Wandering August
The buckwheat is blooming along Cuzzart Road. White froth riding on a green sea. You don’t see farmers raising buckwheat around here like they once did.
I made buckwheat cakes for my aunt and uncle Friday. They were visiting here from Baltimore. My uncle loves those things, my aunt not so much. We had a good visit.
Pumpkin vines are wandering beyond their allotted ground, like a child coloring outside the lines with green pencil. I’ll have to re-direct them before I mow, if I mow. Been terribly dry.
The vines have blossoms, but only two pumpkins.
I’m not seeing many bees this summer. There are days the air around the farms reeks of weed killer.
The ironweed and Joe-Pye-weed are blooming along the lane and where weed killer has not been applied. Someone chopped off the Joe-Pye heads.
It’s county fair week in Tucker County. I’m not a fair person, especially the livestock part. It’s all very depressing, showing off a project one week, killing it the next.
The two white-faced steers in my neighbor’s pasture are almost butchering size. One black, one brown. Handsome boys. I wish I could breach the fence and hug them.
Seems like every farm has gone to raising beef, maybe because prices are up. The fields are dotted with lambs and goats, too. I wish I could save them.
I’ve never eaten lamb. I ate my last hamburger 30 years ago.
One acquaintance told me my hair would fall out if I gave up meat. I got a haircut at Betty’s last week. She does a nice job. $12.
There aren’t many vegetarians in Appalachia. Even fewer vegans. I reconnected with my mixed-media artist and friend Robert Villamaga in Wheeling last week. He’s a vegetarian.
The tomatoes are coming on now. Only a quarter of the plants survived the incessant rain of June and July. They aren’t setting much fruit. I’ve waited a year for them.
It’s hot, but there’s a stiff breeze this afternoon, good for drying clothes on the line. They come out wrinkled that way; it’s still better than adding more heat to a world burning out of control.
Something has died in the woods where the lane crosses the rivulet, Stinky Hollow. August humidity embraces the stench of dying flesh like burdock on a dog’s tail.
Two fawns and a doe are hanging around our yard and woods. My Washington Strawberry apple tree is all the worst for it.
I don’t fault the deer one bit. I’m a squatter here, and we all have to eat. Better a few deer for neighbors than thousands of acres of data centers.
The mood is gloomy in Thomas and Davis. The state approved the air quality permit for a mammoth power plant that will spawn data centers in Tucker County.
Axes, sawmills, tanneries, pulp mills and railroads began raping the place 137 years ago. Coal mining opened up deep wounds that still spew poison into the water.
The barons literally cut and ran, the politicians got fat; my ancestors got cancer, black lung, emphysema, hopelessness.
It has taken a century, but Tucker County is healing. Lovely place. A gem.
Now this.
I’m spending a lot of time in Tucker County these days. I’m writing a book, Wandering Tucker County, mostly about its people. I love them. They’re authentic, as is where they live.
Folks like John DePollo, Stuart Thayer, Sonny Lansberry, Don Roth, John Bright and Daniel Boone Pase. My grandparents. My uncle, who loves buckwheat cakes.
Goldenseal magazine published many of my stories about Tucker people. The Department of Culture and History published that magazine for 51 years.
The legislature abolished it July 1.
Everything feels off kilter. Bees are dying, butterflies are gone, the steers and lambs are on death row, the tomato and pumpkin vines aren’t setting fruit, something’s dead in Stinky Hollow, the deer ate the apple tree, the laundry has wrinkles. The darn state lawmakers are killing West Virginia culture and eager to repeat the state’s history of exploitation.
But buckwheat is blooming over on Cuzzart Road.
Nice article. Too bad so many things of yesterday are changing or gone. Every generation seems to set aside many of the ideals, treasures and values of the previous. God is the only thing that is forever the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow, if he gives us another day.