Mason Adams, Author at West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Shaun Slifer’s 'So Much to Be Angry About' Explores 1960s Appalachian Radicalism And Its Use Of A DIY Press

Since the color writers of the late 1800s, there’s been no shortage of writing about Appalachia by those visiting the region — but it’s a lot rarer to find Appalachians who set out to tell their own stories.

That’s exactly what happened beginning in the late ‘60s in Huntington, West Virginia, when a group of young people began printing pamphlets under the publishing label Appalachian Movement Press. Shaun Slifer inadvertently came across one of the press’s pamphlets a few years ago — which led him on a journey to learn more about the press. The result is a new book, titled “So Much to Be Angry About: Appalachian Movement Press and Radical DIY Publishing, 1969 – 1979,” published by WVU Press.

A rare Appalachian Mountain Press logo that was developed right at the end of AMP’s history, and only appears on a handful or their last publications in 1978-79.

Slifer read a blurb from the press that functioned as a sort of manifesto — a statement of purpose that often ran alongside its catalog offerings.

“Appalachia is a colony,” read Slifer. “Our wealth is daily stolen from us. Our natural resources and our labor are exploited by giant corporations whose owners do not live here. Not only do these owners not live here, they make no contribution to the process of production. Our natural resources rightfully belong to all of us, and it is by our labor alone that they are made useful to us in the form of products. Yet today we receive no value from our resources and a mere pittance for our labor.

“The greatest share of what is produced from our resources and labor goes into the pockets of these corporate owners who do nothing at all to earn it. They live and have become the richest people in America by exploiting us. We at the Appalachia Press are dedicated to putting an end to the exploitation of our land and labor,” Slifer read — in words many would appreciate still today.

Slifer reflected in an interview about what the book revealed and how he had tapped into this history.

“The process with Appalachian Movement Press really started from being handed one of their pamphlets at a wedding that I was at at the Appalachian South Folklife Center in Pipestem Resort State Park a few years back,” Slifer said. “I was very curious on the back, it said ‘Appalachian Movement Press,’ and I knew about movement presses in the 1960s and 70s, as part of the left in the United States.”

The movement press was a group of people who owned the means of production for printing their own posters, pamphlets and sometimes books. The coal miner’s pick on the press snared Slifer from the moment he saw it.

An Appalachian Movement Press 1976 mail order catalog, which was part of an effort at getting a wider readership and buy-in from libraries outside the region. Here, as in some of their other work in the late 1970s, Appalachian Movement Press has dropped “Movement” from the name.

“I just thought, ‘That’s cool,’” said Slifer. “I took a picture of the logo and texted it to a couple of friends of mine who run a publication called ‘Signal,’ which is a global survey of political graphics and graphic culture. I thought they would at least know what it was, but they said, ‘Wow, I’ve never heard of this,’ and challenged me to go dig up the history of it.”

Slifer’s subsequent research revealed that the people behind “Appalachian Movement Press” were a group of college students around Huntington’s Marshall University who originally spent years trying to get the college to recognize their chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, a late ‘60s radical group. They began the press to publish their newsletter, but soon picked up a lot of republishing work as “Appalachian Movement Press.”

The press was distinguished by the fact it was by Appalachians, for Appalachians. The group kept its work simple and stripped down. It was focused on its print content, with the objective of keeping the price low for buyers of all kinds.

“Everything about it was focused on the information itself, and so that created a design aesthetic. What I mean by that is that the design aesthetic felt very stripped down very of the moment. They were neither in communication with other movement presses, nor did were they particularly concerned with what those presses were doing. It was about central Appalachia.”

Slifer’s book includes a historical explanation and several reprints. The book, “So Much to Be Angry About,” is available from WVU Press.

91-Year-Old Restaurant Keeps Chugging Despite All The Changes In Downtown Roanoke

In the midst of downtown Ronaoke’s reinvention, a 91-year-old restaurant is coping with new growth all around it, by keeping things much the same.

What keeps the customers coming back?

“Because it’s never changed,” responded Mark Saunders, who’s been a regular at the Texas Tavern since the 1970s.

