Fall 2003
About two weeks ago, I traveled south on St. Rte. 100, east on U. S. Rte 30 and U. S. 250 through Amish country to I-77. Traveling south on I-77 to Marietta, Charleston, Beckley and Bluefield, W. Va., I had great expectations of seeing brilliant fall coloration. From previous experiences, it was the optimum time of the year for one of the finest shows of nature. The southern mountains were normally ablaze with color. The coloration, even in Ohio was disappointing , but particularly so in the Beckley, Flattop areas. Many leaves were down and muted brown to purplish brown of the oaks dominated the view.
A brother in Brush Fork W. Va. (near Bluefield) explained that around October 1, a low temperature of 24 degrees had “cooked’’ the vegetation. The chemical reactions for the development of the anthocyanins (reds) could not occur and the cellular structure that reveals the yellows was destroyed.
The next day, we traveled on south into the high mountains of southwestern Virginia and then east on I-81 to Waynesboro, VA. We crossed the Skyline Drive. Again the colors were muted. A few protected ravines did display some bright colors.
My three brothers and their spouses spent a few days in Waynesboro visiting our only sister, Betty. The weather was great. There was more coloration in town than in the countryside.
My brother Ira and his wife, Pat, have a very nice place in Brush Fork. They feed hundreds of pounds of food to the birds each year. They also have flying squirrels, deer, foxes and other wildlife in their yard. A pileated woodpecker visits their suet feeder 3 – 4 times a day. Meal worms are available for the wrens, finches, nuthatches, chickadees, etc. They provide nests for several different species.
They told me a story about a house wren that you might find interesting. A male wren came early this past spring and established his territory on a porch of their home. He sang loudly for at least two weeks and carried coarse sticks into a nest. Finally a female was induced to join him and she completed the nest with finer sticks and grass. Seven eggs were laid. The male was always nearby and continually sang his song as only a house wren can.
The female began sitting on the eggs, but when she left the nest, he would chase, attack and flog her. One morning, Ira noticed that two eggs had been raked out of the nest and were broken. Perhaps other varmints were involved, but the male still sang. Later they observed the male bird raking out the remaining eggs and then he tore the nest apart. She apparently left the area, but he still sang. He was later observed destroying the nest and eggs of a Carolina wren, and the singing now was louder and longer.
The next weekend on Saturday, Oct. 25, Mary and I drove to Columbus to attend the Seventy-fourth Annual Meeting of the Ohioana Library Association at the Ohioana Library and State Library of Ohio. We saw more and brighter fall coloation on this trip than on the Virginia trip. Also the color ws much sharper in the towns and villages than in the countryside.
We had been invited as guest of Dr. Ronald Stuckey who was receiving an Ohioana Book Award for his book, Lost Stories:Yesterday and Today at Put-in-Bay. About 15 people were honored for their poetry, fiction, non-fiction, music, and art. Most of the recipients are from Ohio, live in Ohio, and work in Ohio.
Maggie Anderson, an Ohioana Poetry Award recipient for her contributions to poetry in Ohio, revealed in her remarks after receiving the award that she was raised in Almost Heaven, West Virginia. She also said that she presently lives in almost, Almost Heaven, Ohio. She is a full time faculty member at Kent Stqte University in their Creative Writing Program.
After the program was over for the day, Mary and I sought out Maggie to talk about our common West Virginia experiences. I told her that I was raised in a country community in southern W. Va that she had never heard of by the name of Spanishburg.
“Aha,’’ she said, “I taught in the Spanishburg School and have written a poem about Spanishburg and it is in this book, Windfall – New and Selected Poems.”
She went on to say that she would buy the book as a present to me. However, I paid for the book and it is delightful.
There were probably around 300 students at the school, grades 1 – 12. I am not sure of the size of graduating classes when Maggie taught there, but there were 16 in my class. The kids were all rural and some were bussed 20 – 25 miles. Some of those walked more than a mile to get to the bus stop. Most of the families made a meager, but proud living on their hillside farms. A few worked in the coal mines some 30 – 40 miles away. Princeton, a town of about 14,000 was eleven miles away. A smaller town, Matoaka, was about 15 miles away, and closer to the coal fields. Here is her poem.
Spitting in the Leaves
In Spanishburg there are boys in tight jeans,
mud on their cowboyboots and they wear huge hats
with feathers, skunk feathers they tell me.
they do not want to be in school, but are.
Some teacher cared enough to hold them. Unlike
their thin disheveled cousins, the boys on Matoaka’s
Main Street in October who loll against parking meters
and spit into the leaves. Because of them, someone
will think we need a war, will think the best solution
would be for them to take their hats and feathers,
their good country manners and drag them off ˇ ???somewhere,
to Vietnam, to El Salvador. And they’ll go.
they’ll go from West Virginia, from hills and back roads
that twist like politics through trees, and they’ll fight,
not because they know what for but because whatˇˇˇ ???they know
ss how to fight. What they know is feathers,
their strong skinny arms, their spitting
in the leaves.
At the end of the poem in the book, she wrote “A skinny guy from Spanishburg, with gratitude for our meeting in Ohio, sharing home.”
– Percy