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Generation After Generation: Ashe County Seed Savers Preserve Heirloom Seeds, Appalachian History

In Appalachia, organizations like seed libraries and community gardens are helping to save traditional heirloom vegetables from being lost. Sometimes, the seeds are found in unexpected places like when Travis Birdsell visited the barn of an Ashe County farmer in 2017.

There, he found tomato seeds smeared on the side of an old grocery store sack.

“All the words said were ‘Big Red,’” Birdsell said.

“Big Red” ended up being an Oxheart tomato, an heirloom variety known for its huge size. Each tomato can weigh up to 2.5 pounds, making them more than four times the size of the average grocery store tomato. Before the tomatoes are even fully grown, they’re heavy enough to bend their stalks.

Birdsell knew he wanted to plant the seeds, but when he did, only one germinated. That single seed, though, was enough for him to successfully grow the tomato in 2019.

The seed was planted in the Ashe County Victory Garden. It’s located in downtown Jefferson, North Carolina. Birdsell, the Ashe County Cooperative Extension director, has used the garden since 2016 as a space to grow and reintroduce heirloom vegetable varieties in southern Appalachia.

Ashe County Victory Garden is home to nine different heirloom vegetable varieties native to southern Appalachia. The garden is designed with education in mind. The trellises shown here provide an opportunity for community members to learn best practices for their own gardens.

Each seed has a special origin story, but right now, the Oxheart tomato is the star — it’s enormous, of course, and Birsell said it has a meaty texture.

Varieties like the Oxheart tomato are kept alive thanks to the work of seed savers. The work they do throughout Appalachia is crucial in keeping heirloom varieties on our tables and in our bellies.

Seed saving is especially important in communities like Ashe County. Agriculture has always been the main industry, and local families have been able to keep certain varieties around for decades. Birdsell said he hopes the Victory Garden highlights that.

“We want to play into the culture that’s alive and well in southern Appalachia, which is independence. This is a way to tap into food independence.”

A Radical Idea

Getting seeds into the hands of home gardeners is a key part of that self sufficiency. In 2019, Birdsell produced enough of the Oxheart tomatoes to make seeds available to the public, through the Ashe County Seed Library, which is about a mile up the road from the garden in West Jefferson, North Carolina.

The Ashe County Seed Library is housed in an old card catalogue. Anyone in the community is welcome to borrow seeds — no library card needed.

The seed library is on the second floor of the public library and is housed in an old card catalogue cabinet. The drawers are stuffed with dozens of varieties of seeds. There are beans, tomatoes, greens and even flowers.

"Seeds are so important. We don't really think about it that much, but one simple seed can produce a plant that can produce hundreds of more seeds, which can feed a whole community."- Sarah Harrison

Each tiny manila envelope contains about a dozen seeds. Heirloom beans and tomatoes are among the most popular. Librarians ask that people try to save a few seeds, so they can continue to stock them next year. There are also handouts that describe the seed saving process for nearly every kind of seed in the library.

Beans can be left on the vine until the shells are dry. Then, the seeds can be removed and stored in a jar until next year. Tomatoes are a bit trickier. Some people dry the seeds on a piece of wax paper so they’re easy to remove, and others put seeds in a jar and cover them with water. The good seeds float to the top, and the others stay at the bottom.

All the seeds at the Ashe County Seed Library are free. There’s no formal check-out process, and you don’t even need a library card. And when the cost of heirloom seeds can sometimes be more than $4 in stores, it can seem like a radical idea to give them away.

“I think it’s liberating to be able to provide for yourself and being able to access free seeds is the start of that process,” Birdsell said.

Ashe County Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners pack seeds from the 2019 Victory Garden harvest into small manila envelopes. The seeds, which are germination tested, will be available at the High Country Seed Swap in March 2020 and in the Ashe County Seed Library.

A Lost Art

Some of these seeds in the Ashe County Seed Library have been saved by local families like Vida Belvin’s for generations.

Her brother donated a special variety of pole bean that’s been a staple in their family since the 1920s. She calls it the Six Week Bean. It’s a flat green bean and you can get up to two harvests a year with it — more than a traditional green bean.

Blevins and her brother learned to save seeds from their parents. Their mom, Kada Owen McNeill, has lived in Ashe County for a century. McNeill was the 7th child of 12. She grew up on a family farm, just a few miles north of Jefferson.

Kada Owen McNeill, long-time Ashe County resident, sits in her home in Jefferson, North Carolina. Her family has grown the Six Week bean that was featured in the Ashe County Victory Garden and Seed Library since the 1920s.

They grew and preserved most of the food they ate. McNeill remembers giant, 65 gallon barrels of sauerkraut that her family would make and share with their neighbors. And, to save money, they spent many hours at the end of each season saving seeds.

McNeill grew up during the Great Depression. Then, saving seed was a necessity. Because you couldn’t just run out and buy them at the store. They saved seeds for apples, cabbage and parsnips. Her dad even built a small room specifically for drying pumpkin and apple seeds. She taught her daughter to save seeds too.

“I think it’s kind of a lost art now,” Blevins said.