Communities across Appalachia have used outdoor adventure as a marketing tool to attract new visitors—and new residents, too. Roanoke, Virginia, has succeeded, using its location amid the Blue Ridge Mountains along with new apartments downtown to attract millennials and reverse decades of population loss.

But while the change is good for the city’s energy and bottom line, it can be disconcerting. Ever since the ‘30s, customers have been able to walk into the Texas Tavern and order “two and a bowl with.” If you’re not familiar with the tavern’s lingo, that translates to, “two hamburgers and a bowl of chile beans with onions.” The Texas Tavern recently celebrated its 91st birthday and looks well on the way to its centennial.

Danny Fralin makes chili dogs during a recent weekday lunch shift at the Texas Tavern in Roanoke, Virginia. Fralin has been a cook at the restaurant for 37 years.

The diner’s secret can be found amid the lunch hour, as church bells just up the street ring in the noon hour on a Tuesday in downtown Roanoke. Spring is showing, so despite the pandemic, people are out and about. And the Texas Tavern is seeing a brisk movement by customers.

”How’s the elevator business?” third-generation owner Matt Bulington asks a regular.

“Up and down, buddy!” replies the operator in a rehearsed joke that still cracks up the cooks.

The banter here is just part of the appeal. The diner is tiny — 10 seats, and right now they’re all blocked off with yellow caution tape — but its crisp red and white paint and the unmistakable smell of its grill practically dominate the larger buildings around it.

Saunders, for example, started coming here back in the ’70s but still usually orders the same thing.

“It’s either two with, a bowl and a drink,” Saunders said, indicating a preference for burgers and a bowl of chili beans with onions, plus a soda. “Or a Cheesy Western, a bowl and a drink.”

For Saunders, the lack of change provides much of the appeal. The Texas Tavern’s small menu offers up blue-collar classics like chili dogs, small hamburgers, and the Cheesy Western – a hamburger with a scrambled egg and the tavern’s signature relish. Regulars tend to be passionate about their favorites.

The menu at the Texas Tavern hasn’t changed much since it originally opened in 1930, and that’s the way customers like it.

“Two hot dogs and a chili beans.”

“Cheeseburger.’

“The Cheesy Western! No. 1, Texas Tavern!”

The price is right, too. The Cheesy Western is one of the most expensive item on the menu — $2.85. Owner Bullington’s great-grandfather started this joint.
“My great grandfather, Nick Bullington, had been an advance man for the Ringling Brothers circus and the Gentry Dog and Pony Show, and had his own railroad car,” Matt Bullington said. “He traveled all over the country.”

It wasn’t long before he discovered the chile recipe in Texas. And then soon after, he discovered White Castle, an emerging chain restaurant that sold small hamburgers — the first fast food. Bullington decided to make a go of it and opened The Texas Tavern in Roanoke in 1930. The Great Depression was taking hold, but the Norfolk and Western Railway had its headquarters there, which gave him a built-in customer base.

“Times were hard, but it was a really fast-growing city with good economic potential,” Matt Bullington said.

Roanoke has changed dramatically since then. Railroad jobs are mostly gone. Downtown has completely transformed, from office buildings to rental apartments for a new, younger set. Texas Tavern’s competition used to be other diners. Now it sits alongside upscale international cuisine and craft breweries.

That was before the pandemic hit. COVID-19 has turned downtown into what Bullington calls “a ghost town.” It’s pushed the tavern into take-out only, at least for now. And the tavern’s customers are craving constancy.

“It’s kind of one of those places people like to come back to, as everything else changes,” Bullington said. “The food stays the same. You walk in and it looks like it did in 1950, or 1970, or 1990.”

Since he took over in 2005, Bullington has added sausage gravy to the menu, and replaced an old cigarette vending machine with a vintage Coke cooler — and that’s about it. That’s the way regulars like it.

So while Roanoke is seeing new growth and an evolving economy, the Texas Tavern is chugging toward its 100th birthday in 2030, doing what it’s always done: selling inexpensive comfort food in a setting that looks pretty much the same as when it opened. In doing so, it’s become a foundational piece of Roanoke culture and cuisine — a link to the past that gives comfort in the present.

