Drive through Charleston, West Virginia any day of the week, and you’re bound to come across a sign advertising a local fish fry. Within Charleston’s Black community, fish fries have been a time-honored tradition for generations. Our Folkways Fellow Leeshia Lee grew up in Charleston. She says that it was common to see friends and neighbors hosting fish fries — they’d sell fish dinners as a way to raise money for different needs. In this special report, Lee shares her experiences with fish fries, and visits with one of Charleston’s best fish fryers.
This story originally aired in the Oct. 22, 2023 episode of Inside Appalachia.
Drive through Charleston, West Virginia any day of the week, and you’re bound to come across a sign advertising a local fish fry. Within Charleston’s Black community, fish fries have been a time-honored tradition for generations.
Our Folkways Fellow Leeshia Lee grew up in Charleston. She says that it was common to see friends and neighbors hosting fish fries — they’d sell fish dinners as a way to raise money for different needs.
In this special report, Lee shares her experiences with fish fries, and visits with one of Charleston’s best fish fryers.
History Of Fish Fries
Some people would have fish fries for rent parties — they would have a fish fry if they were short on their rent. Or if there was a trip that somebody needed to go on and they didn’t have all the funds, they would whip up some fish and sell it outside. Growing up, it was nothing to go to someone’s house to purchase food for whatever reason they needed it for.
In our community, I think historically the reason why fish fries are the thing is because it comes from the slave era. And it was what they were allowed to do on Sundays. They were allowed to go fishing. And because it was free — they didn’t have to purchase it — they would catch fish.
That’s how enslaved communities would fraternize with each other, was through cooking and preparing fish, and eating it later on in the day. So I think that the tradition of having the fish fry has been embedded in our community. It is something that we were taught to do, and we do it so well that we use it as a financial means when we don’t have resources to do anything else.
What Makes A Good Fish Fry
I think the most important part of a fish fry is the meaning or the purpose for having the fish fry. Don’t get me wrong, people care about the food, the taste of it. But if it’s for a good cause, people will come out and support your fish fry.
People use different fish for their fish fries. And a lot of times people use whiting. You usually get the fish, you let it thaw out. And you season it. The main part is how you season your fish. We use cornmeal, and then we use seasoning salt. And you have to get the grease just right. It has to be sizzling and popping. And then you dip the fish and you fry it. And you can’t make it too hard. Some people serve it on croissant bread, and some people serve it on regular white bread. You add hot sauce, tartar sauce, and then it’s good to go.
Texas Pete is the community favorite hot sauce. But sometimes you go to a fish fry and you get the off-brand hot sauce. So I think whatever is there, you just make it work. But I’ve seen some people reach in their purse and pull out some hot sauce. I think that was in one of Beyonce’s songs, where she says she has some hot sauce in her bag.
The sides are very important at a fish fry. Some people like coleslaw, but usually you get the same soul food sides that you would have at a Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner: macaroni and cheese, and greens. And then sometimes people have fish fries with french fries.
Fish Fries At Charleston’s First Baptist Church
Andre Nazario
Credit: Leeshia Lee/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Andre Nazario is known as one of Charleston’s best fish fryers. He hosts a weekly fish fry at the First Baptist Church in downtown Charleston. Nazario said their recipe at the church is top secret.
“I can’t really divulge those secrets because then I’d have to take you hostage,” Nazario said. “But yes, there is a certain way that we prepare our fish. There’s a certain way that we season our fish. There’s a certain way that we fry our fish. There’s a certain temperature that we fry it at. And there’s a certain crisp that we want, a certain texture that we want to our fish.”
The fish fries are held at First Baptist Church in the gymnasium. When you walk in, you might see people you know who are waiting for their food.
“It’s like mini family reunions,” Nazario said. “So we’re bringing people together. You get to talk about it, you strike up some conversation. You hadn’t seen somebody in a while, you hadn’t talked to them, but then they came out to the fish fry. So it’s a way of touching base and staying connected with our community.”
