Thursday, May 24, 1973
TV Quiz
On the seventh and last night, the Pocahontas team lost on Klassroom Kwiz by a close 10 points to Andrew Lewis High School, 150 to 160. The boys are to be commended for the wide range of knowledge they displayed and the whole county is proud of them.
Rick Wooddell, a senior, is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Forrest Wooddell, of Green Bank.
Philip Horne, a sophomore, is the son of Mr. and Mrs. William G. Horne, of Arbovale.
Mike Smith, a junior, is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Smith, of Bartow.
BIG FISH
Michael Drost, of near Buckhannon, admitted that he had taken the big fish from the Fish Hatchery last week, taking it to Buckhannon and checking it with the conservation officer there as a prize winning fish. In the Justice of the Peace Court of R. S. Hollandsworth, Prosecuting Attorney Eugene Simmons reports that Drost was fined $100 and costs, plus he will pay for mounting the fish and it will be brought back for display at the Fish Hatchery.
GRADUATES
Among those receiving degrees from WVU were William H. Hevener, Arbovale; Larry E. Matheny, Bartow; Wanda J. Wymer, Hillsboro; Robert L. Kelley, Huntersville; Henry S. McNeil.
DEATHS
Roscoe T. Beverage, 67, of Knapps Creek; a son of the late Coe Beverage and Sadie Lightner Beverage… Burial in Mountain View Cemetery.
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James Homer Clark, 66, died Saturday, May 19, 1973, of a heart attack while mowing his lawn at his home in Marlinton. Born in Greenbrier County, a son of the late John and Myrtle Clark… Burial in Mountain View Cemetery.
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Elmer Allen Grimes, 64, of Akron, Ohio; born at Mill Point, a son of the late Mr. and Mrs. James B. Grimes.
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Leslie William Ryder, 77, of Ronceverte, formerly of Boyer; burial in the Boyer Cemetery.
THEY DROVE OL’ SHANE AWAY
By Ralph Reppert
The Sun Magazine 1972
AFTER sticking it out for almost a year in the big city, my cousin Shane has gone home to West Virginia. The only explanation he gave me was that if he stuck around any longer he’d yawn himself to death.
Typical case history. I’ve seen it happen to other free spirits like him. West Virginians don’t like being minorities any better than anybody else.
City people, upon learning a man is from West Virginia, often reply: “West Virginian, huh? Then how come you’re wearing shoes?”
The man may be dressed in the same flawless dinner jacket everybody else at the head table is wearing. He may be a professional man, perhaps the principal speaker. But, invariably, the tired wisecrack about the shoes.
Even worse are the city idiots who apparently didn’t get any geography in school and don’t know West Virginia has been a state in its own right more than 100 years. These people, meeting a man from the Mountain State reply: “West Virginia, you say? Why, I’ve got relatives in Roanoke.”
This is as absurd as telling a man from Dallas: “A Texan, eh? That’s a coincidence. I used to date a girl in Phoenix.”
This is why many West Virginians identify their state as “West – By God – Virginia.”
It is not pronounced as a blasphemy. It is spoken with the same reverence as “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. For what power, other than God, could create a state with coal enough to heat the world, oil enough to lubricate it, natural gas enough to illuminate it, and brains enough to run it?”
West Virginians are easy going people. You don’t see any of them in the protest marches or the sit-down demonstrations. They don’t do much talking, and no talking at all if they don’t feel they can improve on the silence.
So West Virginians accept quietly the patronizing questions city people ask, string them along, and let them believe whatever they want to.
As a result, city people form some weird opinions about West Virginians. Here are a few:
A honeymoon in West Virginia, consists of a man and his bride climbing into the old jalopy and riding until dark.
The average West Virginian lives so far back in the sticks that his third grade school teacher was a bear.
Money is so scarce in West Virginia that most people barter. A dressed hog is a $5 bill, and they use chickens for change.
When you win at Bingo down there, they let you keep the corn, and sometimes people get married just to get the rice. In the hamlet taverns down there a man orders potato chips by telling the barmaid, ”Gimmie a bag of them big, d——d cornflakes.”
Smug city people feel this way secretly, but cover it up with pseudo apologies for what they have.
“I guess we like the house well enough. We only paid $70,000 for it but, what the heck, it’s a place to sleep.”
“It’s only an $8 bourbon – if you buy it in case lots – but in a mixed cocktail who can tell?”
This sort of downplay rankles a West Virginian, who regards periodic libations with respect, and treats it as the pleasant little interlude it ought to be.
He triggers the situation with the good humor it deserves, by laying down his ax, ballpoint pen, slide rule or whatever tool he’s working with, and announcing:
“This old tool tickles my hand, and I can’t work when I’m laughing.”
Then out comes the bourbon, not often in a decanter, but as often that way as in a jug, and the invitation to touch glasses.
The accepted response is, ”Well, now, I don’t care if I do.”
SHANE, like all other West Virginians, hated “being missionaried.”
A host apologized for not having any corn likker, and asked him to try a cocktail called the martini. He then explained how, and with what, martinis are made.
Shane could have told the man: “Yep. That’s the way I mixed martinis for a number of years at the Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs.”
But he didn’t.
The capstone on Shane’s disillusionment was some educated city character at a party, telling him: “Washington, D. C. is just 40 miles from here. That’s the National Capital, you know.”
That was the night before my ignorant old hillbilly cousin loaded his golf clubs and his 20 Hickey-Freeman suits and his custom-made English shoes into his private plane and headed back home to backward, undernourished, poverty stricken West-By God-Virginia.