“Somebody that didn’t understand the business might think, oh, he should modernize this and open up and create more seats because we only have 10 stools, which — you’d be losing something,” Bullington said. “You’d be missing something.”

Two Months After Judge Ordered Them Down, Tree-Sitters Still Block Mountain Valley Pipeline

As 2020 gave way to a new year, and Donald Trump turned the White House over to Joe Biden, tree-sitters in western Virginia held their position against construction of the interstate Mountain Valley Pipeline.

Activists have blocked the pipeline in a mountain hollow just outside Elliston, Virginia, since fall of 2018. A judge ordered them down in November — but more than two months later, tree-sitters remain in place. And they’re not alone.

A look at the Yellow Finch tree-sits, still occupied by protesters despite a judge’s order.

“There’s all kinds of like, local youth organizers that would come up to this space,” said a tree sitter known as Acre. “They clean up around the stream and read speeches and make banners. There’s been all kinds of local folks that have written letters to us, and stood under the trees and read them.”

Acre said that local support has kept them in the treetops through the winter months, even after the judge’s order. Like other activists who’ve occupied the blockade known as Yellow Finch — named for the dirt road that runs through the hollow just below the tree-sits — Acre uses non-binary gender pronouns and declined to reveal their real name.

“Using a pseudonym lets you do cool stuff that you wouldn’t be able to do with the same amount of integrity with the real name,” Acre said.

That includes writing posts that are published on the Facebook page of Appalachians Against Pipelines, which functions as the public face of the direct-action campaign against the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

“I don’t have to write everything,” Acre said. “I don’t always have to be the same person. There can be other people signing [posts as] Acre. If people can just walk up here like this, you know, you could be Acre, for all you know.”

The Mountain Valley Pipeline, or MVP, was announced in 2014 and approved by the federal government in 2017, but it’s still incomplete. Now, a shift in White House administrations and accompanying change on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) signals a new phase in the fight.

In mid-January, FERC deadlocked on — and therefore denied — a request by MVP to bore beneath waterways and wetlands along 77 miles of pipeline route in West Virginia. With one of the FERC commissioners in opposition to this process ascending to the commission’s chairmanship, some analysts see further obstacles in MVP’s future.

The pipeline was originally supposed to be in service by 2018, and its cost has gone up from a projected $3.3 billion when it was announced, to nearly $6 billion today. The pipeline did not respond to requests for comment, but its website reports that construction is 92% complete. Still, it remains unfinished — in part because of activists like Acre, who have put their bodies in the pipeline’s way.

Hand-drawn art can still be seen on boards among the remnants of the former Yellow Finch support camp.

Tree-sits first went up against MVP in 2018, on the Virginia-West Virginia state line. Others followed, but all were forced down after a few months. Then, that fall, Yellow Finch quietly went up at a more defensible site, in a steep hollow near the south fork of the Roanoke River. It became a destination for pipeline fighters across the East Coast and the Midwest. They came from all kinds of backgrounds, too: Black Lives Matter, criminal justice reform, mutual aid, and fights against tar sands extraction, fracking, and other pipelines.

The Yellow Finch encampment became a hub for activism, not just against the pipeline but also for jail reform, mutual aid and other efforts. Its relatively accessible location made it easy for visitors to find and locals to plug in, while the steep slopes around the tree-sits made it difficult for law enforcement and pipeline security to remove.

The topography around the tree-sits underscore the activists’ argument against the pipeline. On one side of the hollow, the land has been cleared down to mineral soil, and it looks like pipeline workers are using a giant sheet of plastic or some other material to stabilize the ground. On the other side — where the tree-sits are located — the slope is still forested.

After the judge’s order in November, the activists took down the support camp. In late December, the pallets they used as a streamside barricade lay in piles, and the bunkhouse they slept in had been dismantled.

