Out of The Ashes: an Opera House, a novel

FIRE! FIRE! THE TOWN IS BURNING!

Chestnut, spruce and pine;
lamp oil, whiskey and twine;
furniture, boots and bread;
statuary, lace and thread.
The city of Thomas burned to the ground,
in less than two hours,
it became a smoldering mound.

The early morning fire of Nov. 12, 1901, consumed 83 buildings in the Thomas, W.Va., business district, plus many of the better residences surrounding it. The 50-mph wind blowing that night spread the flames like an outbreak of dysentery in a lumber camp. Many of the business owners, such as Hiram B. Cottrill, had neglected to purchase or could not obtain fire insurance. Twenty stores were gone, as were the town hall, bakery, print shop, Catholic church and six saloons. And winter was coming.

Five years later, T. Nutter, author of Thomas, West Virginia: History, Progress and Development, wrote of the “Great Fire” as “a blessing in disguise.” Brick, mortar and iron replaced the cheap, abundant lumber from which the town was built at the inception of the coal and railroad boom. With both industries going strong, a steady supply of immigrant labor and demand for goods and services, Thomas was in its heyday. Rebuilding was a safe bet, and owners rebuilt for longevity.

Among the fine structures raised from the ashes was Hiram Cottrill’s Opera House, complete with an elegant bar on the first floor and three upper floors enclosing an auditorium with 600 stage-level seats and a five-sided balcony. Cottrill eventually sold the opera house to the Sutton family, who ran it as a movie theater as motion pictures overtook traveling vaudeville acts as a popular form of entertainment. The dwindling population of Thomas in mid-20th century and competition from television eventually led to the theater’s closure. In 1979, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Owned by Alpine Heritage Preservation, the building is undergoing renovation.

The lower level, where Cottrill once had his swanky saloon, is occupied by a merchant and art gallery. Susan Smith, board secretary for Alpine Heritage, said last month that all the exterior bricks have been re-pointed. Attention is now turning to the interior auditorium renovation, which will become a space for live performances and other programming.

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A Christmas ghost story

Perhaps Elizabeth Podsiadlo, a Romney author who set her latest book in the Cottrill Opera House, will be among those performing. Podsiadlo, also known as the Opera Singing Chef, has performed on the Cottrill stage before. It was roughly 15 years ago when she was asked to sing an aria there. Her daughter, Betsy, had her fiddle with her and was asked to play some classical pieces—in both cases, to help the heritage group assess the acoustics.

The experience quickly turned from artistic to supernatural. As Podsiadlo listened to her daughter’s performance, she noticed the face of a little boy looking through a window “and right at my daughter. I thought to myself at the time, ‘How sweet that was.’ When it was my turn, I went to the stage and sang two Mozart arias, Voi Che sapet and Verdrai carino,” she said. “Then I ended with Ave Maria, the Bach Gounod version. When I finished and joined the folks that had been watching me from the theater floor, (Betsy) said to me, ‘Mom, the whole time you were singing, I could hear someone pacing above the balcony. But when you sang Ave Maria, they stopped.’ Well, ‘out of the mouth of babes,’ I thought.”

Fast forward a decade, when Podsiadlo began work on her fourth novel, she selected the Thomas landmark as the setting for her story.

“Many books today, they get a certain credibility because (authors) place their stories around history,” Podsiadlo said during a book reading/signing held in Thomas Nov. 22. “And this is the same here in that this whole street burned down over 100 years ago . . . and I use that as one of the parts of my story. It is where the story really begins.”

Songspell is the fourth book in Podsiadlo’s “Cozy Cottage Culinary Ghost Story Mysteries” series. Prior titles are Talking Pictures, The Last Aria and Sonoma’s Gold.

As in with prior works, Songspell is stew of music, culinary arts and history simmered in a base of the series’ main characters, Barbara and William. The chefs also are “inadvertent conduits for spirits” who help the spirits move and resolve their motivations for haunting.

In this latest adventure, they arrive in this “charming mountain town” to assist with the theater’s grand re-opening. In the process of cooking and baking for the event, they encounter two Italian witches, a ghost and, perhaps, an angel. A song that Barbara had never heard before arriving in town becomes implanted in her brain and refuses to release its grip on her mental ears, the familiar earworm we’ve all experienced.

Writing the book became a literary earworm that haunted Podsiadlo until the work was in print.

“All I can tell you is that for the last three years, the story of Songspell would not let me sleep, quite literally,” she said. “I’d be walking with my editor, and I’d say, ‘Becky, guess what? I just found out that Fitwell is an angel.’ And she’s like, who’s Fitwell again?’”

In Songspell, the production that will re-open the Cottrill stage is called Dolls Christmas. Podsiadlo is probably the only author who illustrates her book readings with a shelf full of dolls. As she plays a recording of her performing the earworm tune, Podsiadlo pulls each doll from ornate metal German cookie tins and announces the character’s name. The dolls, received as Christmas gifts before the book came along, become victims in Songspell.

“One day, early in the process of writing my book, I glanced over at the group of dolls . . . and realized that many looked like characters from my book. So, I would place them where I could see them, and since there were dolls in my story, it seemed appropriate,” she said.

Podsiadlo has been writing novels for more than two decades. She’s been a chef and opera singer even longer—she’s known as the “Opera Singing Chef” and has a website dedicated to those pursuits. As with prior books, in Songspell Podsiadlo included the recipes for the food that Barbara and William are cooking for the events. Songspell is stuffed with 50 of them, just in time for the holidays. During the book signing event, tables were spread with cheese logs and gingerbread treats she made using the recipes in the book.

These recipes come from a professional who has immersed herself in the world’s culinary experiences since growing up in the Eastern Panhandle. She left West Virginia as a young woman and created a culinary career in California, where she filmed a 13-segment cooking show and was interviewed by national media about both her culinary interests and books. She also became an accomplished vocalist, musician and vocal instructor.

But the mountains kept calling her home, and she returned to the panhandle nine years ago. The homecoming has been fruitful, with Podsiadlo adding old-time and Celtic music traditions to her performance and teaching work. And in West Virginia, she has found a wealth of new culinary experiences and regionally grown ingredients with which to create them.

“West Virginia is a melting pot, and you will just as easily taste the best red sauce you have ever had, then turn around and taste the best Sauerbraten,” she said.

The state is likewise fertile ground for experiences and spirits that keep Podsiadlo awake at night and writing the chapter and suffering from stuck song syndrome. But readers need not fear Songspell’s spirits. While there are witches, a ghost named Guisseppe and other spirits floating around the opera house, in the book and perhaps in real life, these spirits are malevolent. While Podsiadlo has been fascinated with ghosts and witches since reading childhood fairytales, she’s not one to be drawn to “things that are too scary.”

“I do believe spirits are with us all the time. I do believe that there are some folks who are sensitive to energies and perhaps there are folks who can manifest different outcomes with just their calling to them. It’s fun to think about it,” she said.

Songspell is available from amazon.com, but we encourage you to shop small at a bookstore near you. Her website is theoperasingingchef.com.