mainly a lot of people I went to school with - would attest, I grew up poor of course in a single-parent home, and where we lived the nearest supermarket was a luxury to us.  However, in retrospect, we didn't really need them, because in the 1970's and 1980's when I was growing up, the local general store still provided a lot of our needs in those days.  From about the time I was 9 years old, I grew up in Hampshire County, WV, living first with my grandparents in the town of Augusta, just off US Highway 50, and later about 12 miles south of Augusta in the tiny hamlet of Kirby.  The primary feature of a lot of these towns were their general stores, and every small town had one (some had two or three, and many stores were also out on the highways too).  In Augusta, it was CJ Smith's Market on US 50, in nearby North River it was McBride's Grocery, and in between was Chuck's Market not far from the intersection of Dunmore Ridge Road and US 50 due east of Augusta.  Kirby had Cox's Store, my hometown of Hendricks had Sonny Hedrick's Market, and in the town of Rowlesburg where we lived when I went to high school there was Si Faris's store/bar/restaurant.  And, of course, if one descended into the river valley 3 miles west of my hometown of Hendricks, near the small community of Bretz just outside Parsons, there was Propst's Market too, where some of the best stick pepperoni could be purchased (Jim Propst, the store proprietor, was a bit of an entrepreneur though as he later branched out on the mountain in Thomas as well).   A lot of times too, it was customary on payday to hit a number of the little stores in the area, as some offered stuff the others didn't, so it rounded out our grocery needs for the month.   There was something about those little stores too that enchanted people like me back in those days, as they many times served as community centers as well.  A trip to the general store was often a treat, as it meant some sugary confection of some sort, or a piece of dry stick pepperoni, a good hunk of fresh longhorn cheese, or some other local delicacy, all washed down with a bottle of Frosty Root Beer or Frozen Run Birch Beer.  The latter was especially good on a hot summer day, after helping the folks work in the garden or goofing off with your friends - nothing like an icy cold birch beer to quench your thirst!

General stores were more or less a carryover of the old mercantiles of days past, as often you could order just about anything through one of them, an easy task being the proprietor of the store often knew you too and was more than happy to oblige.   As previously mentioned, even in my younger years getting to a grocery store was not often possible, and therefore the local general store got a lot of business from people around the area.  A lot of times, the proprietor of the store could get wholesale discounts on things such as 40-lb boxes of chicken leg quarters, chicken nuggets, fish squares, or turkey legs, and for under a hundred bucks a family could stock their freezer for a month with good meat.  And, if the family was financially lacking, it was no issue - stores extended credit.  The way that worked was that you would go in to the store, do your shopping, and the store owner would draw you up a credit tab for the amount you bought. Then, he (or she) would make arrangements with you to pay the balance at the beginning of the following month or at the next pay period you had if you had a job, which made things convenient.  Therefore, even when money was lacking, one could eat at least.  Another feature of the general store in those days was glass soda bottles.  Not only did soda taste better out of a glass bottle, but a kid with some scruples could make some money off the empty bottles.  When I was a kid in Kirby, WV, as a matter of fact, I used to collect soda bottles, cash them in, and that would be a candy bar, another soda, or a bag of chips.  Of course, I was a little more enterprising, as Nellie Cox, the owner of the store in Kirby, often kept those empty pop bottles on the store porch, and I would help myself to them and get a little extra money - I think Nellie knew that, but being she and her husband Lincoln were pretty well-off, she let a lot slide; God bless her mercy on me for that!  Most of the time though, an ample supply of pop bottles could be found in the roadside ditch, the creek bed, and in fields near the highway, as many people just chucked them out the window.  It was a good incentive for a sort of "Adopt-the-Highway" plan, as it paid dividends for us kids to keep the empty pop bottles cleaned up!

Those old general stores played a major part in this old West Virginia boy's life, and I do miss them.  As I have spent most of my adult life in the city, with the conveniences of shopping centers and supermarkets all over the place, there is something missing in shopping; whereas a trip to the store as a kid used to be a treat, and the older adults found the local store a good place to hang out and socialize, nowadays supermarkets here are so impersonal and callous that the clerks and baggers don't even know people who shop there everyday.   And the quality of food at a supermarket - here in Florida, these people would not know a good stick of pepperoni if it walloped them upside the head!  But, all is not lost - upon moving to Largo a few years ago, much to my delight I discovered a little place two blocks west of the house that still has the country store feel I remember.  It is the Amish Country Store, owned by Stu Opp, and it is a little taste of home.   And, Stu knows me now, and I can chit-chat with him much in the same way I used to with Nellie Cox, Sonny Hedrick, Ray McBride, and Si Faris at the stores of my youth back in WV.  If you are ever in the area, be sure to check them out.

