Buckhannon, West Virginia: The Perfect Birthplace

A community in the Allegheny foothills nurtured novelist Jayne Anne Phillips' talent for storytelling

  • By Jayne Anne Phillips
  • Photographs by Jeff Swensen
  • Smithsonian magazine, January 2010, Subscribe
View More Photos »
Buckhannon West Virginia
A tractor with the West Virginia flag attached to the back makes it way down Main Street in Buckhannon, West Virginia. (Jeff Swensen)

Photo Gallery (1/5)

Buckhannon West Virginia

Explore more photos from the story

More from Smithsonian.com


(Page 2 of 2)

My dad, who was past 30 when he enlisted, served as an Army engineer and built airstrips in New Guinea throughout World War II, foreman to crews of G.I.’s and Papuan natives. He came back to Buckhannon after the war and met my mother at a Veterans of Foreign Wars dance in 1948. During the war she’d trained as a nurse in Washington, D.C. The big city was exciting, she told me, but the food was so bad all the girls took up smoking to cut their appetites. A family illness forced her return; she came home to nurse her mother. My grandmother was still well enough that my mother went out Saturday nights; she wore red lipstick and her dark hair in a chignon. My father looked at her across the dance floor of the VFW hall and told a friend, “I’m going to marry that girl.” He was 38; she, 23. He was handsome, a man about town; he had a job and a car, and his family owned a local hospital. They married three weeks later. In the winter of ‘53, when my mother had three young children under the age of 5, Dr. Jake made a house call. She was undernourished, he told her. Though she’d quit during her pregnancies, she was smoking again and down to 100 pounds. She told me how Jake sat beside her bed, his black medical bag on the floor. “Now,” he said, lighting two cigarettes, “we’re going to smoke this last one together.”

Hometowns are full of stories and memories rinsed with color. The dome of the courthouse in Buckhannon glowed gold, and Kanawha Hill was lined with tall trees whose dense, leafy branches met over the street. The branches lifted as cars passed, dappling sunlight or showering snow. Open fields bordered our house. Tasseled corn filled them in summer, and thick stalks of Queen Anne’s lace broke like fuzzy limbs. Cows grazing the high-banked meadow across the road gazed over at us placidly. They sometimes spooked and took off like clumsy girls, rolling their eyes and lolloping out of sight. Telephone numbers were three digits; ours was 788. The fields are gone now, but the number stays in my mind. Towns change; they grow or diminish, but hometowns remain as we left them. Later, they appear, brilliant with sounds and smells, intense, suspended images moving in time. We close our eyes and make them real.

Jayne Anne Phillips was a 2009 National Book Award finalist in fiction for her latest novel, Lark and Termite.


I grew up in the dense, verdant Appalachia of the ‘50s and ‘60s. For me, “hometown” refers to a small town, home to generations of family, a place whose history is interspersed with family stories and myths. Buckhannon was a town of 6,500 or so then, nestled in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains of north-central West Virginia.

I left for college, but went “home” for years to see my divorced parents, and then to visit their graves in the rolling cemetery that splays its green acreage on either side of the winding road where my father taught me to drive. I know now that I loved Buckhannon, that its long history and layers of stories made it the perfect birthplace for a writer. My mother had grown up there, as had most of her friends, and their mothers before them. People stayed in Buckhannon all their lives. Despite the sometimes doubtful economy, no one wanted to leave, or so it seemed to me as a child.

Buckhannon was beautiful, the county seat, home to West Virginia Wesleyan, a Methodist college whose football field on College Avenue served both the college and high-school teams. Main Street was thriving. Local people owned the stores and restaurants. We lived out on a rural road in a ranch-style brick house my father had built. Two local newspapers, The Buckhannon Record and The Republican Delta, were delivered weekdays, thrust into the round receptacle next to our mailbox at the end of the driveway. My father went to town early on Sundays to buy the Charleston Gazette at the Acme Bookstore on Main Street. The Acme smelled of sawdust and sold newspapers, magazines, school supplies and comic books. Comic books were Sunday treats. I think of my father, vital and healthy, younger than I am now, perusing the racks, choosing a 15-cent Superman or Archie for my brothers, Millie the Model or a Classics Illustrated for me. An addicted reader early on, I first read R. D. Blackmore’s Lorna Doone and George Eliot’s Silas Marner as comics, before finding the original versions in the library, where I’d replenish armloads of borrowed books under my mother’s watchful eye. She’d finished college, studying at night while her children slept, and taught first grade in the same school her children attended.

