Metz and Mannington

 Leaving Cameron West Virginia, heading east on Route 250, I had a lot on my mind.  I kept the radio off and the CDs in their brown paper bag.  Driving is good for thinking.

Solo road trips are usually good for long deep thinks but driving Route 250 through the West Virginia hills requires a lot of attention.  I paid close attention to rectangular speed limit signs, those diamond-shaped signs with a drawn arrow describing the shape of the curve, and all the warnings about slope.  I’m usually not that cautious, and my caution soaked up more of my brain’s bandwidth than usual.  Thankfully, there was some left.

I began thinking about the Buick.  Between turning it on, twisting a key the old-fashioned way rather than carrying a fob and pressing a button, and twisting the key back to turn it off, I confess to ignoring the Buick’s engine and drive train entirely.  I check the oil when I fill up, and change the oil regularly, but that’s about the extent of it.  But talking with Bob in the café about his cars and extra wear and tear from the hills made me wonder how the Buick was doing.  I tuned in.

The transmission was shifting all the time, gearing down to take the rises, gearing up when it leveled off, back down to help control the speed on steep descents.  I thought of how different that must be from Illinois driving.  If the Buick were a person, it would say “where the hell have you taken me?”

I tried to remember the details of the transmission work I had done before the pandemic.  I’d had an intermittent check engine light I blamed on the gas cap being loose.  But after buying a new gas cap the light still came on.  I asked the guy at my go-to independent garage in Ottawa to plug the computer into the Buick and tell me what it said about that warning.  Turned out to be two faulty speed sensors in the transmission.  I blogged about it.  Tonight, in the hotel I should get out the laptop and reread that blog.  I did remember the guy at the transmission place in Morris, also independent (no warranty but cheap) pointed out the check engine light went off after replacing those sensors.  That was good enough for him. 

I used to notice a lag when putting the Buick in Drive from Reverse, along with a clunk.  It happened often when I backed out of my driveway and headed down the hill.  I knew it couldn’t be good, and I thought it went away after I had that work done in Morris.  But I wasn’t sure.  I have to listen more closely for that clunk, I told myself silently.  See if I still felt that lag.  So many thoughts go through your mind on a road trip.

Then my mind took me to Metz, a town I would come to up the road.  I’d researched the towns on Wikipedia.  There wasn’t much information on Metz, but what was there stuck with me. 

I remembered the town was founded as Bee Hive Station in the early 1800s by Jacob Metz, a German guy who was a beekeeper.  When the train line came through there in the 1850s the railroad approached Jacob to buy land for a right of way they needed at the time.  Jacob told them he wouldn’t sell them the land but would give it to them on the condition they put in a stop, build a station, and name it Metz Crossing.  He figured the stop would be a boon for his honey business.  The railroad took the deal but soon after the word “crossing” was dropped, and the town became known simply as Metz.

And then the train stopped running in 1959, they tore up the tracks in 1975, and in 2011 they closed the Metz Post Office.  It’s been downhill from there.  I took this picture because it best represents Metz today.

For all we know that could have been Jacob’s house.  It appears Metz is now best known as the name of a portal, or access point to the Marion County Mine, formerly Leveridge Number 22 Mine, an underground coal mine.  It used to belong to the Marion County Coal Company, now a subsidiary of Murray Energy Corporation.  That mine produces 6.1 million tons of coal a year.

The sign is at the intersection of Jonny Cake Road and Route 250.  I wanted to drive back on Jonny Cake to the mine entrance but decided to press on.  It was mostly because I liked the name of the road anyway.

I learned later that the Marion County Mine was one of three mines for which the previous corporate owner, CONSOL Energy, agreed to build a combined $200 million wastewater treatment system, and pay the state and federal governments $6 million to settle hundreds of alleged violations of the Clean Water Act.  The fines included payment to the W. Va. Division of Natural Resources for damage to Dunkard Creek.

Those violations remained alleged because, under the terms of the settlement, CONSOL Energy denied responsibility for a 2009 toxic bloom that killed countless fish, salamanders, mussels, and other aquatic life in Dunkard Creek, a tributary to the Monongahela River.  Yet they paid the money.  Coal and the mining of it does more than foul the air.   

Metz was a short stop.  There was little to see.  Neither a hive nor a honeybee in sight.  Jacob Metz would hardly recognize the place.

The road was changing.  From Metz, the Buick and I found ourselves following Route 250 between the hills in a small valley formed by Buffalo Creek.  The road flattened out.  Mannington appeared, population 2,063, and with it came a noticeable change, the appearance of national brand businesses, Dairy Queen, CVS, BP, Dollar General, and hallelujah, McDonald's.  If the town of  Cameron could have but one of those businesses, it would be such a boost to their community.  But someone somewhere has run the numbers and it is not in the cards.  I kept going.

 As the Buick and I approached Farmington this sign appeared on the outskirts of town. 

Such a big national figure from such a small town.  I thought Farmington was bigger.  Population 369.  Sadly, Farmington’s claim to fame is not Joe Manchin but a tragedy that still haunts the community.

On November 20, 1968, at the nearby CONSOL Number 9 mine, an explosion killed 78 miners, one of them Joe Manchin’s uncle.  Annually, Joe Manchin and members of his family attend a memorial service held on that day.  The pain and trauma of the Farmington Mine disaster never go away.  Most families of the victims killed in the Number 9 mine accepted final settlements of $10,000 per miner offered shortly after the explosion by the mine owners.   However, the catastrophe in Farmington led to the 1969 consolidation of safety laws for various industries under a single agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Act Administration, or OSHA. 

The Farmington Disaster is but one of many mine disasters that haunt the people of West Virginia.

On December 6, 1907, the largest West Virginia mine disaster in history, an explosion and collapse in the Monongah mine south of Farmington, took the lives of 362 miners, nearly all of them recent immigrants to the United States. The largest ethnic group among those killed were 171 Italians. The list of coal mine disasters is long.  I describe here only four among scores of catastrophic events. 

On January 2, 2006, an explosion in the Sago mine near Buckhannon, West Virginia trapped thirteen miners for two days.  One survived.

At the Upper Big Branch mine near Montcoal, West Virginia a coal dust explosion 1,000 feet underground took the lives of twenty-nine of thirty-one miners on April 5, 2010.

As I learned these facts, my new friends Bob’s words as we were eating banana cream pie rang in my ears. 

“We’ve had to fight for everything we ever got in West Virginia.  We fought to form unions…fought for safety in the mines…fought for years to get Black Lung recognized as a disease.  We’re tired of being ignored.  It’s like we’re being thrown away.” 

From pain comes determination.  I think I get it now. Not only does the coal industry contribute to climate change and pollute rivers and streams, but it also kills the people who work in it.  The experience of working people in West Virginia with the American Dream is hollowed out by death and sadness at the expense of a country hungry for energy at any cost.  Why can’t we find a way to take care of each other in this country?

By the time the Buick and I got to Fairmont, a big town of 18,400 on the Monongahela River, I decided to give the Buick a break and put it on a big multi-lane road with gentle rises and falls, gradual curves, and long straightaways.  I found an entrance to Interstate 79 South and took it, hoping to make it to Beckley, a soft motel mattress, and a good restaurant before it got dark.

