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Sunday Afternoon with a legend
Read MoreIt was August 16, 2004, when my father and I met Volkmar Wentzel at his home in Aurora, W.Va. He and his wife, Viola, were visiting their farm from Washington, D.C., and agreed to meet me for an interview for Goldenseal Magazine. Mr. Wentzel is…
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Virginia furnace glows for a split second
Read MoreThe stone pyramid stands between Route 26 and Muddy Creek in Preston County, an imposing artifact from the county’s nascent industrial era. The iron furnace was built by Levi Kennet for Harrison Hagans, Brandonville’s foremost entrepreneur, merchant, and promoter. Historian Reardon S. Cuppett claimed it…
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Waiting for the big muscle to heal
Read MorePart 3 of a memoir of heart failure, open-heart surgery and complications At some point in my recovery at the acute-care facility, a cardiologist tells me that the muscles in my body will not recover any faster than the big muscle, my heart, recovers.I do…
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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 working man’s room
Read MoreTraveling across West Virginia, writing and photographing as I go, I am compelled to stay in economical accommodations. I look for rooms that cost under $50 a night, all taxes included. And so it was that began my autumnal pilgrimage in Bridgeport, where the clerk…
