The Morgantowner: Four Hours in Clay County, West Virginia

If you follow this blog, you know I visit a different county every month, within three hundred miles of Morgantown, and in alphabetical order. This month's county was Clay, West Virginia. It's more than a hundred miles, less than two hundred, which normally means I would spend one night. But Clay has fewer than ten thousand people, down from more than fifteen thousand in 1940. It's located southwest of Morgantown, on I-79. The county seat and only city, also called Clay, is about ten miles off I-79, along Elk River. It's about forty-five miles north of Charleston, our state capital and largest city, where the Elk River meets the Kanawha.

Besides City Council in Morgantown, I've been busy with the High Holydays, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. I chanted in Hebrew from First Samuel, about Hanna on Rosh Hashana, and from Deuteronomy 29 and 30 in special trope on Yom Kippur. I also sang a World War II-era partisan song in Yiddish on Yom Kippur afternoon. I was glad to do that, and it's easier than singing the whole holiday liturgy, as I used to do, or leading the service. Preparing for that kept me home most of the month, and after, since last Wednesday night, I've been running on low energy.

But Saturday was a home football game, late afternoon, and I figured I could get out early in the morning and come back during the game, before the crowds left the stadium and Morgantown's roads became impassible.That's how I came to be in Clay yesterday.

I know two people from Clay: Chrissy Packtor, who I met in my first campaign for office in 2016. She was an undergraduate then and now lives in Boston, and my primary care doctor at WVU, Lucas Hamrick. I mention them because the three most famous people from Clay are the FEMA worker who called Michelle Obama a racist name and her friend, the former mayor of Clay, who, on receiving that comment, said "You made my day," and more recently a school bus driver who kicked a kid off his bus, saying "I don't want (insert anti-gay slur here) on my bus." Chrissy and Doctor Hamrick are exemplary intelligent and compassionate people. If you read the news, you would imagine Clay County to be full of screaming bigots.

I arrived in Clay County about 11:15, and turned off I-79 to the town of Clay. Other than the Interstate, which runs across the northern edge of the county, I think all of the roads are two-lane. I didn't see any traffic lights. It's certainly pretty, driving through the hills, autumn having not quite reached that far south. Elk River looked placid, and except for the empty lots along Main St., you wouldn't know that the whole town was badly flooded in 2016. There is a chain drug store, a dollar store, the old courthouse, the only place in the county on The National Register of Historic Places, vacant, I think, and a new, modest courthouse building across the street, a local mid-century modern bank building, as well as a health department and other government buildings. There is a library, open only a few hours on Saturday morning. North of town, past the intersection of State Routes 4 and 16, there is a small branch of a chain market, three chain restaurants and another dollar store. That's about it. The town has fewer than 1,000 residents, houses being uphill across Main Street from Elk River, or scattered along the main roads.

I checked all of this out, then headed for lunch at the chain place that makes subs. There was an older and a younger woman working there, and the older gal (younger than I am) joked that I needed cheese on my sandwich because "cheese makes the sandwich." There was a gentleman, heavyset and bearded, sitting across from me, wearing a t-shirt that said "Joey 'Wolfman' Varrella" with a picture of a wolfman on the shirt. I asked if he was "Wolfman" and he said he was. He photographs high school football games for a living. We talked geography (he was originally from Washington, D.C.) , the weather and football. I only said that I was in town to avoid WVU's game that afternoon. I mentioned my spouse, Joe, in an anecdote, and he didn't flinch. I'm glad I talked to a "real" person who still lives there. Everyone in Clay clearly does not have horns and carry a pitchfork.

Roger Hanshaw, a Republican, represents most of Clay, all of Calhoun and parts of Gilmer County in our state legislature. He has just been appointed Speaker, as the previous speaker, Tim Armstead, resigned so he could be appointed to the state supreme court. It's actually more complicated than that. Hanshaw, like many Republicans in the state, has a billboard up, that says "Born and Raised In West Virginia, "Real West Virginia Values" and one other thing I don't remember clearly. These burn me, as a politician in this state. "West Virginia Values," when used by a Republican, seems to mean kowtowing to the coal and gas industry, hating unions, immigrants, environmentalists, African-Americans and "outsiders" generally, not necessarily in that order. I saw many signs for Hanshaw's opponent, David Walker, who was previously in the House of Delegates and lost by a very slim margin in the 2016 election. Clay County went 76.8% for Trump, according to Politico. I'm sure Walker is not a flaming liberal, but it's good to know he has a fighting chance.

I didn't see many people out until I tracked down the high school, just south of town. People were gathering for, apparently, a football game later in the afternoon. I followed Route 16 south to Bickmore, a dot on the map, but with a restaurant open, advertising ice cream. I stopped in for a chocolate cone. They had a real food menu as well, so there are places to eat in the county besides the three chains.

I also found, across Elk Creek, what I had read was to be a rails-to-trails project, put off by the flooding in 2016 along Elk River and Buffalo Creek. The rails are still there, and a sign says there was once a booming little town, now gone, where coal and lumber were shipped to Charleston and other places. Now they have four-seater rail cars that you can move manually along the tracks. I saw the cars, but not anyone out there.

I followed 16 north, the long way out of the county back to the interstate. There was a park along the Elk River, not much, but something. I was home by 5:30, well before the football game ended. I'm glad I went to Clay. It's a real place, with many nice people, not awful, as I had expected. People nodded "hello" at me wherever I went, and seemed to know each other. My lesson is to not judge a whole place by a few idiots who may live there.