I looked out the windows of Academy Primary School and saw, across South Kanawha Street, the large house in which my mother had lived until she married my father. My mother had graduated from high school in 1943, and my father, nearly a generation earlier, in 1928, but he wasn’t a true native. Born in neighboring Randolph County, he was raised by three doting paternal aunts. Each took him into their families for a few years, and he’d moved to Buckhannon for high school, winning the elocution contest and giving a speech at graduation. This fact always amazed me. My father, masculine in bearing and gesture, was not a talker. Women in Buckhannon told stories, and men were defined by their jobs. He attended the local college for a semester, then went to work, building roads, learning construction. His first name was Russell; for years, he owned a concrete company: Russ Concrete. My brothers and I rode to school past bus shelters emblazoned with the name. We seemed to have lived in Buckhannon forever.

In a sense, we had. Both sides of the family had helped settle western Virginia when the land was still a territory. My mother traced her people back to a Revolutionary War Indian scout; a great-aunt had spoken of the “bad old days” of the Civil War. Her people had fought for the Union, but the Phillips men, a county south, were Confederates. The family donated the land for the Phillips Cemetery in the early 1870s, when the new state lay devastated in the wake of the war. Buckhannon families still told stories of those years. The past and the present were endlessly intermingled, and West Virginia history was an eighth-grade tradition. Every kid in town knew that English brothers John and Samuel Pringle had turned their backs on the English crown during the French and Indian War, deserting their posts at Fort Pitt in 1761 and traveling south on foot. They lived off the land for three years until they arrived at the mouth of what became the Buckhannon River, following it to find shelter in the vast cavity of a sycamore. The unmolested forests were full of gigantic trees 40 or 50 feet in circumference, and the 11-foot-deep cavity would have provided living space of about 100 square feet, the equivalent of a 10-by-10 room. The brothers survived the frigid winters on plentiful game, waiting out the war until they ran out of gunpowder. John Pringle traveled 200 miles for supplies and returned with news that amnesty was declared. The brothers moved to settlements farther south, but Samuel returned with a wife and other settlers whose names are common in Buckhannon today: Cutright, Jackson, Hughes.

Buckhannon adolescents still visit a third-generation descendant of the original sycamore on field trips. In 1964, my eighth-grade class drove to the meadow along Turkey Run Creek. The buses bounced and groaned, and we all lined up to walk into the tepee-size opening of what is still officially designated the Pringle Tree. I remember the loamy smell rising from the earth, damp, fertile and hidden. Somehow the version of the Pringle brothers’ story that we learned didn’t emphasize that they left a war to found a settlement in country so virgin and wild they had only to enter it to escape the bonds of military servitude. Wilderness was freedom.

The town was truly a rural paradise; even into the 1920s, some 2,000 farms, averaging 87 acres each, surrounded Buckhannon. Such small, nearly self-sufficient farms survived through the Depression and two world wars. Miners and farmers kept Main Street alive, and the town rituals, seasonal and dependable, provided a world. Everyone knew everyone, and everyone’s story was known. There were churches of every Protestant denomination and one Catholic parish. Parades were held on Veterans Day, Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. A week in the middle of May is still devoted to the Strawberry Festival. The populace lines up on the main thoroughfare to watch hours of marching bands, homemade floats and home-crowned royalty. The year my cousin was queen, I was 6 and one of the girls in her court. We wore white organdy dresses and waved regally from the queen’s frothy float. The parade wound its way through town, slowly, for hours, as though populating a collective dream. Though the queen wore her tiara all summer, the town’s everyday royalty were its doctors and dentists, the professors at the college, and the football coaches who’d taken the high-school team to the state championships three times in a decade. Doctors, especially respected and revered, made house calls.

The long dark hallway to our doctor’s office on Main Street led steeply upstairs and the black rubber treads on the steps absorbed all sound. Even the kids called him Jake. He was tall and bald and sardonic, and he could produce dimes from behind the necks and ears of his young patients, unfurling his closed hand to reveal the sparkle of the coin. The waiting room was always full and the office smelled strongly of rubbing alcohol. The walls were hung with framed collages of the hundreds of babies he’d delivered. My mother insisted on flu shots every year, and we kids dreaded them, but Jake was a master of distraction, bantering and performing while the nurse prepared slender hypodermics. After our shots, we picked cellophane-wrapped suckers from the candy jar, sauntered into the dim stairwell and floated straight down. The rectangular transom above the door to the street shone a dazzling white light. Out there, the three traffic lights on Main Street were changing with little clicks. We’d drive the two miles or so home, past the fairgrounds and fields, in my mother’s two-tone Mercury sedan. The car was aqua and white, big and flat as a boat. My father would be cooking fried potatoes in the kitchen, “starting supper,” the only domestic chore he ever performed. I knew he’d learned to peel potatoes in the Army, cutting their peels in one continuous spiral motion.

