I Am the Last Living Hillbilly

When I was a child growing up in the ’40s and ’50 there were still corners of this fine republic where the concept of travel for pleasure barely existed. I came of age in the backwoods of West Virginia in an isolated hill-and-valley community whose inhabitants rarely left because the difficulties of escape were so great and the rewards so unknown.

Most of the people who lived there had little education or portable skills. Roads were bad and frequently impassable. Money was tight. Travel for pleasure usually meant catching one of the C&O “locals” that served the small villages scattered along the railroad track deep in the New River Gorge — places with exotic names like Thayer, where I lived for first five years of my life, Prince, Thurmond, Quinnemont, Glade, Sandstone.

My father’s mother — my grandmother Lola — lived to be more than 80 years old without ever leaving Summers County. My grandfather, her husband, was more worldly, having traveled as far west as Charleston and as far east as Charlottesville. True, my father had been to many places in Europe — France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany — but it wasn’t his idea.

In 1950, I didn’t know a single person who owned a telephone and only a handful who had an indoor toilet. Nobody ever locked their doors. There would be a murder once every 20 to 30 years and always involved people who knew each other well. Nobody ever got divorced.

I didn’t see a TV set until my great uncle Edgar got one around 1954. Edgar had been to New York in 1918 and was about to board a troopship going “over there” when World War I ended. He returned home and began looking for a bride. Not able to find a suitable lady locally he was told about a woman named Vergie who lived about 50 miles away. Since few people in southern West Virginia had cars in 1920 and there were no roads anyway, a decent courtship was not practical.

But, letters were exchanged, a date was set, and eventually, they managed to meet each other at a church about halfway between and tie the knot. They were married for about 40 years, until her death, had four kids together, and were as happy as any other couple you’re likely to meet. That’s a picture of them sitting side by side in rocking chairs in the 1940s and they’re holding hands.

Although I have traveled the world a bit, hung out with people from lots of different cultures, I remain — to this day — most comfortable among these people or, at least among the older ones who lived there before the interstates and the malls and the Appalachian Redevelopment Act came along and made people who were poor, but fiercely independent, poor but dependent.

The world I grew up in no longer exists. Murder, drugs, divorce and widely separated families are common — even in the smallest communities. Everyone locks their doors these days.

I may be the last living hillbilly. I guess that’s progress.

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