Keep it Simple: Almost heaven: In the great state of y’all

In praise of the neighborhood bar...

A while back, well, a long while back, my wife and I used to make the 10-hour-plus drive to Morgantown, home of West Virginia University, where our son spent some time in the physics department's grad school program.

Our visits were pretty much confined to the Morgantown area and hence we never saw much of the “almost heaven, West Virginia, Blue Ridge Mountains” John Denver sang about in his '70s hit “Country Roads.” We recently set out, some 20 years later, to rectify the situation. We decided to take a week and drive the back roads of the mountain state and see what fall colors the trees were up to.

We did make a detour to Morgantown though and enjoyed ourselves despite a wet day which limited our ability to hike any nearby trails.

On the way back from a rainy drive to Coopers Rock State Forest we made a detour to Gene’s Beer Garden, a classic neighborhood bar dating from the 1940s. Their website indicated they had live music and I wanted to see if there was any scheduled for that evening. There was and we returned later that night to this thoroughly quintessential neighborhood bar where, just like the opening theme of the old sitcom “Cheers” everyone seemed to know everyone’s name. The band played rockabilly, do-wop and other old chestnuts from the '50s and '60s. They were great and the 15 beers the tiny bar had on tap were great, although I confined my choice to their IPA selections.

My understanding is that back in the day (think back to the days of us Baby Boomers' parents) many city neighborhoods had a friendly modest bar and I wish I could have been around during their heyday. Gene’s well-preserved watering hole gave me a glimpse into the glory days of that time.

Thanks, Gene’s, for a great evening compliments of the wayback machine known as nostalgia and your ability to remain open since 1944.

Of hills, hollers gaps and notches ...

When not waxing nostalgic about delightful neighborhood watering holes, we spent the better part of the week chasing fall color in the West Virginia mountains and I may have driven a grand total of 11.23 miles on the Interstate; choosing instead to take the country road(s) less traveled. From Wheeling, at the start of our trip I chose not to take the freeway through Pittsburgh on our way to Morgantown, but instead twisted and turned my way up and down highway 250 adding another hour to a glorious drive through mountain “hollers” on roads which snaked back on themselves with an endless supply of hairpin turns and switchbacks flipping back and forth enough to make your head snap.

It was on rural highway 250, though, with its sparsely settled “hollers” — small mountain valley hamlets, there appeared to be the most abject poverty I have ever seen in this country. Judging from the tumbledown, barely habitable looking abodes, inside must live the most truly forgotten and downtrodden folks who pundits, in the runup to the 2016 presidential election, cited as the voters who would, and did, turn the tide in putting Donald Trump into office.

Never mind Trump wouldn’t recognize a poor, downtrodden person if his rich, pampered life depended on it. He claimed, incorrectly, he was watching out for the poor and had their back. He insisted he was a friend to the coal miners and would bring back “many beautiful” mining jobs; of which West Virginia’s economy has relied in years past to provide well-paying; albeit dangerous jobs, for the common man.

While Trump was in office the number of coal jobs actually decreased on his watch. So much for looking out for the poor and hopeless in the hollers, gaps and notches of West Virginia. Biden, I might add, has done no better at remembering the forgotten up in the hills and hollers.

I have no idea how to bring a semblance of hope and prosperity to the poor of Marshall County and the other destitute mountain burgs and towns in West Virginia. Wish I did.

While the drive through these winding country roads was breathtakingly beautiful, it was, at the same time, sobering to see so much poverty in the lives of the people both political parties appear to have forgotten and cast aside in their quest to stay in power. Shame on all of us for not demanding better.

— Michael Jones is a columnist and contributor for the Gaylord Herald Times. He can be reached at mfomike2@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Keep it Simple: Almost heaven: In the great state of y’all