Nazario is the co-founder of Creating the Advantage, known as CTA. CTA is a nonprofit that works with under-resourced youth around Charleston. They support young people to excel in sports and in school. The money from these fish fries helps fund CTA’s activities.
“We set a price for our fish fry, but most of the time people give a little bit more,” Nazario said. “Because when you offer food, that entices them or encourages them to give a little bit more.”
One of the main components of CTA is their basketball program. They train participants in the physical aspect of the sport. And they teach them to cope with the mental challenges of the game. The fish fries play a key role in supporting this program.
A fryer full of fish.
Credit: Leeshia Lee/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
“With the fish fries that we do, the proceeds go directly to the kids,” Nazario said. “It helps fund training. It helps fund trips, it helps pay for uniforms, it helps pay for hotels for the kids, it helps feed our kids. It’s an assortment of things that we do with the funding from fish fries. And again, the best way to someone’s heart sometimes is through their stomach.”
Fish fries are very important to the Black community in Charleston because they allow us to become our own resource. Fish fries are a source of mutual aid when the funds are limited. It allows the community to come together to show that what you’re doing is important to them.
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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.
It starts — as all pepperoni rolls do — with the dough. But not just any dough. That’s one of the secrets of Kanawha schools’ pepperoni rolls. They are made using the same recipe as the delicious, soft and sweet hot rolls that accompany every school Thanksgiving dinner and Salisbury steak.
This story originally aired in the Aug. 13, 2023 episode of Inside Appalachia.
It’s 7:30 a.m. in the kitchen at Horace Mann Middle School in Charleston, West Virginia. Breakfast just wrapped up, but lunch is already heavy on everyone’s minds. There’s a lot of cooking to do between then and now.
Food Services Coordinator Lori Lanier shows me how to make Kanawha County Schools’ famous pepperoni rolls.
It starts — as all pepperoni rolls do — with the dough. But not just any dough. That’s one of the secrets of Kanawha schools’ pepperoni rolls. They are made using the same recipe as the delicious, soft and sweet hot rolls that accompany every school Thanksgiving dinner and Salisbury steak.
“I don’t care how many times you make them, sometimes you may have a pinch more flour or a pinch less flour. You just have to watch the consistency, because it’s all on how the flour is sifted,” Lanier explains over the rumble of a jumbo-sized stand mixer.
It will take several batches of dough to make enough pepperoni rolls for the school. Each batch then has to raise for half an hour before the process can continue.
After the dough has risen, cooks still have to individually stuff and shape the rolls, filling giant sheet pans that go into a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes. Once the tops are golden brown, the rolls come out of the oven and are brushed with a coating of melted butter.
Lori Lanier, Kanawha County Schools food services coordinator, mixes up a batch of pepperoni roll dough at Horace Mann Middle School. Lanier previously worked at the school as a cook.
Credit: Zack Harold/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Cooks will tell you — this is one of the most time consuming lunches to prepare. A lot of schools shift pepperoni roll day to the end of the week so they can work on the rolls a few days in advance. Horace Mann made half of their rolls the day before I visited, storing them in the walk-in cooler until it was time to pop them in the oven.
But there is a good reason to go to all this trouble. These pepperoni rolls are beloved by generations of school kids.
“On pepperoni roll days, the teachers would let you out five or ten minutes early so you could get to the cafeteria, because there was always such a long line,” said Whitney Humphrey, a friend and former co-worker who graduated from Riverside High School in 2007. “Because even kids who typically didn’t eat school lunch would eat lunch on pepperoni roll day.”
It was a similar story at Capital High School, where Brittany Carowick graduated in 2006.
“We’d always try to talk our teachers into letting us, in class, at the door so we could run all the way across the courtyard and be first in line for pepperoni rolls. Because they’re so good,” she said.
And Carowick really shouldn’t have been eating the pepperoni rolls.