Seed saving may be less common than it was a few decades ago, but it can still have the power to shape entire communities, Sarah Harrison said, who donated seeds to the Ashe County Seed Library through the Seeds of Resilience Project at Appalachian State University.

“Seeds are so important. We don’t really think about it that much, but one simple seed can produce a plant that can produce hundreds of more seeds, which can feed a whole community,” Harrison said.

According to experts like Chris Smith, the executive director of the Utopian Seed Project, based in Asheville, North Carolina, the cost of losing these seeds could be devastating for Appalachian communities down the road.

Smith said that seed saving helps build ecological resilience. Because if we only have a handful of different types of tomatoes or types of beans, we aren’t as adaptable as we would be if we have hundreds of different types of heirloom seeds kept somewhere safe. As a researcher, he said that genetic diversity in seeds is key for a sustainable, resilient future.

“If we’re saving our own seeds, in our own regions, then what we see is crop adaptability from season to season,” Smith said.

And the seeds that have grown here in this climate for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years are simply better adapted to southern Appalachia than most of the seeds you can buy in the store.

This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council. The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.

W.Va. Hunters Return To Historical Roots

West Virginia’s Mountaineer Heritage Hunting season began Jan 9, two weeks after most hunting seasons have closed. It is the second year since its conception, and most notably, it is limited to primitive weapons – like flintlock muzzle loader rifles.

The season is meant to memorialize the state’s settlers, using similar hunting techniques and weapons.

Muzzle loader rifles are long guns, easily four feet. Hunters load black powder into the muzzle — the end of the gun — to fire. It takes an experienced person just under a minute to reload. That means that for hunting, you typically have one shot to kill an animal.

“Literally these are not high tech. These are primitive weapons. There’s nothing high tech about them,” Gene Wotring, a Morgantown-based rifle maker, said.

A New Generation

As of last spring, Gene started making the WVU Mountaineer rifle — the signature piece for WVU’s Mountaineer mascot. His father, Marvin Wotring, made the rifle for over 40 years prior to that. Marvin made 949 muzzle loaders in his life, and Gene is on number nine. It takes him about 80 hours to make one rifle.

Handmade rifles in Gene Wotring’s shop outside Morgantown. Wotring, who recently took over his father’s business, made the most recent Mountaineer mascot’ rifle. WVU replaces the Mountaineer rifle every five to six years. Because the rifles are shot at least a dozen times per WVU sports game, depending on scores, they wear out quickly.

Inside Gene’s shop in Morgantown, five rifles were mounted in front of a rugged, cotton American flag. The rest of the shop was in a bit of disarray — Gene is still going through all of his father’s tools, which he inherited. But the rifles on display stand out. He made them all this year.

“A lot of frustrating hours in that gun and I had to put it up for a little bit. So then I built this one and made out of completely scraps from his shop,” Gene said.

One of the rifles Gene made in 2019. It is made out of a rare patterned maple, called Birdseye.

They all have a glossy wooden shine to them. Two have a hand-carved gold emblem in the shape of W.Va. Another is made out of Birdseye Maple, which gives it a distinct, patterned look and is decorated with a metal bear paw.

Building It For The Challenge…

Gene said the knowledge of how to build muzzle loaders, and even how to shoot them, is dwindling. He said it is easier to hunt with modern rifles because they are easier to load, can shoot a longer range and can shoot multiple times within a matter of seconds.

But, he said, black powder hunting is almost a sport of its own.

“There’s a challenge to it. At some point, honestly it’s pretty easy to kill an animal with a modern rifle, you want to make it a little more challenging.”

And that is a big reason the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources advocated for the Mountaineer Heritage Hunting season. In a 2018 DNR survey of hunters, data showed that almost half of West Virginian hunters intended to take part in the season.

And Gene is one of those people. He made his first muzzle loader at 11 years old, but he had stopped building the rifles in adulthood.

…And The Legacy

When Marvin passed away unexpectedly, Gene felt like he needed take over his father’s legacy. WVU needed a new rifle right away, and Marvin had a list of other customers orders dating back to 2010. Gene said as Marvin got older, he could not keep up with the demand.

Gene was left with a stack of worn papers, big and small, that Marvin liberally scribbled names and phone numbers on.

Gene inside his shop. After his father’s unexpected passing, Gene inherited a lot of rifle-making tools, as well as a long list of orders.

“There’s 98, plus all the ones on the side, plus the ones on the top. He ran out of room. But some people are finding me,” Gene said.

For as long as Gene can remember his dad was making muzzle loaders, so Gene said he did not realize how special of a craft it is.

“I’ve heard comments where my work is just as good as dad’s, but when I look at it I think it doesn’t even match up – completely different category,” he said.

Building It For The History

Larry Spisak is another West Virginian who builds muzzle loaders.

His shop is down a windy turnpike outside Morgantown. It sits on several acres of forested land that he hunts on. Larry is retired and devotes much of his time to studying and interpreting the practices of our Appalachian ancestors.

Larry Spisak on his property outside of Morgantown. All of the tools pictured he or his friends have hand made.