I hope I get back to those hills.  Maybe I’ll find another way to get to Fairmont and take Route 250 on up to Cheat Mountain and into Virginia.  I’m sure if I do, I’ll meet more good people along the way and understand them even more.  

The Talk Turned to Politics

There in the Bridge Street Restaurant, I had a feeling my new friend was about to send me to school on West Virginia politics and while I had asked for it, I was a little wary about the next part of our conversation.  I thought maybe dessert would help the conversation remain civil.  Besides that, I saw a sign when I walked in saying they served homemade pie.  That doesn’t happen in America much anymore, and when it does, I do all I can to support it.

“I think I’m going to have a piece of pie and coffee.  Want to join me?”

“I shouldn’t.  But I will.”

“How is their pie.  It’s homemade I see.”

“It’s all good, but my favorite is the banana cream.  Great meringue if you like that kind of thing.  They zap it in the microwave before they give it to you.”

I flagged the waitress down and ordered two slices of banana cream pie and two coffees.  He leaned forward.  I kind of wished we’d kept talking about the best route west.

“There is a lot to say about Joe Manchin, but I’ll start with this.  It’s not the party that matters when it comes to him it's where he’s at in the Senate that matters.  You remember Robert Byrd?  Former senator from here?  He was in the Senate for 51 years, served in the House 3 years before that.  Died in office at age 92.  Byrd had clout.  Just like Manchin does now.  A state like us needs politicians with clout.” 

“West Virginia only has three electoral college votes you know.  Nobody cares about us much.  We know that.  So, when we get someone in Washington with seniority, heading up committees and such, we hesitate to start over.  I don’t care what party he’s from.  Know what I mean?  Manchin is Chair of the Energy Committee.  That means a lot to us.”

“It means a lot to everybody.  I think the decisions we make now about energy use in this country, and the world, are going to end up meaning what kind of world our grandkids live in.  I think climate change is the most important issue in politics.  And whether to stop burning coal is at the top of the list.  It’s the dirtiest fossil fuel there is.  So, Joe Manchin makes big money selling coal to power plants, still does, and he’s in charge of the committee reviewing and approving legislation about it.  Does that work?  You really think he can be impartial?”

“Do you think I don’t worry about my grandkids’ future?  I worry about climate change too.  And most everybody knows coal is on the way out.  But it’s a matter of speed on this switch to green energy.  You can’t do it fast.  Nearly all our power is made from coal.  We generate more electricity than we need from coal plants and sell it to our neighbor states.  You gonna shut down the coal business in West Virginia and leave us with nothing?  It may not matter to you but it damn sure matters to us.  You gonna make us turn around and buy electricity from someone else?  That’s not right.  We’re a poor state man.  Besides that, what are we gonna accomplish if America shuts down fossil fuels and China and India don’t?  I’ll tell you what, nothin’.  Fixing climate change isn’t just up to us.   Do you think the world revolves around the USA?”

“No.  But they look to us.  I think we have to show them how it can be done, do it, and then help finance the change, along with Europe.  It would be a great investment.  China doesn’t need our money, but other countries will.  It’s a global problem, and it’s in our interest to be a part of fixing it.  In our grandkids’ interest more than ours really.  And when you ask where are the incentives for West Virginia to drop coal and go green, they’re probably in the climate change proposal the Democrats are pushing that Joe Manchin, a Democrat, is holding up.  I bet he could get you what you need.  What’s his problem?  He’s acting like a Republican.”

“He’s acting like a conservative.  He’s always been a conservative.  He represents a conservative state.  He hasn’t changed, the Democratic party has changed.  He walks a fine line.  He voted twice to impeach Trump. You think that went over well in West Virginia? You know how big West Virginians voted for Trump right?  He made it through the 2018 election when Trump was President, won by a few percentage points.  Got just less than half the vote, which isn’t like him, but still won.  And he runs again in 2024.  We’ll see.  He’s got to play his cards right if he wants to stay in office.  And if he’s anything like Byrd he’ll stay till he dies.”   

The waitress brought the pie, and I had a bite.  The meringue felt like a sugary cloud in my mouth.  The banana cream was rich and warm.

“You know anything about Manchin besides his politics?”

“I feel like I do.  Maybe that’s why West Virginians like him so much.  His granddad went to work in the mines when he was nine years old and his uncle was killed in a coal mine.  Joe started out in the carpet business with his brothers, ran into trouble there, went into politics. Started out selling gob coal to power plants and went on to get rich as a coal broker.”

“Gob coal?”

“Yeah.  Gob coal is waste coal more or less.  It's what’s left lying around when they close down mines, when they clean up coal yards.  They scrape it up with all the dirt and crap laying around and sell it cheaper than regular coal.  It all burns up in the power plants.  Some people say gob coal is better left in the mines and on the ground than burned and released into the air.  It’s dirty stuff.  Manchin’s a complicated guy.  He’s from just down the road you know.”

“I knew got rich in the coal business but didn’t know he grew up here in the hills.”

“He’s from Farmington.  You’ll go right through it on Route 250.  Not a fancy place.  But you don’t need me to find out about Joe Manchin.  There are smarter people.  Hell, look him up on the internet.  It knows more than both of us.  But I’m telling you it’s not his party that matters.  It’s who he is.  We know him. He’s been in politics a long time.  Started out in the state legislature and worked his way up.   He’s a pretty straight shooter.  And he knows us.  Here’s what I think he’s doing.  He’s holding out to get investment in the state that will help us live through the change to green energy.  You can’t just pull the rug out from under West Virginia without making up somehow for the loss of the coal industry.”

“Have the feds started making up for it at all?”

“Not that I can tell.”

“Did Trump do anything in his four years to get that going?”

“No.  But neither did Obama and he had eight years.”

“What about Obama?  Wasn’t Obamacare a big help to West Virginia?“

“It may have helped some people afford care.  But it sure as hell didn’t help us get more medical providers.  It’s a damn thin health care system out here.  Especially mental health.  And the amount of substance abuse treatment is just pitiful. 

“You can say that again.  Speaking of health care, can you figure out why our health care system isn’t talked about anymore?  Rural health care is a mess.  But it’s dropped off the radar.  Except for drug prices, it’s like health care doesn’t matter anymore.”

“I think the health care lobby shut down that discussion.  But I don’t know.  I was hoping you could tell me.  Why aren’t the Democrats bringing it up.”

“It disappoints me that they don’t.  I think you may be right about the health care lobby.  And I’m sorry I don’t have more answers for you, but I do have a few more questions.  Like this one.  I can see why West Virginia might have gone big for Trump the first time, because he made coal an issue, said he’d save the coal industry.  I don’t think that was ever going to happen, but I can see the attraction of the coal mining community back then.  But he never made good on that promise.  Why would West Virginians vote for Trump even more in his last campaign than his first?” 

“Because we want to raise a stink however we can till things change.  Mayor of Cameron here in the ’30s was a socialist.  Don’t think we didn’t catch hell for that.  But people noticed.  We’ve had to fight for everything we ever got in West Virginia.  We fought to form unions.  Then we fought for safety in the mines.  Had to fight for years and years to even get Black Lung recognized as a disease, let alone get money to treat it.  We’re tired of being ignored.  It's like we’re being thrown away.  I got a mother living here to take care of.  I got kids and grandkids here.  You can’t just walk away from these little towns and the people in them.  We won’t let you.”