The Amish Country Store, on 12th Ave SW in Largo, FL

This article doesn't fully capture the ambience as I wanted to concerning the institution known as the local general store, but I am sure some of you who grew up as I did will relate to it.   So, next time the city life gets some of you down, think about a nice hunk of longhorn cheese for a nickel and a 25 cent bottle of pop, and it will be comforting to you.   God bless until next time.

Fond Memories of Chloe (1999-2011)

There comes a point in life where you have a loss, but fortunately there are fond memories with that loss that make it more gentle to deal with.  Such was the case with the recent loss of our cat Chloe on January 30th.  Chloe was a special pet to us, and especially to Barb since he was originally her birthday present.  So, today, I want to tell his story in his memory.

It was in Tampa back in April 1999 when a co-worker of mine, a lady who worked in the accounting department of our company by the name of Shielda, mentioned she had some kittens she needed to find homes for. The kittens - there were 3 white ones and a tiger-striped gray tabby - were at that point about 5 weeks old and were barely weened from their mama at that point.  Barb had always wanted a white cat, and being her birthday was close at hand I decided to surprise her by getting one of Shielda's little white kittens for her. Shielda had brought the babies in the back of her truck to work, and she told me I could take my pick of them, and the one I chose was one of the three white ones she had.  Being it was at work still that day, I had to put the little tyke in a box and carry him over to Barb's office, which was approximately 5 blocks away.  He was not happy about it, and to this day I still have a small scar on my hand where he nailed me through the box!  However, it was all worth it when Barb saw him, as she fell in love with him almost immediately.  So, that day he came home with us.

Now, as far as determining the gender of a cat, it's a little hard to do that when they are little, so we assumed it was a girl and so Barb commenced thinking of a name for the kitten and came up with Chloe.  A couple of weeks later, my mother comes over for a weekend visit, and in her "wisdom" she christens the kitten a girl as well, so Chloe stuck as a name.  However, a month or so later, as the cat was walking through the house, I noticed something odd - Chloe did not quite appear to be a girl!  So, I exclaimed to my wife, 'Honey, Chloe has balls!" which of course got an interesting response.  Barbara vowed to never again let Mom determine the sex of any of our pets after that one!  And, since he already had the name, we kept it Chloe, and he seemed happy with that.

As mentioned, Barb fell in love with Chloe, and he became without a doubt her cat.  She babied him like a child, even taking him to the bathroom with her, and he got to be a very spoiled cat fast!  And, although he was an energetic kitten, he soon mellowed into an easy-going, loveable gentle cat with a variety of nicknames - we called him Chlo-Chlo, the Snowbeast, the White Baboon, Butterpuff, among others, over the years.  When he was still only a few months old though, we had a bit of a scare with him, and that almost lost him for us.

At that time, we lived on the third-floor balcony of a high-rise apartment building in St. Petersburg, FL, and we had a sunporch/balcony that our cats loved to go out on but it had no screens.  One day, Chloe got a little too adventurous and ventured out too far, and he fell off the balcony!  It was quite a scare, and we were pretty sure we lost him.  However, we kept hearing a tiny "Mew!" on the roof below, and sure enough, Chloe was down there.  A maintenance man in our building helped get him down, and fortunately he was no worse for the wear.  And, Barb babied him even more.

In due time though, being Chloe was our only cat then, he was getting a little lonely, and Barb figured he needed some company, so in October 2001 for my birthday Barb got me a little black-and-white tuxedo female kitten I named Oreo, and she and Chloe became soulmates, later giving birth to their first litter of kittens together on April 2nd, 2002.   One of those kittens, a rare Snoeshoe Siamese, we kept and named Peaches.  Peaches was a unique cat too, but we lost him to kidney trouble in November 2008, which too was a huge loss.   Chloe would father many more kittens up to late 2003, and then we got him neutered and his baby-making days were over.  He then got more mellow and lazy as he got older, although he always did have that frisky playful streak in him up until the end. 

Bottom line, Chloe was a special cat, and he gave us many years of pleasure and joy.  He was loveable, mellow, yet still always up for a play on his catstand, and he was honestly a real blessing.  I was preparing for the day he might be taken by the Lord from us, but even though I had accepted that realization, it is still a bit of a shock even now.  It is more so considering how he passed away - last week Saturday he was fine in the morning, and then he was unable to walk that afternoon.  With some intense swelling in his legs, and a shortness of circulation, we suspect he may have had heart failure.  He passed away, peacefully in his sleep, a week ago today, and we laid him to rest under an oak tree in our backyard.  I know some people may theologically disagree with me on this, but I personally feel animals can be in heaven, and one day may see him again.  And, although he is greatly missed - he was a very integral part of our lives for 12 years - I am thankful to God that he showed mercy on Chloe and let him pass peacefully at home.  So, my dear little Snowbeast, rest in peace, and we will always love you.