“The ability of dressing in period clothing, firing period weapons, hunting and experiencing the woods as our ancestors did 200 years ago, even with today’s modern technology, for me and many others, that’s the closest as you can come to time travel,” he said.

Over 40 years he has made dozens of rifles. Larry prefers to make flintlock rifles, which are a type of muzzle loader, and are one of the oldest firearm technologies dating back to the 1500s.

“Ready To Fire”

With a flintlock, one pulls the trigger, and a piece of steel hits the flint, which is just a very hard rock. It creates a spark and ignites the black powder.

“First thing I do is take my powder horn and I’ve got my powder measure right here and that’s from a wild turkey leg bone,” Larry said.

Larry puts some black powder into the barrel of the rifle. He can load a Flintlock in under a minute, which is relatively fast given the several hundred-year-old technology.

All of his supplies are handmade. A friend made the turkey powder measure and Larry made the leather bag carrying the rifle and round lead ball, which serves as the bullet.

Larry wrapped the ball in a small piece of fabric, or a patch, before putting it into the barrel of the gun.

“The patch acts as a seal and it also allows the rifling to grip the ball better and put that spin on the ball,” Larry said. “Alright now we draw the ram rod and drive it home.”

He used the ram rod to push the black powder and bullet into the bottom of the gun, back by the flintlock.

“Alright it’s on the charge. Ready to fire. Put it on full cock and we’ll go,” he said.

The gun made a bellowing sound through the woods.

Historical Roots

The rifle is a large part of Appalachian history, Larry said. Early settlers had to hunt for food, and muzzle loaders were the way they did it, Larry added that West Virginians today still embody their ancestors.

Larry preparing to shoot his Flintlock. He hunts with his handmade rifles every year.

“A large percentage of the population lives in the mountains, and maybe not realizing it, they are, in their everyday activities in their farming and hunting, they are living a bit of the life that was commonplace 200 years ago,” he said.

And that is why Larry still makes and hunts with muzzle loaders. He likes to feel connected to the settlers who paved the way for us in Appalachia.

The 2020 West Virginia Mountaineer Heritage Hunting season is January 9 to January 12.

This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.

How WVU’s Mascot Has Influenced Generations of West Virginians

West Virginia University’s mascot, the Mountaineer, is a big deal in the state. In fact, fans are called ‘Mountaineer Nation.’ West Virginians have long identified with the mascot as it symbolizes independence, strength and curiosity — a true frontiersman attitude.

On a football gameday, the Mountaineer stampedes down the field, rallying the crowd. The mascot wears a tan leather buckskin shirt and pants with long fringes that flap in the wind. There is a raccoon skin hat with a bushy tail and beady eyes, knee-high moccasins and a bison horn that holds black powder — the ammunition for the rifle held in the Mountaineer’s hand.

Among a cheering crowd of 60,000 fans and a stadium with a giant screen, is a Mountaineer who looks like he stepped straight out of the 1800s Appalachian frontier.

“Growing up in West Virginia, you’re instilled with that mountaineer pride at a very young age,” Timmy Eads, current WVU Mountaineer, said.

Becoming The Mountaineer

The mascot was officially recognized in the state in 1934. It is unique in that unlike most other university mascots, the Mountaineer does not wear a foam head – one can see the person’s face.

Also, there are no top-tier pro-sports team in the state, so most sports fans rally around the Mountaineer.

Rosemary Hathaway, author of the upcoming book about the Mountaineer, talks with Timmy Eads. The two were speaking at WVU about history and culture of the mascot. *Credit: Jesse Wright/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Rosemary Hathaway is the author of the soon to be released book “Mountaineers Are Always Free.” She said former Mountaineers she interviewed all say it is more than a mascot for them.

“Putting on the outfit and feeling almost this magical transformation; I’m both myself but I’m also sort of this symbol of the state,” she said.

Becoming the Mountaineer is a rigorous process. One has to be able to handle a gun, take a full class load, be a good public speaker, be willing to travel across the country, have the energy to serve as a role model daily and be able to represent not only the university, but West Virginia as a whole.

Gene Wotring started making the Mountaineer rifle last year. His father, Marvin Wotring, made rifles for the university for more than 40 years before he passed away in 2018.

Growing up, Gene watched many Mountaineers come in and out of his father’s shop.

“The Mountaineers, they were little kids dreaming about being a mountaineer and they’re here now, and going through it,” Gene said. “I think they have to mature in the role because it’s a big responsibility.”

The Buckskins

In just about six months, Timmy has attended over 250 events as the Mountaineer – including everything from elementary school visits to sports games to hospitals to rural hollow communities. He said he wears his buckskins almost every day, and one can tell. The leather has darkened, the creases look permanent, there is a musky smell and it is a little rough around the edges.

“What I was told by former Mountaineers to do if you come home and are absolutely drenched in sweat or you catch an odor, just freeze the entire thing and the freezer will help kill the bacteria and help it not smell so bad,” Timmy said.

Timmy’s worn-in buckskins and satchel. *Credit: Jesse Wright/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Each Mountaineer keeps their buckskins at the end of their reign.