“I’m actually allergic to pepperoni. But I still loved the pepperoni rolls. So I would unroll them, take the line of pepperoni out, hand it to all my friends, roll it back up and eat it,” she said.
Tom Bragg is also a former coworker of mine. He graduated from Nitro High School, where his love of pepperoni rolls turned him into something of a scam artist.
“Twenty years ago, you were assigned a lunch number. It wasn’t like a scan card or a barcode,” he said. “They told you, ‘Here’s your three-digit or four-digit number — don’t forget it.’”
At some point, Bragg realized these numbers had been assigned alphabetically and in numerical order. So his best friend, who just happened to share the same last name, had a lunch number just one digit away from his own.
“My best friend always brought his lunch or would skip school and go get lunch somewhere else,” Bragg said. “So I was like, man, he’s not taking advantage of pepperoni roll day. And his number is one before mine. So I’m just going to go back through line and get a second pepperoni roll.”
The plan went off without a hitch — until his friend’s mom received a lunch bill.
“We were at his house and the lunch bill came. His mom was like, ‘I thought you didn’t eat lunch at school,’” Bragg said. “And I started giggling. She was like, ‘Tommy you owe me $10 for the pepperoni rolls you ate last month.’”
This probably comes as no surprise. At this point, pepperoni rolls are an iconic West Virginia food: invented in the north-central part of the state by Italian immigrants who wanted a portable lunch to take into the coal mines. The story is as well-known as John Henry or Mothman.
But if you’re a West Virginian who didn’t grow up within an hour’s drive from Clarksburg, cast your mind back about 20 or 30 years. How prevalent were pepperoni rolls back then?
I went to school one county away from Kanawha, in Boone County. We never had pepperoni rolls on our school menu. I’ve polled folks around my age who grew up in neighboring counties — Putnam, Lincoln, Jackson, Logan, Clay, Nicholas — and none of them had pepperoni rolls at school, either.
Even my Kanawha County friends who enjoyed pepperoni rolls at school didn’t have many memories of them outside the lunchroom.
“Kanawha County Schools is where we learned about pepperoni rolls,” Bragg said. “You started seeing them pop up in gas stations after that.”
Trays of pepperoni rolls, ready for the lunch rush at Horace Mann Middle School in Charleston, West Virginia.
Credit: Zack Harold/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
So here’s what I decided to figure out — when did pepperoni rolls first appear in Kanawha County Schools, and how did the dish come to appear on the menu?
“It became kind of a quest,” said Diane Miller, Kanawha County Schools’ director of Child Nutrition.
Once Miller heard about my research project, she started fishing around, too. There’s apparently no paper record of the pepperoni rolls’ first appearance. There’s no archive of school menus that we could dig into. So she had to rely on school employees’ memories.
“They believe it started between 1992 and 1994. But we in Kanawha County can get it back to ‘97, ‘98.”
She talked with the Kanawha superintendent and folks from the West Virginia Department of Education. She even found some retired school cooks and picked their brains.
That’s how she discovered a possible origin story.
”They were making their own pizza breads and they ran out, and didn’t know what else to do. So they decided — they had roll dough for the next day, so they put them together. They’d had pepperoni rolls with their families that were working in the mines,” Miller said.
I asked Miller to connect me with a cook who might know some of the history — and she directed me to Nancy Romeo.
“I have made more pepperoni rolls than you can shake a stick at,” she said.
Romeo retired in 2010 after 20 years with the county. She says pepperoni rolls were already on the menu when she arrived in 1990. She even called a former coworker to make sure.
“We were hired about the same time. Both of us agree that they were making them before we both were hired,” Romeo said.
That was as much information as she could give me. But I had one more lead.
I called in a favor at the Charleston Gazette-Mail. There was a time when the paper printed the Kanawha schools’ menu for each week. Using that, I thought maybe we could pinpoint the first reference of pepperoni rolls.
My connection checked the newspaper archive and it turns out school menus didn’t run in the paper in the 1980s and early 1990s. But I did get the name of another retired school cook — Ellen Carter.