“You’re saying the Democrats are no better?”

“Democrats did a lot for us in the past.  But that came to a grinding halt.  I think they’re all for the cities now.  They figure that’s how they’ll win elections.  To tell you the truth Republicans have done damn little either.  But Trump is like neither one.  He’s like a third-party candidate running within the system.  He runs as a Republican but he’s not really one of them.  Sort of like Manchin and the Democrats.  I think Trump has the GOP's nuts in a vise, and he'll use it to help people like us.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t know really.  And then he pulled that January 6^th shit.  Not sure I should have voted for him the second time, and not sure I’d do it again.  But who else is there?”

“Young people.  Let’s turn it all over to them, vote out everybody over fifty.”

He laughed. 

“You may be on to something there.”

I finished my pie and had a swallow of coffee. 

“How’d you like that pie?” he asked.

“It was wonderful.  Reminded me of my mom’s.  Who do you suppose baked it?”

“The cook here.  Bakes them at home in her kitchen, brings them in every day.”

He looked at his watch.

“I got to get going.  My grandson’s ball game is going to start soon, and he’ll be looking for me in the bleachers.  Hate to eat and run, but it was nice talking to you.  Be careful on the road.  And keep asking us hillbillies about politics.  Maybe we’ll figure ourselves out that way.”

He smiled, shook my hand, stopped at the cash register to pay, and left.  I finished my coffee, collected my atlas, and walked over to my waitress standing at the cash register.

“You had a Reuben and milk, right?”

“Yeah.  With two pieces of pie and two coffees.”

“Bob paid for the pie and coffee.”

“Is that right?”

See?  We can still talk to each other and get along.  And we didn’t even know each other’s names. 

Bridge Street Restaurant

Bridge Street Restaurant in downtown Cameron, West Virginia isn’t much to look at, but I wasn’t going there for ambiance.  I needed food and a table to spread out my Rand McNally Road Atlas. 

You may think you don’t need paper maps anymore but try planning a route across several states using the screen on your I IPhone.  I needed to see how far east I wanted to go before heading south.  Along with that, I needed to figure out where I might end up at dark and if there would be a place to stay when I got there.  Why didn’t I have these things planned before I started?  Because that’s not how I travel.

It is not hard for a small restaurant to get busy fast.  There were only a few old guys sitting around having coffee when I walked in.  But soon after me came two groups of men who looked to be work crews of some kind.  They wore those bright vests and serious work boots.  They pulled tables together.  The waitress came to take my order but kept looking up at what they were doing.  I think she was counting them under her breath.

“I’ll have the Reuben sandwich and a glass of milk.”

“It comes with fries.  That OK?”

“You got any slaw? Could I maybe trade fries for an order of coleslaw?”

“Sure.  You want that milk when you bring your meal?”

“Yeah, that’s fine.”

When she left I opened up my atlas.  I hadn’t come very far, and it was going on 12:30. I was only about 28 miles past Wheeling and going slowly.  It was 75 miles to Elkins.  Trouble was, I didn’t know how long that would take me.  Depended on the road.  And then there was that local Dave warning me about the road past Elkins.

I looked around at the walls.  They were fairly empty save for stuff about Cameron Schools.  Cameron’s team mascot is the Dragons.  That made me smile.  The school mascot in my hometown, Danvers Illinois population 800 (then, 1,044 now but without a high school) was also the Dragons.  They had a Cameron football jersey on the wall, probably the number of some young local hero, along with athletic schedules and a group picture of the cheerleaders.  It was good to see some hometown pride.  But back to the map.

I could take a bigger, no doubt straighter and faster road when I got to Fairmount.  Make it to Beckley.  I’d stayed somewhere by Beckley last time in that 2016 West Virginia snowstorm. 

My food came.  The cook had toasted the rye bread which I like, and there was plenty of shaved corned beef and Swiss cheese.  Little skimpy on the sauerkraut, but plenty of thousand island dressing.  The slaw was good, but the waitress forgot my milk.  I flagged her down.

“I have a glass of milk coming.”

Shoot, I do that all the time.”

She saw the atlas open beside me.

“You’re not lost, are you?”

“Not exactly.  I just don’t know where I’m going.”

“Is there a difference?”

“Yeah.  I know where I am.  I just don’t know where I want to go next.”

“Well, if you need help, let us know.”

“Thanks.”

I was working on the second half of my Reuben while figuring out where I might cross into Virginia when the table of old guys drinking coffee slid their chairs back from the table and started leaving.

“You need help?”

I looked up to see a man with a nice smile.

“Yeah, probably.”

“Where you headed?”

“Florida in the end, but for now I want a good route out of these hills that will put me somewhere with a place to stay when it gets dark.”

“Where you coming from?”

I hate to even say where I’m coming from because people look at me like I’m crazy.  Hopelessly lost at a minimum.

“Illinois.”

While his face took on a blank look, but before he could ask another question, I followed up.

“I swung out here on purpose to see how you’re doing in West Virginia small towns.  I come from a small town myself.  West Virginia has been in the news a lot because of your Senator.”

“Yeah, Joe’s soaking up the spotlight all right.  So, what are you finding out about our small towns?”

“I haven’t come to any conclusions, but it looks like things have gotten tough out here.”

“Oh, I don’t know.  It’s always been fairly tough living in these hills.  Matter of degree.  Want me to tell you what I know about that map?”

“Sure.  Sit down.”

I don’t judge age well, but I figured him to be a bit younger than me.  He seemed relaxed, it was the middle of the day, and he was in no hurry to leave.  He had all the characteristics of a retired guy.

“I’m trying to figure out if I can stay on Route 250 on into Virginia and make it into a hotel somewhere by dark.  Guy in the grocery store parking lot told me the road gets a lot harder to drive after Elkins.”

“I’m not sure I agree with that.  I usually don’t take it past Elkins, but I have and don’t remember it as being so bad.  It’s different.  You’re up on Cheat Mountain and the national forest.  Longer climbs and bigger drops than what you’ve done to get here.  Mostly though, there’s little out there.  Beautiful.  But not much for towns or services.  You could google it, but I’m thinking you wouldn’t find a hotel till Staunton, Virginia. Let me see that map.”

He ran his finger down the line that was Route 250. 

“Yeah.  From Staunton you could get on 81 going south or cut over to 29 and head to Lynchburg.  Slow going.  What are you driving?”

“2006 Buick.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“No kidding.  Got that big V-6?”

“Yeah.”   

“How are your brakes?”

“Seem to be OK.”

“Yeah, well I’d be careful just the same.  Driving these hills can be hard on cars.  When we were kids, we bought stick shifts so we could work on the trannies.  We were always burning out clutches.  It was all about clutches, trannies, and brakes.  If you didn’t learn how to put in a set of brakes back then,+ you’d go broke.”

I didn’t respond, but I was thinking of the transmission work I had done on the Buick.  When was that?  Before the pandemic for sure.

“Should be a nice drive though.”

“So have you lived here your whole life?”

“Yep.  Started in the coal mines when I was 18.  Just retired, took my pension.  Feel damn lucky to have made it through.  I was lucky to never get hurt bad.  I’m afraid I might be among the last bunch to retire out of the mines.  Coal mining is drying up.”