Gary Nebel has been hand-stitching deer hides together to create the Mountaineer outfit since the 1980s. All his work is in the style of pre-1840s.

“We even make some of the buttons — we roll the leather buttons or put antler buttons on them,” Gary said.

Gary is not from West Virginia, nor has he ever lived in the state. He lives in Indiana, but WVU still sought him out to make the outfit. That is just how rare his skill set is.

Gary said, hand making these buckskin outfits — much like our Appalachian ancestors did — is a knowledge that is also dwindling.

“When I’m gone I don’t know who will take it over. I don’t know if my son will do it or not,” Gary said.

But he does not plan to retire anytime soon.

The Rifle

Gene Wotring — the new maker of the Mountaineer rifle — is someone who did take over his dad’s business. His dad, Marvin, made 949 black powder rifles. Gene is on number nine.

The Mountaineer uses a .45 caliber Kentucky Long Rifle, a weapon developed in the early 1700s. Gene said it is a primitive technology, and the pressure of making the WVU rifle is huge.

“It’s not just the Mountaineer, it’s all of Mountaineer Nation,” he said. “If the rifle doesn’t go boom, a lot of people are upset.”

Rifles made by Gene Wotring, who has taken over his father’s role of making the Mountaineer rifle. *Credit: Jesse Wright/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

In a football game, the rifle is shot dozens of times, with a stadium and thousands of fans at home watching. The Mountaineer rifle Gene made last year is striking. It is a dark, maple brown and about four-feet long. There is a gold metal, hand-carved emblem in the shape of West Virginia on the side. Underneath, in gold metal, are the words “Country roads take me,” with the shape of West Virginia as the implied home.“I had to do like five of these to get the state and get the arc right and get the words to fit in there,” Gene said.And on the other side are the distinctive flying letters “WV” — the letters almost look painted on.“It’s coal, and it’s inlaid in there,” Gene said. “I took coal and crushed it up and put it in a resin and molded it in there. Yeah, coal’s just a big part of West Virginia.”The WVU rifle is passed down each year to the new Mountaineer. It is only replaced every five or six years. Seeking DiversityThese days, the Mountaineer typically has a big, bushy beard. Although, prior to the 1970s, that was not the case. Rosemary Hathaway, the author of the upcoming Mountaineer book, said beards were seen as being unkempt and represented someone who has radical politics.In fact, the Mountaineer statue at WVU does not have a beard, and two women have been the mountaineer — Natalie Tennent in 1990 and Rebecca Durst in 2009. Rosemary said the beard was used as an argument for not having a female as the mascot.“In their minds, I think they’re thinking, ‘You’re not being sexist, right? Because you just can’t grow a beard so you can’t be the Mountaineer,’” Rosemary said. “But, I think it was really just a cover for a woman not being the Mountaineer for a whole lot of other reasons, and not growing a beard was just one of them.”

Rosemary Hathaway and Timmy Eads speaking at an event at WVU during Mountaineer Week in 2019. Pictured in the slideshow is Rebecca Durst who was the mascot in 2009. *Credit: Jesse Wright/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

In the 84 years since the mascot was officially recognized, there has not been a person of color in the role. Granted, over 75 percent of WVU’s population is white, but there are students of color, and only one person of color has ever applied.

Rosemary said the women who were the mountaineer faced a lot of backlash, and that could be intimidating for any minority student who is thinking of applying.

“I don’t know what the reaction would be, if people would be cool about it or if they’d think, ‘It’d be politically incorrect for me to say something, so I’m just going to keep my mouth shut.’ Or whether there would be an out-and-out racist response to it,” Rosemary said.

However, according to the mascot application the “Mountaineer Mascot selection committee and the Mountaineer Advisory Committee do not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, age, disability, veteran’s status, religion, sexual orientation, color or national origin.”

Timmy Eads will be passing the rifle that Gene made onto the new mountaineer this spring.

This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts and culture.

Wetzel County Workshop Keeps Folk Toys Alive

When I was a kid, the thing that intrigued me most about Santa wasn’t the beard, or the flying reindeer, or the repeated breaking and entering. No — I was fascinated by his workshop. I loved to imagine the elves working tirelessly to make toys that would end up under Christmas trees around the world.

But you know, I never once imagined the elves making the season’s hottest toys.

Instead, I pictured Santa’s little helpers building toys with good old-fashioned wood and glue. I imagined a shop filled with the smell of sawdust and the sound of popguns.

In addition to wooden toys, the Mountain Craft Shop Co. also sells metal puzzles and cloth dolls.

Turns out, my visions looked a lot like what I found in Proctor, West Virginia; headquarters of Mountain Craft Shop Company, which has been turning out traditional handmade Appalachian toys since the early 1960s.

The tree-shaded workshop used to be an elementary school. Now, one side of the building is filled with power saws and a wood lathe, bottles of Elmer’s Glue and slabs of locally sourced hardwood. The other side, the shop’s showroom, is filled with toys your great-grandparents probably would recognize.

