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Coming Home
Read MoreAt 3:36 p.m. November 14, 2020, my 2013 blue Scion XD crossed the state line on Interstate 79 north of Morgantown, West Virginia. As the WVU billboard near the state welcome center declared, I was home. Finally. My parents left West Virginia in 1956 and…
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Visiting with West Virginia’s last living Tuskegee Airman
Read MoreYou can trust a secret to Clifton E. Brooks Sr. Information that Clifton decoded back in the 1940s remains known only to Clifton, a resident of the county seat of Mineral County, Keyser, and West Virginia’s last surviving Tuskegee Airman. Clifton is getting up there…
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A castle, commissioner & cemetery
Read MoreIn a typical year, I would make my first West Virginia/Back Roads journey in early May. But so far this year (2016) I’ve made two trips, one in January and one in March. The January trip, to the Eastern Panhandle, was during a weekend when…
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The Reunion
Read MoreI knew his father before I knew Joe. Joe DePollo was the son of John DePollo, who owned DePollo’s Store in Thomas, W.Va. The store was started by John’s parents, first-generation Italian immigrants, who eventually built the three-story brick building on Front Street in 1915.…
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The view from Mount Wood
Read MoreIt is dusk and haze hangs over the Ohio River as the wide serpent slithers into its den between distant mountains. I have an amazing view of the legend and its urban child, Wheeling, from Section A of Mount Woods Cemetery. The view makes me…
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Calemine’s Patriotic Shoe Repair Shop
Read More[trx_image url=”http://thefeathercottage.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Calemine-31-of-35-1024×683.jpg” shape=”square” top=”inherit” bottom=”inherit” left=”inherit” right=”inherit”] Guerino “Reno” Calemine died this year. Feb. 23, to be exact. He was almost 91, but up until a few days before his death, Reno was still working in his shoe repair shop at 25 Armstrong St., Keyser, W.Va. “He…