“If you don’t work in the mines, where else is there for work out here?”

“Hardly nothing.  You gotta drive.  Wheeling or Fairmount if you’re lucky, maybe farther.  Clarksburg, Parkersburg.  Hell, at the end there I had to drive a long way to get to a working mine.  My last mine was nearly a hunnert n’ twenty miles round trip.  And with the price of gas now?  Straight loss of spending money for people stubborn enough to keep living in these towns.  You can buy a house cheap, but you can hardly afford to live in it now with this damn inflation.  And then you can’t sell it for much.  It’s a shame to watch it happen.”

 “How’s retirement?”

“Best job I ever had.  I have grandkids.  That’s what I’m doing here today.  I live out of town, and I came to see my oldest play a ball game down to the school.  Figured I’d come early and have coffee with my friends.  We don’t see each other much anymore.  I don’t miss work, but I miss the people I used to see there.  Well, most of them anyway.”

He paused, then went on. 

“What did you do?  Seeins you’re on a trip in the middle of the week I figure you’re retired too.”

“Yeah.  I retired as early as possible.  I ran an agency that helped troubled families.  We did counseling, foster care, daycare, stuff like that.”

“That’s important stuff.  Heartbreaking though I bet.  Did you do much with substance abuse?”

“Yeah.  Not many problems are more destructive to families than addiction.  Hard to be a decent parent well when your full-time job is figuring out how to get more drugs.”

“We for sure know that here in West Virginia.  Lot of people my age are raising their grandkids.  My wife and I aren’t, thank God, but we have friends who are.  Hell, we have good friends that lost a kid to an overdose.  I don’t think they know to this day if it was an overdose or suicide or what.  First, it was Oxycontin, now it's Fentanyl.  I can’t keep up.”

“You know, this isn’t a clinical term, but when that kind of death happened in the families we were trying to help at the agency, I used to think of it as accidental suicide.  They may not intend to die, but their lives put them so close to the edge that death is always close by.  It’s awful to watch.  Addiction and mental illness both.  They don’t commit suicide, they die from their disease.”

“Awful for the ones that are left behind I know.”

We were both quiet for a moment.  I changed the subject.

“I just had my first grandchild.  Little girl.  Turned one in February.”

“Oh man, that’s a wonderful age.  Mine are all older than that now.  But heck every age is wonderful.  Look at this.”

He got out his phone, poked it a couple times, and turned the screen towards me.  On it were three smiling blonde kids on a bridge with mountains and a huge gorge in the background, their heads like stairsteps.  Little girl in front, two boys behind.

“That’s a handsome group there.”

“Lucky for us they live close.  They’re my son’s kids.”

“Does he work in the coal mine too?”

“No.  They both work retail in Wheeling.  He’s trying to work himself into regional sales.  We watch the kids for them when we can.  His Mom didn’t want him to work in the mines.  I wanted him to go to college, but he didn’t take my advice.  He had kids young.  The money is tempting in the mines but I’m afraid there’s no future in it.  Not sure there’s much future in what he’s doing now either but it’s safe and healthy.  They’re making it work.  We help as much as we can.  No pension in his future though I’m afraid.  I’m hoping I can leave him something.”

I looked up a picture on my phone.

“Here’s my granddaughter June.  First trip to the grocery store with her Mom a couple weeks ago.  Her Mom is my daughter.”

“Oh boy, she’s going to be a heartbreaker.”

“She already is.  When I saw this, I thought, first trip?  How’d they swing that?  But the pandemic you know?  Our daughter went through her whole pregnancy worried about catching the virus.  June’s Dad did all the shopping early in the morning before work.  They were very protective.  Still are.  We’re seeing her as much as we can.  We take a COVID test before we spend time with her. We live about 90 miles away.”

“Yeah.  These last two years were a hell of a time and COVID’s not over yet.”

“God, I hope it is.  I don’t know how much longer I can put up with living like I’m scared of my friends and neighbors.  Or a threat to my own family.  It’s a bad way to think, let alone live.”

“I feel the same way.  I got all the shots I could, but lots of people didn’t.  Some of ‘em paid for it too. 

That shut us both up.  COVID is a sobering topic. 

“So,” he went on, “if you want to know about Route 250, I can tell you you’re going to see a lot of trees and mountains, and towns like this one.  Some smaller than this, a few bigger.  It’s not a pretty picture.”

“I scouted them out some.  Phillipi?  Belington?  Pruntytown?”

“Pruntytown?”

He laughed out loud.

“You’ll be lucky if you know you drove through Pruntytown.  It’s pretty much just a prison.  Philip-eye, the way you’re sayin’ it, is in the bible.  Phila-pea is in West Virginia.  It’s got some size, maybe 2500 people nowadays.  Got a college there.  Floods bad though, Phillipi does.  It’s on that Tygart Valley River.  You’d find a hotel there.  Belington too.  They’re both better off than Cameron but not by much.  What are you really looking for?”

“Let me see if I can figure out how to answer that in a good way.”

“I’m trying to figure out West Virginia politics.  And your politicians.  Especially Joe Manchin.  We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want, but I don’t understand how he’s a Democrat and is still being elected when West Virginia has voted for Trump in such a big way.  Twice.  And even more the second time.”

He sat back in his chair.

“I try hard not to talk about politics around here.  But then, I likely won’t see you again after today.  So, I don’t suppose I’ll be making an enemy I got to live with anyway.”

“I’m not out to be anybody’s enemy.  I just want to learn that’s all.”

My Brain was Interrupted

 

 

I don’t know how writers, particularly nonfiction writers trying to compose essays about real and perhaps current events, stick with a topic when a more pressing one emerges.  I was in the middle of writing about my recent road trip through West Virginia, a short account about people I met and things I learned when I was completely interrupted by national news.  Emotionally ripped away by the slaughter of fellow Americans in an upstate New York supermarket and an elementary school.  It’s been hard for me to think about anything else.

I read a New York Times account of the newest classroom tragedy, after hearing earlier reports from news conferences held by local officials at the scene.  The news comes at you in so many ways these days.  I was listening to an NPR interview in my car in which an expert of some kind was talking about nineteen children killed in one classroom.  The NPR interviewer, to his credit, asked this question.

 “Do you know for a fact they were all in the same classroom?”

“No, I don’t.  I assume so because Texas mandates no more than 22 kids in one classroom.  It just makes sense to me.  But no, I don’t know.”

It made sense to me, and I accepted his assumption.  Until my brother called.  My brother, older than me and as tuned in as anyone I know to the news, was the first to suggest otherwise.

“I couldn’t sleep the other night, got up, and tuned in to cable news.   Now they’re saying he was in more than one room.  The rooms are adjoined.  There were more than nineteen kids who went through that hell. Some lived through it.”

I had been grieving for nineteen kids, and two teachers (team teaching perhaps?) all of whom died.  Now my grief expanded to include the lifelong impact that experience would have on those who were in those rooms but live on.

For thirty-some years I was the director of a youth service/child welfare agency that expanded its expertise and programming from troubled teens, including runaways and those caught up in the juvenile justice system, to include services for those suffering neglect and physical and sexual abuse.  It was the sexual abuse that was most chilling, although it is open to debate as to which experience is most devastating.

