The Morgantowner: Welcome to The Morgantowner

I'm starting a new blog today, and calling it "The Morgantowner," since I'm now co-owner of a home in Morgantown with my spouse, Rabbi Joe Hample. Owning a home means we plan to stay here for the forseeable future. I expect to continue to write about my travels, about politics nationally and in West Virginia, and about my personal journey. My previous blogs, "Barry's Excellent Adventure," about our life from January 2010 to July 2012 in Crescent City, California, and "Year Three Morgantown" about our third year in town are both available online at http://www.barrywendell.blogspot.com and www.yearthreemorgantown.blogspot.com respectively. The Crescent City blog is available as a book titled Barry's Crescent City Blog. I have a few copies left. Send $20 to P.O. Box 831, Morgantown, WV 26507 and I'll mail back a copy. I'm on Facebook as "Barry Wendell," although there are others with that name there. On Twitter, I'm "Barry Lee Wendell." One could e-mail me at rebnermwv@gmail.com. Welcome to "The Morgantowner."

I've been visiting one county monthly since we moved to Morgantown in July 2012. All the counties should be within three hundred miles (500 kilometers) of Morgantown, regardless of what state they are in. I'm going in alphabetical order, more or less. I'm behind by two months because I was ill in January and the weather was so bad I couldn't get out in February. I understand what the word "compulsive" means.

I'm just back from May's county, Boone, West Virginia. It's 187 miles from Monongalia County's courthouse in Morgantown to Boone County's in Madison. I stayed at The Oak Tree Inn, part of a chain I had not heard of before. There didn't seem to be any place to stay in Madison or Danville, the two biggest towns in the county.

I started in Whitesville. From Charleston, it's about forty miles south to Whitesville, a coal mining town far down State Road 3, a two-lane highway that runs through Boone County.

Whitesville has a real downtown. Most of the storefronts are vacant, many with yellow signs in the windows that say "2015. Let's turn this town around." I stopped for gas at the one station. They had a convenience store and a lunch counter in the back of the station. The local elementary school is on The National Register of Historic Places. There is also an imposing monument to the twenty-nine coal miners killed in an explosion at The Upper Big Branch Mine in 2010.

Comfort, where the motel is located, is midway, about twenty miles each way, between Whitesville and Madison, the county seat. In addition to the motel, there are two gas stations, a convenience store with a chain sub shop and a pizza place. I saw a sign-in sheet at the motel for railroad employees.

Madison has a beautiful courthouse and a Main St. containing mostly social service agencies. The big old bank building is now the public library. There are two chain grocery stores between Danville and Madison and many fast-food restaurants. There is a small strip mall. I found a family-run Chinese restaurant for dinner. The waitress spoke fine English, but she wrote my order on her ticket in Chinese characters. I wanted to ask how her family came to live there, where there isn't any kind of minority community.

Boone County is more than 98% white, according to the 2010 census. There are lots of churches. Coal is king. In fact, a historic marker on Route 3 notes the location of the first coal mine in West Virginia. I saw the rail cars loaded with coal, passed several mines along the road. I visited Nellis, a small town on the National Register, an early coal company town. I didn't go south of Madison, but I could see that there were lots of small towns on the map down Route 85.

Boone County is beautiful, set in the mountains along Big and Little Coal River, not far from flood stage in this rainy summer. I could see why someone from there would want to stay, and I understand the antipathy to environmental regulations that would negatively impact the coal industry. Still, most of Boone County looked impoverished, particularly Whitesville. The highway through there was crowded with big trucks bringing coal to market. Someone is making money there. It just doesn't seem to be the residents.

I was worried about how I would be treated. There are reports that "outsiders" have been threatened in some of the coal counties of Southern West Virginia just for taking pictures. In Boone County, everyone I spoke to was friendly, upbeat and helpful.

I left the morning after I arrived. I had stopped at McDonald's for an iced tea on the way out of town. The car I parked next to had two bumper stickers. One was from the United Mine Workers. The other said "Don't blame me. I voted for the old white guy." I thought to myself that Romney (the old white guy) would have done everything he could to destroy the miners' union. A few homes had Confederate flags on their porches, the residents being obviously unclear about why West Virginia exists. There were also "Don't Tread On Me" Tea Party flags around. My impression is that most of the people in Boone County aren't that political, but just working hard to maintain their life.

Here are the pics: