Last week we watched the Netflix show Mortified. If you haven't seen it you absolutely need to as it is an amazing and weird (and sometimes naughty) adventure into the hearts and minds of young folks as read by their adult selves - via their own diary.
I can not IMAGINE sharing what was going on in my head as a teenager. I mean it's pretty obvious - mainly how I was going to be a star baseball player, get all the girls, and make all the money. Spoiler alert: that didn't happen.
But the running theme is how vulnerable and lonely these people were. The people who decide to share come from all over and might have been the most or least popular - or one of the millions of awkward in-betweens who are trying to figure things out. One girl had her parents on the show and shared how one maddening incident led an innocent early teenager to call her parents words that I shan't put here lest the internet monitors give me a R-rating. Another boy wished desperately to have sex across the nation and created a rock band in his notebook - complete with over 200 songs - though he never learned to play an instrument or sing.
I'm really good at going one direction with a blog and then completely switching it up so here goes the ol' switcheroo. One of the storytellers was from Huntington, West Virginia - home to Marshall University. I have two connections to Marshall: one was via my college's remembrance day. In 1970, a plane carrying the Marshall football team was on its way home after playing my school, East Carolina, and crashed, killing all aboard. ECU & Marshall played every year during my tenure and we always had a moment of silence for the incident.
The other is a more fond memory, and is something I never really expected.
Poor West Virginia is the butt of a lot of jokes. It is pretty much the lowest-ranked state in most education-related categories: percentage of adults holding a degree, educational attainment, and quality of education - among others. It's main natural resource is coal and we are desperately trying to get away from using coal. Young people leave in droves and WV is one of the oldest states, with over 17% of its population being over the age of 65.
Everyone knows - or should know - that if you hear banjo music you need to run, and that the hills have eyes.
During my textbook-buying days I ended up in West Virginia a lot. There are about 30 colleges or universities in WV and I traveled to almost half of them - including Mountain State University in Beckley, WV before it lost accreditation and was turned into University of Charleston - Beckley in 2013.
Nearby was Bluefield, WV which was home to Bluefield State, a Historically Black College/University (HBCU) and Bluefield College, a Baptist Liberal Arts college - literally a mile down the road. At first, I thought there might be some racial tension and one started after the other, but turns out Bluefield was a "little New York" in booming coal times and was home to 70% of the state's black population so in 1895 it was started as a high-graded school for African-American youth while the liberal arts school started later, just because.
Like a lot of towns in WV, Beckley and Bluefield are essentially remnants of what they used to be. The 1950's and 60's mechanization coal processes brought a decreased demand in labor. In the 70's it increased and then the 80's decreased once again, creating poverty-stricken towns that look like driving through a modern version of an old abandoned western town. A few businesses on the main streets remain: mechanics, repair shops, and dollar stores. Near the highways Wal-Marts, grocery stores, and fast food restaurants are lit up which provide minimum-wage jobs and plenty of carbohydrates for the residents who remain.
My travels took me deeper into the mountains - to places like BridgeValley Community College in Montgomery, WV - one of my favorite places to go because it felt like another world. Tucked away on a corner of the Kanawha River, you can see coal operations as you wind the bends into town, and the college itself is built into the mountainside, with lots of stairs and strange architecture.
Once I got out of the mountains I would go to the bigger universities like West Virginia and University of Charleston - and sometimes I'd end up at Marshall University. With my friend Gerard D.
Gerard and I planned a road trip from his home in Savannah, GA to my grandparents' home in Brighton, Illinois, then back across Kentucky and Ohio and West Virginia and Virginia - all the way to Virginia Beach. Helluva road trip.
It was a rough start. We'd had one or four shots too many on Saturday night in Savannah, so I woke up at 8am Sunday and drove straight through to Brighton while Gerard slept in the back of our rented Ford Flex. We stayed one night with my grandparents and had a slow Monday so we decided to keep moving to bigger colleges (sorry Grandma and Grandfather!)
Next, a storm was coming in and we were barely ahead of it so we raced to Louisville, Kentucky and ended up Priceline-ing a sweet suite next to Churchill Downs. The storm was bringing a ton of snow so we continued racing across the states to West Virginia where I'd planned to stay in a hotel I'd been to before in Huntington, West Virginia.
Except there was a high school wrestling tournament in town so EVERY. HOTEL. IN HUNTINGTON. WAS BOOKED.
We called everywhere and ended up crossing the border into Ohio and down a dirt road lined with trailers searching for a room - and then we heard banjo music... OK, we didn't but there was some sketchy shit happening around us so we booked it out of there and we finally found a hotel that had one room available.
And then we ended up at Marshall on a cold and rainy day where we ended up raking in a haul of books. I went back to Marshall several times after that - not only for the school but the drive there was beautiful and peaceful.
I've had some of the best experiences in West Virginia. The best wings I've ever had were at a restaurant in Charleston, WV. I stopped at Roma's in Beckley, WV every visit for a delicious calzone. And I loved learning about the history of places like Bluefield and Montgomery when I went there. I even took a trip up into the Canaan Valley after a successful week just because I had some time to kill and watched the wind turbines turn with the snow-capped mountains in the background.
Later in my life I would go on to book a work retreat in Summit Point, WV at a place called Hillbrook Inn. I loved it so much that I took my girlfriend at the time for a night and we loved it.
Now we're getting married there next year!
Maybe I understand now why songs are written about West Virginia. The topography helps keep it inaccessible, tucked away, overlooked, but in many ways a gem. Take me home, country roads!
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