Physical abuse and neglect are at least understandable to the public.  Sexual abuse was a taboo rarely considered until the mid-80s.  In the early days when Americans first felt able to openly talk about the sexual abuse of children, after a network news show called “Something About Amanda” starring Ted Danson, my staff couldn’t make a public presentation about our sexual abuse treatment program without some adult coming up after the talk and divulging their own traumatic experience.  The lid came off the dynamics of sexual abuse, most often familial, and the specter of its damage, the sheer extent of the trauma suffered by those abused and not believed, or never sharing their secret, was breathtaking.

It was my job as director of a child welfare agency to read and sign unusual incident reports, familiarize myself with court reports being submitted by my staff, to understand the problems confronting both the children and families we served but also the depth to which our staff and foster parents were affected by hearing their stories.  It was as simple as taking the material from my inbox, mail received and information from staff, walking back to my office, sitting down, and reading it.  What I read was often horrific.

And confidential.  Children and families involved in our child welfare, juvenile justice, and family court systems have a right to privacy.  I could talk to my staff who were involved about what I was reading, and I did often, but not to family and friends close to me.  It was hard.  I knew things about my community that others did not, and I couldn’t talk about it.

I retired over ten years ago. Things have changed. Privacy laws and confidentiality measures have remained the same, but we have changed our attitudes about volunteering information about ourselves.  Social media has made us all reporters.  Both journalists and everyday people are giving us more information than ever before.  You must look at it closely for accuracy, but there is no shortage of material to review.  In fact, I sometimes feel we’re drowning in it.

After the initial press conference following the mass murder in a Uvalde Texas elementary school, in which the Governor of the state flanked by its ranking U.S. Senator and others told the world a school resource officer confronted the gunman and brave law enforcement officials ran towards the deadly attacker, we learned otherwise.

The school resource officer was not on school grounds.  Upon returning to his post, he drove past the alleged killer who was in the vicinity of his wrecked truck, and never challenged the alleged killer’s entry into the school he was hired to protect.  (I’m dropping the alleged adjective.  To my attorney friends, I admit I’m wrong to do so.)  The killer entered the school through a propped open side door.  He shot his way into a classroom before the teacher could lock it.  That room adjoined another classroom, and methodically, over time, he killed both teachers and students in both rooms with an AR-15-style rifle he’d purchased legally days earlier on his 18^th birthday.  He was armed with more rounds of ammunition than is supplied to U.S. soldiers in battle, clip after clip of deadly merciless bullets.  Shell casings at the scene told police he had fired 142 rounds of that ammunition.

A law enforcement official in charge, commanding 19 or so armed policemen inside the school, delayed engaging the killer who was inside the classroom for nearly an hour until proper equipment and additional personnel arrived.  Even after they arrived.  His rationale was that the threat of further death was over, and the shooter barricaded in the room was no longer a danger.  He was wrong.

Journalists have helped us reconstruct the scene inside that classroom by conducting sensitive interviews in which survivors and their families agreed to participate.  CNN reporter Norah Neus interviewed Miah Cerrillo, age 11, who was wounded but survived in her fourth-grade classroom where so many of her classmates died.

Present at the interview was Miah’s mother.   Miah was scared to speak on camera, or to a man, because of what she experienced but told CNN she wanted to share her story so people can know what it’s like to live through a school shooting.  She hopes that speaking out can prevent a tragedy like the one she experienced from happening to other kids.

There was a time when journalists would never expose children to this type of coverage.  Again, times have changed.  Miah and her family freely consented to allow her voice to be heard.

Click this link, and click the redirect notice to view the video

Norah Tells Miah's Story

The story recalled in the video is hard to hear.  It’s a memory that will never be erased in her mind.  Hopefully, it can be dealt with in therapy and its impact blunted, the damage contained at some level.  The video speaks for itself.  If Miah is brave enough to share her story, I think we should listen.  It’s 6 minutes and 47 seconds out of your day.

Near the end of the tape, CNN reporter Norah Neus mentions something that struck a chord with me as a former supplier of therapy to survivors of trauma in a rural area.  You can hear Norah’s words in the video about the question of therapy for Miah.  They go something like this.

“Miah’s parents are trying to get her some kind of therapy help, they’ll probably have to drive to San Antonio for that.  They’re starting a Go Fund Me page.”

Excuse me, but it’s bullshit that the parents of victims should be left to their own devices to get help for their kids.  There should have been social workers in that community starting to gather resources and bring help to that community the day after the shooting.  San Antonio is 83 miles away from Uvalde.  Google maps says it’s an hour and twenty-minute trip.  It’s not just Miah that needs help.  Parents and students throughout the school need help.  Teachers need help.  Extended family members need help.  And police and first responders will need a whole lot of help after this one.

Some will require good debriefing, an assessment, and a limited amount of follow-up sessions.  Others will require medication and ongoing psychotherapy for years.  They deserve great care, and they deserve to have it delivered to them in their own community.

I’m not a trained psychotherapist by any means but I could write a budget for a project like this.  I’d start with staff: a team of well-trained and experienced therapists, supported by consulting psychiatrists including a child psychiatrist.  I’d give them a good case manager (maybe more depending on the numbers) that can visit kids at home, with their families, and in the community.  Included should be community education about trauma, and integration with natural supports in the community like churches, police, and whatever exists to support kids and families.

And rather than choosing which resources to provide from a fixed number of dollars picked out of the sky, I would budget whatever it costs to make this happen.  Is there an existing building that can be remodeled and furnished as an inviting, comfortable place for therapy to be delivered?  Then rent it and get that done.  Is there nothing suitable?  Then build one.  There is work to be done in Uvalde, Texas for years and years.  And Buffalo.  And on and on and on.

Come to think of it, it’s not just victims of mass shootings that need this kind of help.  Victims surviving daily gun violence in cities and towns across the country suffer from trauma.  In our data-rich world, I think we could map the incidence of gun violence and find neighborhoods and communities that need a large amount of mental health treatment but have no local source of help.  Let’s set up centers there too.

And for God’s sake let’s not depend on Go Fund Me as the way to pay for this help.  Our states and the federal government should provide comprehensive and ongoing treatment for their citizens as long as it persists in allowing such senseless violence to occur and until it stops it.  If it proves expensive, I suggest a healthy tax collected from gun manufacturers and sellers.  It’s an industry you know.  They should bear the burden of the havoc their products wreak out of the profits they enjoy in our capitalist system just as oil companies fund the clean up of petroleum spills that foul our environment.  Money should not be the issue.

Helping Miah and her family and others like them should be the issue.  We should be guided by what they want and need to be whole and healthy once again.   And we shouldn’t rest until that job is done.  

 

Cameron West Virginia

Cameron West Virginia was the town that most intrigued me.  Aside from the city of Fairmount, it was the largest community I would drive through on Route 250, and it had a new school and an intriguing past.

Coming from the north, I passed the new school in the woods perhaps a couple miles before entering the town.  It’s a gleaming, spanking new middle/high school, built at a cost of $31M, by an engineering firm that received awards for its green design. 

It serves 323 students and draws, I suspect, from a much larger area than Cameron.  It was by far the most modern building I’d seen since I crossed into West Virginia.  I expected to see a town that was a hub for all the little towns I’d driven through, with maybe a Dollar General and a good chain grocery store.  I had it figured as a place to stop for lunch.