“I like to tell the kids, can you remember before Walmart and plastics. There wasn’t necessarily a store to go to to buy toys, so grandmom or granddad or dad or mom made the toys from what was readily available: sticks that they found out back, little pieces of wood, pieces of string, little bits of leather,” says Steve Conlon, who runs the business with his wife Ellie.

Steve and Ellie Conlon outside the headquarters of their Mountain Craft Shop Co. in Proctor, W.Va., which manufactures traditional Appalachian folk toys.

A few months back, Conlon gave me a tour of the property, which he calls “Wetzel County’s Only Amusement Park.” Putting down his popgun, Conlon picked up what looked like a capital letter L.

He held it by the short end and whipped it around in the air, creating an ear-splitting ratcheting sound.

“We call this a rattletrap. All this noise is generated from a tongue depressor and this little cogged wheel here. I tell ‘em, it sounds better in a van,” Conlon said.

Then he picked up that old toy where you try to catch a ball on a string in a cup. Conlon tried twice before landing the ball perfectly on his third attempt.

“This actually dates back to 1580 in England,” Conlon said. “Good for eye-hand coordination.”

Next, he moved over to a low table and palmed a handful of marbles — manufactured about 20 miles away at the Marble King factory, in Paden City.

“We make a variety of marble toys. This one is interesting. We call it a musical marble tree. It’s about 30 inches tall and it has pieces of wood — leaves — that stick out on either side. We drop a marble and a marble goes from one leaf to another,” Conlon said.

He dropped the marbles and they began bounced down the wooden fronds, sounding like Animal from The Muppet Show going nuts on a marimba.

“Makes a wonderful noise, don’t you think?” Conlon said.

The Conlons manufacture all these toys and dozens more models in their tiny shop, which they open to visitors. They also sell their toys in gift shops around West Virginia and surrounding states and at Tamarack, in Beckley. But they did not come to West Virginia to be toymakers. They wanted to be farmers.

“We moved here in 1974 from Philadelphia and we brought with us a couple beehives in the back of the U-Haul truck. I was just fascinated with bees. We tried chickens and cows and every other agricultural pursuit and bees kept kind of rising to the top. So it evolved into us owning a lot of beehives and needing other locations to keep them,” Conlon said.

They placed some of their hives on the property of a neighbor named Dick Schnacke. He was a mechanical engineer by trade and worked at the aluminum plant in nearby New Martinsville. But he also taught himself to make traditional folk toys. But researching how to do it wasn’t easy.

“Very little was really recorded,” Dick Schnacke told the West Virginia Division of Culture and History in 1978. “You see, toys were not considered to be anything but trifles, all through the ages, until just the last few years. So nothing was recorded.”

A portrait of Dick Schnacke, founder of the Mountain Craft Shop Co., still hangs in the company’s Proctor, W.Va., headquarters.

Still, Schnacke forged ahead. He eventually compiled two books on folk toys. He also spun his passion into a small business, the Mountain Craft Shop Company. Schnacke handled all the research, development, marketing, and sales. But, kind of like Kris Kringle himself, turned manufacturing over to a team of elves.

Dick Schnacke compiled his research on traditional toys into two books.

“He actually didn’t make any of the toys himself. He had probably 10 people who were making the different toys at home. People who were buying their farm by making toys to be sold,” Conlon said.

Through the years, Schnacke grew the company’s inventory to include some 200 traditional toys. But by 2002, he was getting older and looking to get out of the toy business. So he offered to sell it to an enterprising couple who could keep his legacy alive — his friends the Conlons.

Along with the business, the Conlons also got Schnacke’s expertise on building folk toys.

“It was a manufacturing business. We had to learn how to manufacture those toys and had to accumulate a lot of power tools, which wasn’t painful for a man to do,” Conlon said.

To keep manufacturing costs low, they decided to start making most of the toys in-house. The Conlons, who still raise bees and sell honey, get the wood from trees they harvest on their own property or from logs their neighbors give them. They mill the logs themselves and air dry the lumber in the shop.

“Some woods do a lot better at certain things. We pick out the woods for their adaptability of the product and also the beauty. If you use a piece of walnut, it really makes a toy stand out. If I’m turning things on the lathe, cherry is a very nice wood for turning,” Conlon said.

Steve Conlon demonstrates the traditional “limber jack” dancing toy in his workshop.

Many of the toys are incredibly labor intensive to produce. Take the Jacob’s Ladder, for instance. This classic, deceptively simple-looking toy creates the illusion that pieces are click-clacking to the bottom of a string of wooden tiles.

“The Jacob’s Ladder has 8 different pieces of wood. So I make the pieces of wood in here, plane them down, sand them,” Conlon said.

Conlon’s wife, Ellie, then cuts 24 pieces of fabric and glues them to the wooden tiles to bring the jacob’s ladder together.

“We make about a thousand a year. Not too many people want to work for pennies on the hour. If you own your own business, you do that,” Ellie Conlon said.

That level of commitment — and sacrifice — is one reason the Conlons are not yet sure who will take over Mountain Craft Shop Company when they decide to retire.