The remnants of the support camp at Yellow Finch, which was removed by activists in November

But a skeleton crew of tree-sitters stayed behind, living 40 feet off the ground on a series of platforms connected by rope lines and covered with tarps. Acre said they’ve got a pile of sleeping bags to keep them warm, but that the weather’s been fairly mild so far this winter. And, it turns out that weather many of us see as an annoyance is crucial for Acre’s ability to stay in the trees.

“The water I drink is all rainwater, so I’m really grateful when it rains,” Acre said. “And then my solar panel charges my phone. So when it rains, I have to take my face away from a phone and read a book, and I get more water from my water-catchment system. In some ways, my setup is reliant on the elements and keeps me in tune with with the daylight and with the weather.”

Acre’s presence in the trees feels like a last stand against the Mountain Valley Pipeline. And it may signal the end of the Yellow Finch encampment. However, the tree-sits, while a focal point for news coverage of the pipeline fight, represent just one front in a long-running, multi-pronged campaign that also includes legal, regulatory and political action. Environmental groups are fighting the pipeline in court, and an army of trained volunteers monitor the pipeline for erosion and other environmental violations.

While the pipeline continues to make progress toward removing its remaining legal and regulatory obstacles, including receiving an important approval from the U.S. Forest Service in January, its fate remains unclear.

In the meantime, Acre and other tree-sitters remain, continuing to hold their space and block the pipeline.

Monster Mash: Virginia's 'Dinosaur Kingdom' Mixes Art And Absurdity

Appalachia is a tourist destination for people around the world, from the Great Smoky Mountains and Dollywood, to the Mothman Museum and statue in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Natural Bridge, a limestone arch at the southern end of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, has pulled in visitors since the mid-1800s. Roadside attractions have popped up all around it, including a wax museum, a zoo, and something known as Dinosaur Kingdom.

The park sits along U.S. 11, behind a giant fence. The walking tour starts with a train car and through a colorful spinning tunnel that transports them back in time. On the other side is Extinction Junction, a tiny town filled with mysteries and wonders, including a house tilted at a disorientating angle and mechanical slime monsters that pass behind walls.

The park also includes 16 acres of woodland where you’ll find sculpted fiberglass dinosaurs that face off against Civil War soldiers in a series of bizarre scenes. In one scene, a steampunk Stonewall Jackson with a trench coat and telescoping arm battles a Spinosaurus. Elsewhere, President Abraham Lincoln sits atop a building as a flying dinosaur makes off with his speech.

Mark Cline created, owns and operates Dinosaur Kingdom II, which is merely the latest in a series of attractions he’s run going back to the early ‘80s.

“You can see that the bird is actually chewing up the Gettysburg address,” Cline said. “Now you know why the Gettysburg address was so short, because the Pteranodon ate most of it.”

Dinosaur Kingdom evolved out of one of Cline’s previous attractions, the Haunted Monster Museum. There, he populated a one-acre space with dinosaurs fighting Civil War soldiers to entertain folks waiting in line for the monster museum.

A dinosaur-solider creation from Mark Cline’s roadside attraction Dino World in Natural Bridge, Virginia.

With Dinosaur Kingdom II, Cline brought the Civil War’s mythos and dinosaurs together in a way that acts as a funhouse mirror, squeezing the nation’s history into an absurdist revisioning. The park exists in a state where the majority of the Civil War’s battles were fought.

Cline occasionally hears from customers and critics upset about his use of Civil War imagery at Dinosaur Kingdom II. His response is as irreverent as the park itself.

“If anybody can make an issue out of cartoon soldiers fighting dinosaurs with slime monsters everywhere, I say bring it on, I want to hear this!” Cline said. “This park is ridiculous. It’s meant to be ridiculous. But isn’t that what war is? War is ridiculous.”

Dinosaur Kingdom II is a throwback to the old roadside attractions of the mid-20th century, when Americans explored the country in their automobiles. Businesses tried to entice them off the road and to spend a few dollars.

“This is an old-time tourist attraction that sort of became extinct in the ‘70s,” Cline said. “Now there’s a whole new generation of kids discovering this. Because this is a brand new experience for them. This is something that just doesn’t exist anymore—but yet, here it is.”