But when I got to downtown Cameron, at the bottom of a valley, I was surrounded by old brick buildings, many of which appeared vacant.

I drove by two tall churches.  There was something of a food and clothing distribution going on near the Presbyterian church. An older woman with a young child, likely her granddaughter, was crossing Church Street heading towards folding tables near the sidewalk stacked with canned goods and neatly folded piles of clothing.  I stopped to let her cross the street.  She took the little girl by the hand, waved, and smiled.

On Railroad Street, I slowed down at a newer concrete building with no sign.  It was across from the grade school.  There were cars in the parking lot.  This sign on a lamppost close to the building caught my eye.

 I pulled in, parked, and walked to the door.  I still couldn’t tell what was inside, but as I got close to the door, I saw shopping carts through a large window.

When I walked in, I saw it was a grocery store.  There was a young man in a stocking hat at a cash register by a bleak produce section. 

“I saw a sign in your parking lot.  Do you sell prepared food here?”

“No. We ought to take that down.  That was for a little event they had in the parking lot a while ago.  We’re just groceries.”

“Thanks.  Do you have a restroom for the public?”

“Yeah.  In the back past the meat counter.  You’re welcome to use it.”

He pointed to the far corner.  Walking there gave me a chance to take in most of the store. I became used to empty shelves during the pandemic, mostly in the paper aisle.  But no store shelves I’d seen in Illinois compared to those in Greg’s Market.  There was very little fresh food of any kind.  Mostly canned.  A very small frozen section.  People were moving slowly up and down the aisles.  Big carts with little food in them. 

There was a lot of looking but little buying going on at the butcher’s counter.  A thin man with faded jeans stroked a long gray beard as he studied the price of the beef cuts.  The beef prices were even higher than at home.

When I got to the corner where the bathroom was supposed to be I encountered swinging doors that divide the front of the store from the back and a sign that said “employees only.”  I stopped.  A voice from behind me said.

“You go right ahead on.  That bathroom is for everybody.”

I turned and saw an older man with cases of canned food on a pallet jack making his way toward me.

‘Don’t pay that sign no mind.”

“Thanks.”

 As I left the store a man was talking to the kid with the stocking hat clerking at the cash register.  Both looked up at me.

“Is there a restaurant here I could get some lunch?”

“You mean a sit-down restaurant?” the clerk said.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, we have a pretty good one.  Follow this street just to the other side of the American Legion, that gray steel building over there.  Bridge Street restaurant is just behind it.”

“OK, thanks.”

I left the store and was just opening the door to the Buick when I heard a voice from the driver’s side of the pickup truck parked beside me. 

“Excuse me sir I want to second Paul’s recommendation of the Bridge Street restaurant.  Pretty good food and a lot of it.”

“That’s good to hear. I haven’t seen much in the way of eating places since I got on 250.”

“Where you coming from?”

“I started this morning in Zanesville Ohio, but I’m from Illinois.”

‘You’ve come a ways then.  How’d you like that drive from Wheeling?”

“I got to say it’s been a challenge.  I don’t have much experience driving on roads like this.  I come from Illinois.  Pretty flat.”

“Whereabouts in Illinois?”

“Ottawa.  About 90 miles southwest of Chicago on Route 80.”

“Ottawa huh? I’ve been on 80 going west but I don’t recall that town.”

“About 18,000.  Good farm ground around there.  It’s on the Illinois and Fox river.  Where they meet actually.  Say, what’s this river that winds around these hills?”

“Not a river.  Grave Creek.  Flow’s past that tall mound in Moundsville where the Adena Indian tribe buried their people.  Ends up in the Ohio River.”

“You lived here long?”

“All my life.  My great-great-grandfather lived here when this town really was something.  Nothing like it used to be.”

“You have really big churches and lots of downtown buildings for a town of 946.”

“That was the 2010 census number.  2020 census has us at 807.  Our high point was 1920.  2,404.  In a hunnert years we’ve lost nearly two-thirds of our people.”

I’d shut the Buick’s driver’s side door and we talked to each other over the hood. He turned from looking at me to looking over his town’s center.

“This town is circling the drain.”

“What happened?”

He turned and looked at me.

“Well, for starters we lost our train.”

“I was looking for tracks.  We’re on Railroad Street but I don’t see any.”

“Nope.  They pulled up the tracks in 1975.  First passenger train ran in 1853 and the last passenger ran in 1956.  Then we lost our freight traffic too.  Took everything they could out of these hills, then walked away.”

“Who’s they you’re talking about?”

“The company that bought the company that bought out the B&O Railroad.  Ended up being CSX I think.  It was the first public access train built in America.  Ran from Baltimore Maryland on the East coast to Wheeling Virginia and the Ohio River in sixteen hours.  It was a big deal for its time.  Like the Erie canal before that.  Set up a way to move goods and people fast.  Spent a lot of money on it too.  Between Cumberland Maryland and Wheeling, they built 11 tunnels and 113 bridges.  That’s what made this town.  People took the train in, took the train out.  This part of town right here was jammed with people making a trip through the mountains.  Slumming it maybe, but they came.”

“What was your great-grandpa doing back then?”

“Made a business out of derrick well drilling.  He dug wells first but ended up making the equipment. You drive pipe into the ground, slam it over and over, then take out whatever.  Mostly natural gas, but water wells too. They took coal outa here, sand, iron ore.  We had an ironworks at one time, and steel was made nearby.  That business mostly all went to Weirton.  But Cameron was a booming place.  And that’s all gone.”

“You got a heckuva high school out there though.”

“Yes we do, and we’re proud of it.  Gotta keep kids in it though.”

“Where’d you get the money for that?”

“$23M from the state and $8M from the county.  Kind of amazing.  We tried to restore our old train depot in the early 2000s, make a community center deal out of it, still can’t find the money to finish it.  But you’re right, we have a great school, and that’s important.”

 “How was the pandemic around here?”

“Well, we live fairly separately anyway.  Social distancing is not really new for us in the hills.  But we didn’t take to masks or shots as well as we probably should have.  I think we lost more neighbors than we had to.  My idea though is some people died of sheer loneliness, especially the older ones.  We didn’t get many visitors like you in the past two years. Not that we ever do now that we’re down to just that winding road.

He paused.

“Covid was terrible.  But I tell you what the opioid thing was worse.  Still is.  We’re going through a lot, and we don’t know what’s going to happen next.  I’m very worried for our young people.”

“I understand.  I don’t think the drug companies did you any favors on the opioid epidemic but you’re right.  I don’t think anybody knows what’s around the corner.”

I had intended to talk to West Virginians about politics.  69% of West Virginia voters marked their ballots for Donald Trump in 2020, a full percentage point more than in 2016.  Marshall County voters, one of which I was talking to, cast 75% of their votes for Donald Trump in 2020 after voting for him at a 77% clip in 2016.

I wanted to ask the nice man I was talking to why.  I wanted to ask him how Joe Manchin keeps getting elected as a Democrat in such a Republican state.  I wanted to ask him what Donald Trump had done for West Virginia to earn such trust.  But I didn’t.  I had the chance, but passed it up.  It felt wrong.  Like I would be badgering him. 

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Dave.”

“I’m Dave too.”

I was going to ask if I could take his picture but when he chose not to tell me his last name, I didn’t do that either.