“How will it play out? We don’t know yet. The reality of the situation is, we are manufacturing in America. Look around you. Manufacturing in America — there’s a lot of competition,” Steve Conlon said.

One thing remains certain, though. The traditional toys they make have not lost their ability to captivate children. They see it every time they set up a booth at a craft fair.

“Kids will just spend minutes, half an hour, there as long as parents are willing to stay. And then of course there’s crying and screaming when it’s time to leave,” Steve Conlon said.

When Conlon says this, it reminds me of something that happened a few months ago, when my wife and I took our five-year-old little girl to Babcock State Park in southern West Virginia. We told her she could pick out one thing from the gift shop. She perused the whole store but ultimately gravitated toward a shelf near the window — where she picked up a Jacob’s Ladder made by the Conlons.

As we cruised down the interstate headed for home, I noticed I couldn’t hear any noise coming from her tablet.

Instead, I heard the clacking of the Jacob’s Ladder.

Even in this age of screens, toys made with wood and glue still possess magic. And Steve and Ellie Conlon are keeping that magic alive.

If you’re interested in picking up some toys from the Mountain Craft Shop Company before Christmas, their Proctor, W.Va. will be open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 20; 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 21-22; and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 23. They will be closed on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Their toys are also available at Tamarack and many state park gift shops.

This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council.

The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virignia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stores of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.

W.Va. Artist Repurposes Flea Market Finds, Reflects On Rust Belt

Flea markets are a common feature across rural landscapes, especially in Appalachia. If you have never been, there is typically something for everyone, and one West Virginian artist is turning the unique finds into art.

“Sometimes it’s the imagery. A portion of my work has an industrial aspect to it, and I don’t mean just the materials, but the imagery,” Robert Villamagna said.

Finding The ‘Junk’

Robert at the flea market. He has been going to this particular market for much of his life.

Robert’s primary art medium is patterned tin — like what is used to make old chip cans or coffee canisters or toys — and there is an abundance at flea markets.

He comes to Roger’s Flea Market in Rogers, Ohio, every other Friday and has been doing that off and on for almost 40 years. He was named West Virginian Artist of the Year in 2016, and much of the materials he uses he finds at this market.

Vendors know him so well they sometimes set certain items aside for him.

“I got something for ya. It’s free,” said Mike Rosati to Robert.

Mike is a regular merchant at Roger’s. He saved an old children’s noise maker made out of tin for Robert. It is brightly colored, with a painted dancing cartoon character in the middle.

“I know he makes tin sculptures and pictures and stuff so I saw that and thought he could use it,” Mike said.

Robert’s wearing red, circle rimmed glasses and a grey fedora. He pulls a little red, canvas wagon to carry his treasures.

Robert Villamagna (left) and Mike Rosati. Robert’s holding the metal toy maker Mike saved for him.

Robert loves what he calls “old junk.” He said it adds another dimension to his art.

“Some of this stuff carries a little bit of the history or spirit of the people that used it or carried it or made it,” he said. “In amongst the big story of the main piece of work, these little stories of these little pieces of metal are coming thr and they have a story too.”

Turning ‘Junk’ Into Art

Robert works out of his studio in Wheeling, West Virginia. Back in that studio — directly behind his home — it looks like what Rogers Flea Market would look like if it were chopped up and condensed into a single large room.

“This is more than lived-in. Actually, it’s the worst it’s ever been,” he said “I call it organized chaos.”

Robert organizes all of his flea market finds into bins. He later uses the materials in his artwork.

It’s not messy, but over the years Robert has amassed a lot of material. The room is filled with deconstructed flea market finds in labeled boxes. For example, one bin is marked, “blue plastic eyes from stuffed animals.”

Robert spends a lot of time breaking down objects — especially tin — into small pieces he can use for his art. For instance, a large coffee can will become a dozen flattened pieces. He uses sheers to cut out words, patterns and colors he likes.

“Here I got some nice white, I might need it for something. So, I’ll put it in my white box. And then there’s red boxes, grey and brown,” he said. “And then there’s more bins with colors — over here there’s a lot of patterns.”

Some of his work resembles sculptures, but a lot of it is like a painting, except instead of paint, he uses metal to create an image. His pieces are bold — brightly colored with a bit of a modern art flare. Sometimes he includes words or other materials, like buttons off a doll or old black and white photographs.

One of Robert’s pieces. He likes to use metal of different colors, textures and sizes to create his art.

Appalachian Roots

Robert is comfortable working with tin, because in some ways it is a part of him. He grew up next to a steel mill in Ohio, not far from Rogers Flea Market. He worked many different jobs in his life, but he spent 13 years in the steel mill. Robert said he was depressed, and his boss picked up on it.

“And he said, “Where would you rather be?” And I said, “I’d rather be working as an artist or making art or something in the arts.” And he said, “Why don’t you make art about this place?” Robert said. “And I thought, you’ve got to be kidding me. I couldn’t wait every day to walk out and punch out, and then to make art about it? No way.”

But he could not resist. During breaks Robert started painting portraits of his fellow steel mill workers on the brick walls on the mill with fluorescent marking paint.