My dad, who was past 30 when he enlisted, served as an Army engineer and built airstrips in New Guinea throughout World War II, foreman to crews of G.I.’s and Papuan natives. He came back to Buckhannon after the war and met my mother at a Veterans of Foreign Wars dance in 1948. During the war she’d trained as a nurse in Washington, D.C. The big city was exciting, she told me, but the food was so bad all the girls took up smoking to cut their appetites. A family illness forced her return; she came home to nurse her mother. My grandmother was still well enough that my mother went out Saturday nights; she wore red lipstick and her dark hair in a chignon. My father looked at her across the dance floor of the VFW hall and told a friend, “I’m going to marry that girl.” He was 38; she, 23. He was handsome, a man about town; he had a job and a car, and his family owned a local hospital. They married three weeks later. In the winter of ‘53, when my mother had three young children under the age of 5, Dr. Jake made a house call. She was undernourished, he told her. Though she’d quit during her pregnancies, she was smoking again and down to 100 pounds. She told me how Jake sat beside her bed, his black medical bag on the floor. “Now,” he said, lighting two cigarettes, “we’re going to smoke this last one together.”

Hometowns are full of stories and memories rinsed with color. The dome of the courthouse in Buckhannon glowed gold, and Kanawha Hill was lined with tall trees whose dense, leafy branches met over the street. The branches lifted as cars passed, dappling sunlight or showering snow. Open fields bordered our house. Tasseled corn filled them in summer, and thick stalks of Queen Anne’s lace broke like fuzzy limbs. Cows grazing the high-banked meadow across the road gazed over at us placidly. They sometimes spooked and took off like clumsy girls, rolling their eyes and lolloping out of sight. Telephone numbers were three digits; ours was 788. The fields are gone now, but the number stays in my mind. Towns change; they grow or diminish, but hometowns remain as we left them. Later, they appear, brilliant with sounds and smells, intense, suspended images moving in time. We close our eyes and make them real.

Jayne Anne Phillips was a 2009 National Book Award finalist in fiction for her latest novel, Lark and Termite.


Single Page « Previous 1 2

    Subscribe now for more of Smithsonian's coverage on history, science and nature.



 

Add New Comment


Name: (required)

Email: (required)

Comment:

Comments are moderated, and will not appear until Smithsonian.com has approved them. Smithsonian reserves the right not to post any comments that are unlawful, threatening, offensive, defamatory, invasive of a person's privacy, inappropriate, confidential or proprietary, political messages, product endorsements, or other content that might otherwise violate any laws or policies.

Comments (96)

+ View All Comments

Jayne, that is a beautiful discription of life growing up in Buckhannon. I lived on Hickory Flat and went to the one room school house just one house up from where we lived with my grandparents, Rev. Lee and Alice Westfall. We moved to Tennerton in 1940. I have traveled throughout the U.S., all States except three, and, I have not found anyplace like Buckhannon. To me, Buckhannon is one of a kind. I like to go back there as often as we can and to Audry and Hollyriver State Park. I often retrace my growing up years there because the place and people relationships were so awsome. As I remember it though, us kids worked and sometimes played. We had assigned chores, and mine began with a 4 o'clock wake up to head for the barn with my father to milk 35 cows. Those years were so so good and will remain as such in my memory forever.

Posted by James (Calvin} Westfall on December 2,2012 | 07:49 PM

I myself was born and raised in buckhannon, born august 27, 1961, have always loved my home town, always has been and always will be a beautiful place to live and raise family.

Posted by james allen kahlbaugh on December 9,2011 | 09:11 PM

I am doing some research on the Upshur County Poor Farm/Lewis home. I noticed it mentioned and would like to elicit any further information anyone may have on its history. A photo would be a wonderful addition to my research.
Contact me at:
adams.laura.l11@gmail.com

Posted by Laura on October 16,2011 | 02:09 PM

I grew up in Upshur County (Buckhannon - county seat) during the 1970s, close to the area which was my father's home. But I remember his stories of town and my visits to Buckhannon outside the school setting. As I read Jayne's article, I started replacing the current real estate with that from her description and could feel the warm feeling with which Dad had described receiving from the people and the town - also the same warm feeling I felt from my visits.

Jayne, thanks for a trip to a time before me.