I found Carter in the kitchen of the Rand Community Center. She told me she didn’t really have time for an interview. But she agreed to let me hang out while she made hot rolls.
“This is going to make 120, and I feed about 112 or 115 people,” she said. “The pepperoni rolls are made out of the same dough.”
Carter has worked in this same kitchen for most of the last 50 years. She went to work for Rand Elementary in 1970 and stayed until 1999. The school shut down a few years later and became a community center. When that happened, Carter came back to cook for the center’s senior nutrition program.
“I’m 89, and in October, I’ll be 90,” she said.
Ellen Carter makes hot rolls in the kitchen at the Rand Community Center. Carter has worked in this same kitchen for much of the last 50 years.
Credit: Zack Harold/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
I figured if anyone would remember when the pepperoni rolls made their school lunch debut, it would be Ellen Carter.
“I think it was the early ‘80s that they started making pepperoni rolls,” she said.
Carter couldn’t give a more exact time frame. She had no idea how the rolls came to be on school menus in the first place. But she said the recipe probably was disseminated in one of the school cooks’ regular meetings.
“We used to have monthly meetings. And we’d go to a different school, we’d take a covered dish, we’d take a menu to the dish we made, and they’d make a copy of them. I have gobs of them,” Carter said.
One thing Carter does know — the way she was taught to make the rolls is not the way cooks are making them now.
Instead of shaping them individually, she’d get a big lump of dough rolled out flat.
“Then you go back and roll it with a rolling pin,” Carter said.
She would top it with cheese and pepperoni, then roll the whole thing into a log.
“And then you cut it and roll your pepperoni rolls,” Carter said. “I don’t know anybody that rolls them out like we do.”
Carter still makes a lot of pepperoni rolls. She recently got a call to make 1,000 for a local high school, which was selling them as a fundraiser. She doesn’t usually make them for her senior citizens, though. They’re not huge fans.
“They like a hot meal. Like today, we’re going to do a baked potato and a salad,” Carter said.
Carter’s senior citizens might not care much for pepperoni rolls, but I know some folks who do.
The pepperoni rolls were going fast the day I visited Horace Mann Middle, but I managed to snag a few and tuck them away in my bag. That way, once I got my friends to open up about their pepperoni roll memories, I could surprise them with a taste of the past.
“This is exactly what I remember. Look at all that pepperoni. You can see the cheese has a little bit of that pepperoni grease on it,” Whitney Humphrey said as she tore into hers. “It’s divine.”
“Oh my gosh, that’s a trip down memory lane. That is so good,” Tom Bragg said between bites. “The meat-to-cheese ratio is great. The cheese is melted but not like lava — cooked long enough that the grease from the pepperoni has soaked into the bread but hasn’t burned it or overtaken it. This is great.”
Brittany Carowick — whose skin still gets a little itchy when she eats cured meats — quickly fell into her old habits.
“I’m pulling apart the outer layer of bread, and then you hit the spiral and you can pull that apart with your fingers,” she explained as she expertly dissected her pepperoni roll — years of muscle memory coming back into play.
With the pepperoni safely removed, she took a bite of the cheesy bread that was left.
“It’s so delicious,” she said. “That is solid cheese.”
Memory is a funny thing.
The Kanawha County Schools’ pepperoni roll is beloved by generations of school kids. And between me and the folks at the Kanawha County Board of Education, we probably talked to dozens of people trying to track down its origins.
And the best we could come up with was a hazy timeline that puts us somewhere in the early to late 80s, and a plausible — but not exactly conclusive — story about a school that ran out of pizza subs one day.
This whole story unfolded within recent living memory, and this is the best we can do.
And yet, Humphrey and Bragg and Carowick have these vivid memories that all came flooding back with a single bite.
“I’m 34 years old and I’m sitting here talking to you about pepperoni rolls, because it’s had such a presence in my life,” Humphrey said. “I don’t have very fond memories of school, but I do have fond memories of school pepperoni rolls. That seems kind of silly, but it’s true.”