Cline’s something of a throwback himself. People call him the “Barnum of the Blue Ridge,” and he’s definitely got the gift of gab. Cline grew up in Waynesboro, Virginia, near the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains, loving comics, cartoons and monster movies.

He pursued those interests through art, and made a major leap when he learned about fiberglass sculpting through a job at Red Mill Manufacturing, which made figurines of animals and people.

Cline’s work falls into that American tradition of building giant sculptures to lure motorists off the highway. Think of the cherubic, statues in overalls at Big Boy Restaurants, or the muffler men and Paul Bunyons that once guarded auto shops and roadside attractions of all sorts.

Cline landed in Natural Bridge, Virginia, in 1982. He set up Enchanted Studios as a workshop for making his fiberglass sculptures, for one attraction after another: the first and second Dinosaur Kingdoms, the Haunted Monster Museum and Foamhenge — a life-sized styrofoam replica of England’s Stonehenge monument.

The hands of fiberglass sculptor Mark Cline.

Cline said that even when he had nowhere else to go, he could turn to his art. It let him escape to a different place for a while. Today, he’s making a go of it—but he’s also been doing this for 40 years. He’s nearly 60, and starting to think about the park’s future.

And that’s where the Virginia Folklife Program came in.

Pat Jarrett, the digital media coordinator for the Virginia Folklife Program at Virginia Humanities, had met Cline during his previous job at a newspaper in Staunton, Virginia, just north of Natural Bridge. He knew about Cline’s concern for his craft and the park’s future.

“He said to me one time something that really stuck with me,” Jarrett said of Cline. “He said, ‘I’m worried that when I die, people are going to come into this yard and they’re going to throw away all these molds because they don’t know what this is or how to work it, and it’s just going to be lost.’ And that is the reason we have this apprenticeship program, is so that this knowledge can be passed down and continued. “

The apprenticeship program pairs masters in a folk craft with a student, so that the traditions can be passed onto future generations. The program doesn’t usually play matchmaker, but in Cline’s case, Jarrett thought of Brently Hilliard, a metal musician and artist who crafted short-run action figures.

Mark Cline and Brently Hilliard in one of the illusions at Dinosaur Kingdom II. Mark Cline’s Enchanted Castle Studios and Dinosaur Kingdom II are full of wonder and are designed to spark imagination. Photos made at the roadside attraction and studio in Natural Bridge on 2/27/19. Pat Jarrett/Virginia Humanities

Jarrett brought the two together and they hit it off. Cline taught Hilliard how to go from small-scale to large-scale sculpture and molding. He also passed along a couple of his clients, like a children’s museum in Connecticut that wanted faerie figures. Hilliard has taken the business and lessons that Cline gave him and combined them with his woodworking and action figures to make a living from his art.

“I definitely learned a ton about mold making and materials that I hadn’t worked with before,” Hilliard said. “I had never worked with epoxy sculpt, which is a modeling compound that cures to almost, like, cement. I had never messed with that. I sculpted a head for a flying monkey for a Wizard of Oz putt-putt course he was working for.”

Fiberglass sculptor Mark Cline is apprenticing Brently Hilliard in the craft of fiberglass sculpture and roadside attractions. Photos made at Cline’s Enchanted Castle Studios in Rockbridge County on 3/13/20. Photo by Pat Jarrett/Virginia Humanities

Cline still lives and breathes sculpture and molding, especially for Dinosaur Kingdom II, where he’s always planning something new, whether that’s an interactive water fight with Bigfoot, a Triceratops bull fight, or a whole new dungeon full of sculpted fiberglass creations. He wants to start a school to teach his particular method of fiberglass sculpting. He’s eventually hoping to stop doing commissioned work and funnel even more of his energy into the dinosaur park.

“What’s true and what’s not here at Dinosaur Kingdom?” Cline said with a laugh. “To me, it’s all true. Hey we’re here, aren’t we? We’re walking through it. People say, are dinosaurs real? I say they are to me, kid!”