“In the dead of the night/In the still and the quiet/I slip away like a bird in flight/Back to those hills/A place that I call home.”
–“West Virginia,” Hazel Dickens
The battered convertible hurtled between cut rock walls covered with matted honeysuckle vines whose sweetness covered me like a benediction. Barn swallows scissored the sky above me as they dipped in and out of the lowering sunlight. Huntington, W.V., scattered golden along the banks of the Ohio. I’d been hitchhiking through the west for months when a postcard caught up with me. My old traveling buddy Pete had settled in Lincoln County, W.V., and wanted me to visit him on his remote acres.
Pete and I had traveled all over the country together hitchhiking with guitar and banjo. We didn’t need much excuse to play for people. We’d sung in a hospital in Missouri. In Mena, Ark., we argued about the scriptural reference for the song “The Great Speckled Bird.” We went into a Bible store and explained we were traveling without a Bible and sang the song for them. The man went in back and came out with a beautiful calfskin bound Bible that had some mis-cut pages. He awarded it to us as though we had accurately recited all the books of the Old Testament. The correct reference was Jeremiah 12:9.
Pete’s knowledge of songs was encyclopedic. He gave me a solid grounding in blues, ragtime and folk music. We parted paths, and the last time I’d seen him he was driving a cab in Brooklyn. He saved his wages and headed to West Virginia with $600 in savings. Land was incredibly cheap in 1970 through much of Appalachia. Pete bought 16 hillside acres covered with an astonishing assortment of hardwood trees, redbud, pokeberry and sweet water springs. He had enough left over to buy a team of draft ponies to haul supplies over muddy trails to his roadless farm and till his tilted acres. Huntington would be my jump off to Route 10, then Mud River Road to Little Laurel Creek, and then ask at the big log cabin …
The convertible dropped me in the gravel lot of a roadhouse called The Circle Bar and Grill. I picked up my guitar and ducked into the smoky glow and murmur of the bar. I picked an empty table as far from the bar as I could find, tucked my backpack underneath and waited.
The barmaid was not young. Her ash blonde hair was streaked with gray and cropped short and mannish. Her rolled up sleeve revealed a muscular arm graced with an anchor tattoo. Her eyes were blue as chicory flowers and checking me out without asking my order. I didn’t have long.
“Can you play the ‘Wildwood Flower’ on that thing?”
I could and did. And I knew “Jimmie Brown the Newsboy” and “The Tennessee Waltz.” Pretty soon there was a big frosty mug of beer by my elbow and a couple of dollar bills and some silver in my open guitar case.
“Sing Frankie and Johnny.” That was probably the first song I ever learned to pick on the guitar. My brother Charles showed me how to give it a walking boogie-woogie bass. I was already looking forward to playing with Pete.
“Do you know the one about ‘I’ll Fly Away’?” His cap was so greasy I could hardly read the Caterpillar Tractor logo. The hand that gripped his beer was missing the index finger. Probably a miner, I thought. I wondered how many times he’d sung about flying away from the inky bowels of a coal mine. My beer was almost gone.
You bet. A circle of patrons joined in.
“One glad morning when this life is over I’ll fly away/To my home on God’s celestial shore I’ll fly away.”
“That’s enough of that s**t!” the barmaid slammed a beer on the bar so hard a foamy geyser arced toward the ceiling. Her face was a rictus of anger. I stood up and stumbled backwards as she came from behind the bar, a flying towel calling an end to the play.
“There will be no singing of hymns in this bar.” Her breathing was shallow, the veins on her temple stood in relief. The blue and red anchor seemed to bounce merrily. “As sure as people start singing hymns some SOB will start singing ‘Precious Memories.’” Her chin began to tremble and an enormous tear rolled down her cheek. “And that was my mother’s favorite song.”