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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.
In late winter in Highland County, Virginia, maple syrup production is a visible part of the landscape. There are maple trees everywhere, adorned with metal buckets and laced with blue tubing.
This story originally aired in the June 4, 2023 episode of Inside Appalachia.
In late winter in Highland County, Virginia, maple syrup production is a visible part of the landscape. There are maple trees everywhere, adorned with metal buckets and laced with blue tubing. There’s a Maple Sugar Road and a Sugar Hollow and a Sugar Tree Country Store. There’s wood smoke hovering over the sugar houses and tree sap oozing from the taps, slowly making its way to becoming maple syrup.
Highland County and its neighboring counties in West Virginia are some of the southernmost areas in the United States where you can make maple syrup. It’s become a deep-rooted tradition in these communities, but these days, producers are experimenting — both out of curiosity and out of necessity.
Traditions With A Twist
Pat Lowry checks for sap in buckets.
Credit: Clara Haizlett/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Pat Lowry and his wife Valerie operate a sugar camp in Highland County called Back Creek Farms. Like many in the area, their family has been making maple syrup here for generations.
“[Pat] has maple syrup in his veins,” Valerie Lowry said. “And he would make syrup 365 days a year if he could.”
Each March, Back Creek Farms takes part in the Highland County Maple Festival, where different sugar camps demonstrate the process of making syrup. Throughout the county, people make and sell all things maple — from maple donuts to maple barbeque.
The festival has been a staple for over sixty years in Highland County and the tradition of making maple syrup here started well before that. But over the years, practices have evolved, as people like Pat and Valerie Lowry apply new ideas and techniques to syrup production.
“People kept asking me, ‘what do you have that’s new?’ Nobody had anything that was new! It was light syrup, medium syrup or dark syrup,” Pat Lowry said.
So they started experimenting. They aged syrup in whiskey barrels and infused the pure maple syrup with natural flavors like elderberry. Valerie Lowry calls their approach “traditions with a twist.”
At this year’s maple festival, Pat Lowry boiled down sap — or around here what they call “sugar water” — while Valerie handed out samples of syrup to visitors.
“Now we are going to do chili pepper and ginger,” Valerie Lowry said, passing around the sampling spoons. “And you all are going to try hickory syrup. Hickory syrup is made from the bark of a hickory tree.”
Valerie Lowry offers samples to visitors at the Highland County Maple Syrup Festival.
Credit: Clara Haizlett/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Tapping Black Walnut Trees, A New Frontier
Gary Mongold of Petersburg, West Virginia has been going to the Highland County Maple festival since he was a kid. But this year Mongold didn’t make it to the festival. He was busy with his own operation — it’s his second year of making black walnut syrup.
Mongold showed me around his sugar grove in his side-by-side. His property was full of walnuts situated along a steep hillside that opened out to a panorama view of Petersburg, Moorefield and Mount Storm.
The process of making black walnut syrup borrows the basic principles of maple sugaring. You drill a hole, tap a tree, and out comes the sap. Plastic tubing funnels the sugar water down the hill into a collection tank. When the sap is boiled down, it transforms into a dark syrup.
“I can’t describe it,” Mongold said. “It’s awesome. I think it’s different. It might be a little sweeter.”
Mongold drizzles the syrup over a bowl of ice cream every night.
”I just dearly love it. I better watch or I’ll eat my profits up!” Mongold said.
Gary Mongold in front of his Sugar Shack in Petersburg, West Virginia
Credit: Clara Haizlett/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Black walnut syrup is an emerging industry and Mongold’s one of just a handful of producers in the region. He’s been working with Future Generations University out of Franklin, West Virginia to conduct research on the process. They’re trying to figure out the best techniques for production.
Walnut trees don’t produce as much sap as maples, and the sap has less sugar. In short, it takes more to make less. And unlike maple, walnut sap contains naturally occurring pectin, which when it’s boiled down, becomes a thick goo — making the syrup difficult to filter.