“Well Dave, it was nice talking to you.  Enjoy lunch in our town.”

“I’m sure I will.  Nice talking to you too.”

I opened the door of the Buick again. Dave’s voice stopped me from getting in.

“Hey, I might tell you.  Don’t know how far you plan to go on 250 but past Elkins it gets pretty rough.”

“Rougher than from Wheeling? “

“Yeah. Lots.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.  Thanks for the worry.”

West Virginia

I crossed the Ohio River and entered West Virginia on I-70 East, then took the Moundsville/South 250 exit.  I’d been on Interstate highways since I turned onto I-80 in Ottawa.  It was April 20, 2022.     

The road to Moundsville takes you down the Ohio River Valley and West Virginia Route 250 takes you up into the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.  When I took the South 250 exit and the Buick began the steep climb up, I breezed past the very spot where, in April 2016, a squad car with flashing lights and a barricade stopped me from going farther.  They said it was due to icy road conditions and assured me it was for my own good.  I generally don’t like people making those decisions for me.

On that day in 2016, the skies were dark, and I was in the middle of a terrible snowstorm.  In 2022, it was clear sailing.  I’m still not sure the pandemic is over, but at that moment it felt like it.  I was alone on a road I’d never traveled and was free to go wherever I chose.  I’d waited a long time for that feeling.  During my life, I’ve had no luck duplicating it.

Route 250 is a two-lane road that will take you clear across the state and into eastern Virginia.  Slowly. On that initial climb up a steep grade the pavement was rough and patchy.  At the top of the climb, the road followed a high ridge for only a moment and then turned sharply downward.  A speed limit sign advised me not to exceed 15 miles an hour. At the bottom of the descent, the road turned quickly back up.

That was the first of many kiss-ass turns I’d been told about years ago at Amy’s Candlelight Fine Dining and Sports Bar in New Martinsville.  That same pattern of climb and descend, with a slowed-down switchback turn at each transition was repeated over and over.  I couldn’t imagine driving that road when it was icy.  I give grudging thanks to the cops that stopped me that day in 2016.

The trees had not greened up for the most part, but redbud trees just blooming added faint purple blotches on the hillsides.  I wished I could have gazed at the scenery more, but my eyes were locked onto the road.

The pavement could have been better, but the task of maintaining that winding track of two-lane asphalt must be huge.  Road shoulders were narrow, and I believe every bit of flat land large enough for a foundation contains a building of some kind.  Homes and farm buildings are few and far between.  The few pastures cleared of trees looked impossibly steep, yet cows and sheep clung to them.  Slope has the upper hand over human habitation in those hills. 

It was slow going.  I had considered the mileage but not the speed.  From Illinois, I imagined myself being in eastern Virginia by Wednesday night.  At this slow rate of travel that might not work.  But no matter.  It was a goal rather than a deadline. My overall hope was to be in Tampa Florida by Saturday night.  But if I wasn’t there, it was OK.  Lack of deadlines makes living easier.

I had researched the towns along South 250 on Wikipedia before I left.  Most are unincorporated, but I didn’t know they were practically unrecognizable.  Limestone is for the most part a road sign, a Presbyterian church, and a general store.  

Littleton is listed in Wikipedia as a CDP or Census Designated Place.  It was formerly incorporated but dissolved in 2004.  196 people lived there in 2000 according to that year’s census.  I turned off the road but saw little activity.  I didn’t look long, but mostly saw abandoned commercial buildings.  lllinois has small towns, but their buildings are grouped together.  I suspect Littleton’s 196 people are spread in houses spread up and down the hills rather than grouped along the main road.  There are precious few places to pull off and turn around on 250 South.  I kept on driving.

 

Burton in comparison looks to be doing all right.  It lost its post office in 2011 but still has a gas station and Discount Center store that sells everything from bread to motor oil plus hot food you can eat in a small dining area if you choose.   Core Oil is a full-service gas station that sells tires and does minor car repairs. Burton even has a body shop/car repair business that doubles as a West Virginia Vehicle Inspection Center.  Here’s an aerial view of Burton.

The bad news is the town of Burton is not included in any cell phone company’s current advertised service area.  You can get a landline in Burton, and “high speed” DSL internet service through Frontier Communications.  And while there is outpatient health care available at “The Burton Clinic” housed in the now-closed Burton Grade School, hospital care is an hour away by ambulance.

All these towns are far ahead of Glover Gap which has a dot named after it in the Rand McNally 2022 Road Atlas but is listed in Wikipedia purely in hopes one of its readers can help them locate its coordinates and discover things like cemeteries or razed building sites to verify its existence.  This goes under the category of “we’ve heard of Glover Gap, but we can’t find it.”  Research in the region leads the Wiki people to believe it was once a community and not just a place name.  So, if you know anything about Glover Gap, let them know.

Hundred, a town of 262 people on 250 south, has a colorful history.  It is named after a man named Henry Church, a citizen of the town who lived to be a hundred (109 in fact, or perhaps fiction) and died in 1860.  Henry fought for the British in the Revolutionary War and was taken prisoner by Lafayette’s forces before being released and returning to his home in the hills.  I forget when I travel in Eastern America how much farther the history of white settlers on the continent extends beyond that of the Midwest.

Here’s a photo of Cleveland Street in Hundred.

Hundred also boasts the birthplace of Edward King who played Major League Baseball for seven years and drove in the final run in the 1922 World Series while playing for the victorious New York Giants.  You learn something every day.

Before I left home, I learned some West Virginia history in preparation for the trip.  In the run-up to the Civil War, a portion of the state of Virginia broke away and formed a new state, West Virginia.  I never knew the story.  Retirement is handy for filling in the gaps.

The land that is now West Virginia was taken from indigenous people in 1607 when Britain claimed to own both it and present-day Virginia.  That action formed the Virginia colony.  In 1776 when thirteen such colonies declared their independence from Britain, the hills and mountains of Appalachia stayed part of the state of Virginia and remained so until the state sharply divided over the question of slavery.  

I think we ignore the significance of slavery not only to our country's history but to its identity.  How Americans living in the land I was driving through felt about the moral question of slavery and wished to define their community created West Virginia.  

In 1861, at a convention in Wheeling (then Virginia) a convention of Northwestern Southern Unionists voiced support for repealing Virginia's ordinance of secession passed in April of 1861. Secession ordinances were boilerplate resolutions circulated among southern states who wished to retain the legal right to enslave black people brought from Africa and keep their status as chattel property of white owners.

After Abe Lincoln's election as President of the United States, secession began with South Carolina and was quickly followed by ten other states and one territory (Arizona).

Two states, Kentucky and Missouri, failed to formally secede but were considered by the Confederacy as southern states anyway.  Two states previously considered southern, Delaware and Maryland, rejected secession and remained in the Union.  No other states acted n the question of secession until, following the Wheeling Convention, a Unionist government formed from50 counties in western Virginia.

That state, West Virginia, was admitted to the Union as a U.S.state on June 20, 1863, in the middle of the Civil War.  Its borders reshaped the demarcation line those famous surveyors, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, laid down to separate North from South and divide our country on the question of slavery.  

But those events are over and done.  I was looking to be in the moment with people in West Virginia, to learn about their present reality and maybe ponder their future.  That started in Cameron.