Posted by Crystal LoudinJones on October 2,2010 | 12:00 PM

Oh the memories. I did not grew up in Buckhannon unless you count the month we spent every year at my grandparents home, the old poor farm where 8 Lewis girls were raised. My mom was the youngest Nina Lewis. She went to a one room school then onto BUHS and worked in the dairy store where she met my dad Robert Gainor of Elkins who was attending WVWC. Our memories were the same as your great article. We still have our family reunions every few years at my cousin camp near the boy scout camp. Baisden cousin still live there with a few in Texas. One year all the cousins that were in town we took over the movie theatre all night watching Edgar Allan Poe movies.. Even cousin Karen Viola from Philadelphia who must have only been 7. The best chilly hotdog ever at Pat's because it was close and then on to tennerton when the older cousin would take us to the pool hall.. I saw Dale Brooks message, my grandparents bought his place in the legget edition when he left town. I bought my first peace of jewelry from Shaffer in 1964 from babysitting money. We older we hung out at the Hinkle pool and party. I learned to swim in WVWC pool while my aunt was working at the their. I must share this article with my other cousins. My dad family is the Heavner family. thanks so much Jayne

Posted by Kathryn Gainor Ventura on September 6,2010 | 02:49 AM

I was born in Buckhannon, and like my Father, have many fond memories of the town and the people. My Dad loved the internet. His comments on this article were some of the only ones I know that he wrote, and so I felt I must share this story to show the power of our words…and why we should always express ourselves when we can.

Dad recently became seriously ill, and passed away on 8/13. Coincidentally the 1st day of his 55th Class Reunion. We tried hard to get him better so he could attend.

Cards and phone calls from his Classmates, both from that year and others during his illness were appreciated. Your words offered comfort, but mostly confirmed insight into the man we knew our Dad was.

One of his classmates who joined him in the Navy in 1955, (Don, Denzil or Earl) was reunited with another friend, because of Dad’s comments on this article. When I read the card I couldn’t believe it!

Buckhannon may be a small dot on the map to a lot of people, but the people that come from and stay in it are powerful. I count myself proudly as one of those. I know my Dad was one too!

Posted by Missi Pappas Powell on September 2,2010 | 04:05 PM

This all takes me back to my memories of growing up in Buckhannon. Was born in Grafton,W.Va. 1927 but came to Buckhannon when I was 3 years old and the depression to live with my Mother& Father. We moved in with my Grandmaother, Grandpa, also my Aunt& 2 Uncles. My Grandma Had a very large house and we were the last house on Boggess St. and not even a sidewalk and still no sidewalk. We had 6 acres of land and still right there on the lower part of Mt. Hibbs. Went to all the schools from the Academy right down the street to the old High school and then the beautiful Wesleyan but only for 1 year and also worked for Dr.Farnsworth as his dental assistant. So many memories but too much to write at this time. Everyone knew all their neighbors back then and always willing to help one another and believe it is still that way.

Posted by C. Jane Martin Cantler on August 20,2010 | 10:51 AM

It was a complete accident that I found this wonderful article by Ms.Jayne Anne. I have read your books and poetry and have lived in many places in my life.... but "there's no place like home." I'll be 70 this coming September, seems like only 60 years ago Oh it was), I and my childhood friends were doing all the same things you wrote about. I have said many times in my life that my name should have been Richie Cunningham, simply because growing up in Buckhannon in my era, the 50's, was certainly Happy Days.
I recognize many of you folks that commented on here as I was raised by my Grandparents on my mothers side, DL & Stella Mae Haymond. Across the street from Babe Lewis' store on South Florida St. Now the RolStar. Our class of 1958 was the last in the old High School. This article refreshed my thoughts of my hometown and my happy days. Thank you and I need more books by you Jayne Anne. By the way I had to give a black Lab away do to health, the lucky ones were Roger & Betty Phillips both from Buckhannon, now in Clarksburg!

Posted by Darrell Lantz on May 18,2010 | 04:54 PM

What a terrific journey down memory lane! My mother's family (McCauley) lived in Buckhannon in the early 1900's; she was born there. Her family later moved to Rock Cave. My cousin, Ural Kellison, still lives there. Most every weekend, we journeyed from our home in Clarksburg through Buckhannon enroute to Rock Cave. We often detoured to visit their friends the Johnsons, who owned a furntiure store on Main Street in those days. Their son, French Earl, was near my age, and we often played together. (Wonder where he is now?) And of those annual trips to the Strawberry Festival, and the family reunions at the fairgrounds. Thanks for capturing and conveying such fond memories for so many readers about a jewel of an Amrican town.