“We called it the Hall of Laborers,” he said.

Now as a professional artist, Robert’s work still reflects issues within Appalachia.

Energy Industry And Flea Markets

One of his finished pieces peaks out from behind a stack of boxes in his studio.

It is called ‘Old King Coal.’ It has a wooden, square frame about 4 feet tall, lined with license plates from Appalachian states. The image inside is made up of different colored tin pieces – each nailed carefully into place.

Robert Villamagna and his piece ‘Old King Coal.’ The piece represents the coal industry being pushed out by natural gas.

“It’s a big hunk of coal crying and he’s wearing a crown. He’s on crutches,” Robert says. “In the background you see some windmills and you see some fossil fuel burning plants. Down below his feet he’s stepping over a gas line.”

The overall idea being the gas industry is overtaking energy production in Appalachia, which is oddly reflected in the flea markets, too.

Rogers Flea Market is 90 minutes away from Robert’s home in Wheeling, and that is the closest one to him. There used to be others, but in recent years they have shut down. Robert said he has noticed a lot of the land occupied with gas pipeline.

Back At Roger’s

So, he makes the trip to Ohio religiously.

Back at Roger’s, he said sometimes things just speak to him, like this oversized baby doll. She is wearing red and blue pajamas, her face is plastic with painted on red cheeks, and she has big blue eyes with eerily long eyelashes.

“I got a feeling he’s going home with me,” Robert said. “It’s somewhere between creepy, spooky and wonderful. It’s just going to have to be something, I [just] don’t know what.”

Weeks after this story was reported, regional news outlets indicated a fire consumed a portion of the market, but apparently it is a resilient community. Robert said he went a couple weeks later, wagon in tow, and things were back to normal.

Robert and the doll he found at the flea market. He plans to use it in his art.

This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts and culture.

W.Va. Campground Preserving Appalachian-Born Style Of Sacred Music That Is Quickly Being Forgotten

There’s a place in southern West Virginia that many consider holy ground. For nearly 70 years, gospel music fans have gathered on this mountaintop just south of Summersville Lake for weekend concerts featuring singers from all over West Virginia and its surrounding states.

This is the annual West Virginia Mountain State Southern Gospel Convention.

It doesn’t take long before you realize the people who come here feel a deep connection with southern gospel music.

“It’s the old-fashioned way of worship,” said Pat Coberly, the convention’s second vice president. “And southern gospel music is more that way. It tells of happenings — it tells of trials, troubles, it tells of wonderful things that happen. It’s more down to earth, more earthy than a lot of your music.”

“It’s the only kind, in my opinion, that can get in your soul. It moves you,” said Jim O’Dell, a singer who’s been coming to the convention for years.

There is also a deep love for the land here.

The camp is in Mt. Nebo, which takes its name from the Old Testament mountain where God gave Moses a peek at the Promised Land. In the same way, longtime attendees see these 48 acres as a little piece of heaven.

“It is a home,” said Jim Nelson, the convention’s first vice president. “It’s not like next weekend there will be football there and the following weekend basketball or a country music concert, or something like that. This is dedicated to gospel music and to the Lord. In fact, we call the shelter where the sing is: ‘The Tabernacle.’ And treat it as such. Set aside for singing and fellowship and just praising the Lord.”

Backstage at the WV Mountain State Gospel Convention Tabernacle.

Southern gospel musicians and fans make their way to the tabernacle on a rainy summer Friday night. Singers trickle into the green room behind the stage, taking their place in a row of old wooden theater seats, each with a number on the back. Those numbers are important because that’s how singers decide the order in which they’ll sing.

“If you wanna go first, you’re in no. 1 chair. If you wanna go fourth, you’re in no. 4 chair. I picked number four because Terry said ‘I can’t get there by 7, don’t book us first,” Odell said.

O’Dell has been performing here for years with several groups. He’s been singing with the trio Saved By Grace for the past three years.

“It’s a good atmosphere. And the people are so nice over here. It’s just a wonderful place to sing and fellowship,” he said.

Fellowship. That’s a word you hear a lot around here.

Although the convention is strictly for Christian music, it is independent of any church organization. For longtime convention attendee Linda Fitzwater, who lives about 25 miles away in Danese, West Virginia, that independence is one of her favorite parts.

“There’s no denominations here. There’s no Methodists, there’s no Baptist, there’s no Pentecostal. Everybody worships the Lord as one, which is the way it should be,” she said.

They worship together and they work together.

“We dress up and have the sings but any other time we’re raking leaves, mowing grass, cleaning bathrooms, hauling rocks, all that. It takes it all to keep it a’going,” second vice president Pat Coberly said. “And it’s all volunteer. We’re all volunteer work. Nobody gets paid for anything, except for the Lord. And the blessings from the Lord.”

A view of the campground at the WV Mountain State Gospel Convention.

Most things at the Convention are free — except for the food at the concession stand and souvenirs at the bookstore.

No one has to pay admission. There’s no fee to park. The convention doesn’t even charge campers to hook up to electricity, water, and sewer offered in the campground.