Zanesville Ohio

 I don’t have anything against Indiana.  It’s “The Gateway to the Midwest” according to their marketing campaign.  At least it’s a descriptive phrase.

Going fast with the trucks on I-70 I found when I crossed into Ohio their tagline is an imperative sentence. “Find it here.”  Find what here?  And what if I don’t care to find anything?  I think states should go with the inviting sentence “Welcome to _______” and skip the rest.  Let the traveler define the territory they enter in their own words.

I made it all the way to Zanesville, Ohio on the first day of the road trip.  I planned to stop in Columbus, but when I reached the home of OSU and Ohio’s state capitol, I felt good, so I went on.  The Buick was running great, aside from an odd growling noise coming from the front end.  I first heard it at a gas station just past Yellow Springs, Ohio when I was pulling up to the pump.  My brother Darwin would know exactly what that noise meant, but not me. 

Zanesville is a town of 25,000 people located at the confluence of the Licking and Muskingum rivers.  My town, Ottawa, stands at the confluence of the Fox and Illinois.  I like how the word confluence sounds when spoken and its meaning.  Merging together, making one.  Zanesville has a famous bridge in the shape of a Y that spans both rivers.  Amelia Earhart said Zanesville, viewed from above, was the most recognizable city in the America because of that distinctive bridge. 

I stayed in a hotel on a high bluff above those rivers looking down on the town.  After the flatness of Indiana and western Ohio it was nice to be in rolling hills.  I was close to West Virginia.

I resisted the steak burger and chocolate shake calling my name from the Steak N’ Shake next to the hotel and made my way to the old downtown.  It was full of well-built brick buildings.  I passed a towering but aging brick church that reminded me of Open Table, my church back in downtown Ottawa.  From 1840 to the breakout of the Civil War Zanesville was also a stop on the Underground Railroad, history we’re just learning about in my town of Ottawa. 

When I saw this building, I figured Zanesville had to be a county capitol.

And it is.  Just as Ottawa is the capitol of LaSalle County, Illinois Zanesville is the capitol of Muskingum County, Ohio.  The similarities kept piling up.  Drive 500 miles and end up in a town that makes you feel you’re still at home?  Eerie.

Near that fine old courthouse was an independent Italian restaurant I’d read about online, the Old Market House Inn.  The hostess put me at a small table by a huge unlit fireplace and a waitress brought me a roll and butter.  When I picked up the knife to butter my bread it was heavy.  I have this unproven theory that the weight of a restaurant’s silverware correlates to the price of the food.  When I checked the menu, my supposition was again confirmed.  No data to support it though, only anecdotes.

I had chicken marsala over pasta and a glass of wine, pondered the next day’s route, and headed back to the Buick.  Before I started the Buick to go back up to the hotel, I rolled the car windows to listen.  It growled when I turned the wheels but not when I drove straight down the street.  What the hell?  I slept well.  Crazy dreams.

The buzz at the free breakfast the next morning was the breakdown of the pancake machine.  It was a fully enclosed unit that promised to spit out beautifully browned pancakes in a minute.  It was locked up.  Pushing any or all the buttons produced no response.  I knew that because the woman in charge of breakfast pushed them over and over.  A man in line suggested she unplug it and plug it in again.  My thoughts exactly.  But it was hard wired into a wall panel. 

As issues go in the world of hotel breakfasts, the broken pancake machine was major.  The breakfast lady took her job seriously, slowly laying down slices of French toast so the tops and bottoms made perfectly straight lines clear across the silver chafing dish.  When they didn’t, she nudged them into place with her tongs.

She was not at all happy about the pancake machine, or the maintenance guy who, after a quick once over, told her there was nothing he could do about it.  I thought pancakes plus French toast was overkill anyway, but she obviously considered pancakes irreplaceable.  I had the fake eggs, a tasteless turkey sausage patty, and a couple of cartons of milk.  I kept thinking about the Buick.

Before leaving my parking place at the hotel I turned on the Buick’s engine and turned the steering wheel back and forth.  It growled most when it was far right or left, and not at all when the wheels were straight.  Then it hit me.  Power steering fluid.  Darwin would be proud.  I headed down the hill and over that famous Y bridge looking for help.

I found it at an Advance Auto Parts store.  Before going in, I popped the hood on the Buick and looked for the power steering fluid reservoir.  Dipsticks for the oil and transmission.  Reservoir for brake fluid. But the deal for power steering was nowhere to be found.   How could that be?  You couldn’t use brake fluid for both.  The store was just opening up.  I approached the guy behind the counter.

“I’m getting a growl from my front end that I think is low power steering fluid, but I can’t find the reservoir.”

“What are you driving?”

“2006 Buick Lucerne.”

“That one is hard to find.  Let’s make sure you need fluid before you buy it.  I’ll show you where it goes.”

He went right to it. 

“See where it is?”

I took my sunglasses off and bent closer.  It was under the alternator near the fire well.  Painted black, lid and all.  Blended in like it was camouflaged. 

“Who would think to look there.?”

“Yeah.  Right?  That’s why it gets so neglected.  Whoever is changing your oil should be checking this level, but they usually don’t.  I like Buicks, but the engineer that designed this deal should be fired.”

He took off the cap, wiped it and put it back, took it out again.

“There’s your problem.  Dry or damned near it.”

“Does that do damage to the steering mechanism?”

“Not usually.  Tells you it may have a slow leak, but we sell a product that usually seals those up pretty well. Let’s get you fixed up.”

I went with him to the shelves and bought two.  Best to have one in reserve in case I needed it.

As he rang me up, he made a general announcement to both me and the young guy just coming in the door to start work. 

“Killian here is going to get that skinny funnel we have and fill up that reservoir for you.”

Killian looked at his boss.  If his facial expression was a poster, it would have said in big letters

”Oh yeah?  Why not you?”

“It’s an old Buick Killian.  Under the alternator.  Make sure it gets filled.  Let it settle and check it a couple times.”

Killian grabbed an odd shaped skinny funnel and headed back out the door.  I trailed behind with my two bottles of power steering fluid.  He took off the cap to the reservoir and tried several ways to get the funnel situated.

I said, “Could they have made it any harder you think?”

“I don’t think so.  The guy who thought this up wasn’t a mechanic I can tell you that.  I’ll take that fluid now.”

He opened one bottle and took off the foil seal.

“I need you to get in the car, start it, and let it idle.  We need to make sure this fluid gets down in the lines and fills up.”

I got in the driver’s side and turned the key.  I couldn’t see him because the hood blocked my view.  He spoke loudly over the engine noise.

“OK sir, now turn the wheels all the way to the left, and again all the way to the right.”

“Good. Do it a couple more times.”

When I turned the wheel the first time the groan could be heard, but as I continued it faded away to nothing.

“OK, you’re full now.  Took almost the whole bottle.”

Thanks Killian.  I really appreciate your help.  Can I pay you something?”

“No.  That’s what we’re here for.”

My young mechanic back in Ottawa tells me the same thing.

I’ve been with this 2006 Buick Lucerne for a long time.  It was the last car Jerry Trost ever sold me.  It needs some care, but I like extending its life.  It’s a great ride.

With the Buick back in shape, I got on Interstate 70 and headed for Wheeling, West Virginia.