Posted by John W Murphy on April 3,2010 | 06:25 PM

Hi,
I am interested in what year that picture was taken. I can't tell by looking at the cars. What a lovely nostalgic story. The girl in the picture looks like my identical twin sister and I am very curious if my mom gave away my twin for adoption. I had a prom dress just like that also.
Sincerely,
Kathy Bourinot

Posted by Kathleen Bourinot on February 11,2010 | 05:53 PM

Thank you Jayne Anne how wonderful to walk down memory lane by reading your article about Buckhannon. I was born at St. Joseph's hospital on August 28, 1969, the fourth of seven kids to Don and Margaret Bailey. I remember as well going to East Main Street school as well as graduating from High School in 1987 and loving the town and all the people. I had and still have some wonderful friends and still come back to the town as often as possible bringing my 3 kids who love coming to the Strawberry Festival! They got to ride on a float 2 years ago and I was so proud to see them and cousins on the float waving to the people of my hometown Buckhannon. I was in the Band with Mr Kennedy and loved my experience and marching in the parades and band camp. Dr Almond delivered me and it was great to see a comment by his son Greenbriar, my mom still talks about Dr Almond and I bought a book the last time I was there about Dr. Almond and I love the book! I live with my husband and family in Delaware now but really miss Buckhannon and living on King School Road and going for the walks and picking strawberries on the side of the road. I remember going to Pringle tree as well and still have a lot of family still in WV. I remember our neighbors the Oldakers, Hinkles, & Roy Warner. My Grandmother lived in Buckhannon as well and loved taking us to the Baxa Hotel with Sammy to spend the night, the small things meant a lot back then, thank you again for the walk down memory lane loved it!

Posted by Billie Dawn (Bailey) Cain on February 9,2010 | 10:31 AM

I was born at St. Joseph, the fifth child of seven to Don and Margaret Bailey.
I remember going to East Main Street school. I have very fond memories of good friends that I started school with and also graduated together. On the weekends we loved going to Skateland and going to town for suppies. As I grow older I joined the band and which changed my life. In 9th grade at BUHS I had Mr. Kennedy as a band teacher. My older sisters Ann and Billie Dawn had told many stories about band camp and running laps when they made a mistake. I was a little scared my first year but, I will never forget the fun and memories we made together. Don't get me wrong we also had lots of work to do for Mr. Kennedy. After graduation we moved to Delaware where I met my husband Ted. We now have three perfect little girls that I enjoy taking back to the Strawberry festival in May. Thank you for writing this article and helping me walk down memory lane.

Posted by Peggy Wiley (Bailey) on February 9,2010 | 08:47 AM

Jayne Anne, thanks for sharing your story. I was born at St. Joseph in Buckhannon in 1966. Dr. Almond delivered me, a name I am sure many will remember. The little brick building just up from the Kanawha theater was his place of practice for years. I have a flood of memories to tell. Some already mentioned, others not. I remember a teacher named Phillips. I struggled in the beginning and switched teachers a lot but recall a Ms Thorn as my teacher. I am from the Tenney family. Well known in Upshur county. My grandparents operated the Kanawha theater for years however were not the owners. My mother was born there and will die there. My father was from Washington DC. Came to Buckhannon and NEVER left. He is buried there today. We were not "city" people and I recall many Saturday mornings "going to town" with my grandfather because that is what everyone did. On Saturday mornings Main street would be lined with people under the awnings just talking! Buckhannon will always be home whether I ever live there again or not. I was just there about a week ago visiting Mom and Sis. Buckhannon, WV is a special place in the hearts of many! I am glad and proud to say that I am one of them. I wish Buckhannon supported a larger employment base. May GOD bless the wonderful people of Buckhannon..past, present, and future. Jeff

Posted by Jeff Andrus on January 27,2010 | 02:08 AM

I as born in Buckhannon on Sept 5th 1934. My family left in Sept of 1940 to move to Ohio. I can still remember walking to school the week before we moved. Walking across the bridge by the feed mill. Looking out the window at the barn on the side of John Post hill. Walking to the cemetery an across the iron bridge to my Grand Fathers House. Those are things I will never forget. I still love to go back and ride my motorcycle around the area. Just walking down the main street & getting an ice cream. I have traveled to England, France, California & a lot of places in between but none can compair with Buckhannon. It truly is Home Town U.S.A. For God & Country.

Posted by James E. Lane on January 27,2010 | 02:56 PM




Submit Your Town

Advertisement

Follow Us





First Name
Last Name
Address 1
Address 2
City
State   Zip
Email


Travel with Smithsonian




Smithsonian Store