Coberly says that’s because the convention serves a higher purpose.

“We’re here for the Lord. This is God’s. This is not ours,” she said. “We’re just workers for him. This belongs to him. And we’re here to spread his word through gospel music.”

Catch that? Not “Christian” music. “Gospel,” music. There is a difference.

That Old-Time Religion

Most of the Christian music you find on the radio now is known in the music industry as “contemporary Christian music.” This style has been around since the 1960s, when artists started mixing the sounds of pop and rock music with religious lyrics.

But the West Virginia Mountain State Southern Gospel Convention was built on a completely different, and older, genre of sacred music known as southern gospel.

You can trace the roots of the style to one songbook, published in the year 1900 in the tiny town of Lawrenceburg, Tennessee.

It was called “Gospel Chimes,” and it was the creation of singing instructor James D. Vaughan. The book contains songs by Vaughan and other Christian songwriters of the day, arranged in four-part harmony.

Vaughan sent out quartets to perform concerts featuring the bouncy tunes from his songbook.

As the company grew, he published additional songbooks and started additional quartets. It wasn’t long before other publishers got in on the act. This inspired other quartets to head out on the road and churches to organize singing conventions, where different congregations would come together and sing their favorite songs.

That’s how the West Virginia Mountain State Gospel Sing got started back in 1949.

Held at the Nazarene Church Camp, just outside Summersville, it was supposed to be a one-time thing. But the sing was such a success that organizers decided, right there by the camp’s split rail fence, to make the convention an annual occurrence.

It eventually out-grew the Nazarene Church Camp and bounced between a few locations before the convention purchased 48 acres of land in Mount Nebo.

Over the years, the event eventually shifted away from congregational singing to focus more on performances by southern gospel quartets. And that’s when the crowds really started flocking to the Tabernacle.

The campground’s bookstore sells the convention annual, a yearbook featuring photos and contact information for all the groups that sang the previous year.

Fitzwater, now 77, says she started coming to Mount Nebo when she was just 16.

“I can remember when I was a teenager that these fields up here where they park the cars would be full. There would be thousands. Not hundreds, but thousands of people here.”

The 1970s is when the convention really seemed to hit its stride. Singer Eddie Withrow remembers one night when prominent southern gospel songwriter Conrad Cook wasn’t quite finished when the convention was over.

“It was about 2:30 in the morning and the singing had just stopped here in the tabernacle. And he said, ‘If I had a piano, buddy we’d sing.’ We pulled a piano off our bus and set up a little sound system and we got right out there. There must have been probably 150, 200 people around in a circle in their lawn chairs,” Withrow said.

Precious Memories

Attendance at the convention remained strong through the 1980s and 1990s. That’s when I first started going. I remember stepping onstage with my family’s southern gospel group, The Bobby Adkins Family, and looking out at what seemed like an endless sea of people.

Reporter Zack Harold (front right) as a boy with his family’s southern gospel singing group, The Bobby Adkins Family, at the WV Mountain State Gospel Convention.

But things started to change. Radio shifted away from southern gospel music, as did some churches. Older fans started dying off. In the 1990s, average attendance was around 15,000 between all three sings. By the year 2000, that figure had dropped to about 10,000 people. And it’s continued to decline.

Each sing now draws just a few hundred people. I hadn’t been to Mount Nebo in years, but on the night I was there, there were almost as many singers waiting in the back as there were audience members to hear them.

The people running the convention aren’t content to let their tradition die on the vine, though.

Larry Neff was elected convention president last year. He has some ideas about how to get the convention thriving again. The organization held its first-ever bluegrass gospel sing in May 2019, which attracted a modest but promising turnout. They’re also upgrading the campgrounds in hopes to attract more campers.

These steps appear to be working. Neff says he noticed a slight increase in attendance in 2019. But he knows the long-term future of the Convention is up to the young people.

“If you don’t have young people to come up and carry it on… like now most of us are over 50. You’ve gotta get young people interested in something if you want it to grow and keep on growing,” Neff said.

Neff acknowledges that getting young people involved will likely require incorporating some of the more modern Christian music young people seem to enjoy — while still finding a way to stay true to the Convention’s roots.

“I believe we’re going to have to get contemporary music in here. Bluegrass gospel. And still keep it the old fashioned way. Somehow we’re going to have to mix those three together.”

Although the event used to draw thousands of people, the WV Mountain State Gospel Convention now only draws a few hundred people.

In the meantime, the folks on Mount Nebo are doing their best to make it through. While I was there, Nelson took the stage to explain some recent bad news the board received.

“We found out our insurance we have been carrying has been very lacking in the amount of coverage we need to have,” he told the tiny crowd. “So to bring our insurance up to date is an increase of about $3,000. We’ve got to cough up some money.”

So what do the organizers do? The thing they’ve always done. Nelson asks Withrow to say a prayer. Then, as the offering plates make their rounds, the crowd joins together in an old, familiar song:

“When we’ve been there 10,000 years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we first begun.”

This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council.

The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virignia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stores of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.