But Mongold is undeterred by these challenges, and he’s even found a creative use for the pectin.
“About a year ago, I was listening to 89.5 PBS here in Petersburg,” Mongold said. “And it was talking about the Mayo Clinic working with pectin for arthritis and gout.”
Mongold has had both. So ever since, he’s been taking a teaspoon of walnut pectin in his morning coffee. While pectin isn’t FDA approved for this purpose, Gary says it has relieved pain from his arthritis.
Using the pectin — like making the syrup itself — is an experiment. And this season, there was another unpredictable variable at play.
Adapting To A Warm Winter
“It hasn’t been a very good season for sap to run,” Mongold said. “Mother Nature has not given us very good weather.”
Last year, Mongold got about 17 gallons of syrup. This year he added even more taps but by mid-March, he’d only gotten five gallons.
In order for sap to run, temperatures need to reach below freezing at night and above freezing during the day.
“When we get this climate change like we’re having and get three 70 degree days in February, that just puts a stop to everything,” he said.
Back in Highland County, Virginia, temperatures in February averaged 39.2 degrees Fahrenheit, making it the second warmest February on record, followed by 2017.
“Honestly, in my 71 years, I’ve never seen a February like this,” Pat Lowry said, shaking his head.
Even the more conventional maple syrup producers were forced to adapt — like Terri Puffenbarger and her husband Doug. There’s a long legacy of maple syrup production in the Puffenbarger lineage but they’re not interested in making different types of tree syrups or trying out infusions.
“We don’t want to do that,” Terri Puffenbarger said. “We just want the real deal and that’s what we’re doing.”
Watch this special Inside Appalachia Folkways story below:
This year, however, the warm February dried up maple production mid season. So when a cold snap hit in March, right around the maple festival, Doug Puffenbarger decided to try something different. He re-tapped his maple trees — drilling new holes in hopes of collecting fresh sap.
“He’s never done that before,” Terri Puffenbarger said. “But with the warm temperatures in February, the climate is changing and that might be a new thing we’re gonna do.”
Mongold ended up re-tapping his walnut trees, too. He got 5 more gallons of syrup, bringing his total for this year up to 10 gallons. And although it’s significantly less than last year, he’s optimistic.
“It is kind of risky, I reckon,” he said. “But you know, I don’t look for every year to be bad. There’s gonna be a lot of good years.”
Mongold’s already thinking about next year. Around this area, tree sap generally runs from the end of January through the end of March. But Mongold thinks that pattern might be changing. So this coming year, he plans to start tapping the first week of December.
And in Highland County, there’s talk of switching the March maple festival to earlier in the season, too — when there’s a higher likelihood of cold nights, warm days and sugar water on the boil.
Maple Sugar Road in Highland County, Virginia.
Credit Clara Haizlett/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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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.
This week on Inside Appalachia, we visit with Jerry Machen of Kingsport, Tennessee. When he first started making art from old carpets, his wife Linda wasn’t impressed. We also meet the devoted family and friends of Cuz’s Uptown Barbeque, who rallied behind the acclaimed Appalachian restaurant during a hard time. And, it used to be that every grocery store had a trained butcher behind the counter. But that’s not the case so much today. So the owner of a Charleston abattre had an idea.
This week, we visit with Jerry Machen of Kingsport, Tennessee. When he first started making art from old carpets, his wife Linda wasn’t impressed.
We also meet the devoted family and friends of Cuz’s Uptown Barbeque, who rallied behind the acclaimed Appalachian restaurant during a hard time.
And, it used to be that every grocery store had a trained butcher behind the counter. But that’s not the case so much today. So the owner of a Charleston abattre had an idea.
You’ll hear these stories and more this week, Inside Appalachia.
Zack Harold explores the meat industry and learns about Buzz Food Service’s mission to create more meatcutters. Credit: Zack Harold/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
The pandemic has shown how fragile our food supply chain can be. Distribution bottlenecks and breakdowns at processing plants have meant some products went missing from grocery store shelves.
That’s why Buzz Food Service in Charleston set out to build a new model for locally raised meat. But it needed butchers to make that work — but butchers can be scarce. So Buzz came up with an old-fashioned solution: an apprenticeship program.
Folkways Reporter Zack Harold has the story.
A Carpet Craftsman Creates Carpet Art
One man in Kingsport, Tennessee, has been building and repairing carpets and rugs for more than 50 years. For Jerry Machen, Sr., the business not only provides him with a livelihood — but also an opportunity for expression and discovery. Credit: Nicole Musgrave/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Lots of families live with furniture, silverware, and rugs, but we sometimes take them for granted. We seldom think about who makes these items — or where to turn when they need repaired.
One man in Kingsport, Tennessee, has been building and repairing carpets and rugs for more than 50 years. For Jerry Machen, Sr., the business not only provides him with a livelihood — but also an opportunity for expression and discovery.
Folkways Reporter Nicole Musgrave has the story.
Passover Observed During The Civil War
In 1862 during the Civil War, 20 Jewish Union soldiers came together in southern West Virginia for a Passover feast known as a seder. This year, a group in Beckley, West Virginia, recognized that event.
WVPB Reporter Shepherd Snyder spoke with Joseph Golden of Beckley’s Temple Beth El congregation and Drew Gruber of Civil War Trails about this event’s historical significance.
A Community Rallies Around Cuz’s Barbecue
Cuz’s Uptown Barbecue offers more than one kind of flavor. Credit: Connie Bailey Kitts/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
People love to argue over which barbecue sauce is most authentic—vinegar, tomato or mustard. But Cuz’s Uptown Barbeque in Tazewell County, Virginia, is distinguished by something entirely different. For one thing, its food is inspired by Asian cuisine and local mountain specialities. You can find things on its menu like Morel mushrooms, cheesy egg rolls, and country ham caprese.
Folkways Reporter Connie Bailey Kitts and her family stopped in at Cuz’s for dinner and brought us us this story.
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Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by Andrea Tomasi, The Steel Drivers, Erik Vincent and Mary Hott.
Bill Lynch is our producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens. Zander Aloi also helped produce this episode.
You can send us an email at InsideAppalachia@wvpublic.org.
Family recipes are a way to connect generations, but what happens when you’ve got grandma’s recipe, and it doesn’t have exact measurements? We also talk with Ohio poet laureate Kari Gunter-Seymour about Appalachia, poems — and getting published. And we revisit a story about an attraction at the confluence of the New and Gauley rivers — and the man who put it there.
Family recipes are a way to connect generations, but what happens when you’ve got grandma’s recipe, and it doesn’t have exact measurements?
We also talk with Ohio poet laureate Kari Gunter-Seymour about Appalachia, poems — and getting published.
And we revisit a story about an attraction at the confluence of the New and Gauley rivers — and the man who put it there.
You’ll hear these stories and more this week, Inside Appalachia.
A West Virginia Woman Reverse-Engineers Grandma’s Potato Candy
Old family recipes are shared and passed down through Appalachia. Sometimes, they come on fingerprint smudged, handwritten note cards stuffed in wooden boxes. Others show up in loose-leaf cookbooks. These family heirlooms can be a way to connect with the past. But not all of those hand-me-down recipes use exact measurements. So how do you know you’re getting it right?
For Brenda Sandoval in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, it involved some trial and error — and an assist from a cousin. Folkways Reporter Capri Cafaro has the story.
Brenda Sandoval rolling potato candy. Credit: Capri Cafaro/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Ohio’s Poet Laureate Celebrates Appalachia
Kari Gunter-Seymour is Ohio’s third poet laureate since the state created the position in 2016.
She’s an earnest cheerleader for Appalachian Ohio, which, as she points out, represents about a third of the state.
Gunter-Seymour is the author of several poetry collections. She’s the editor of “I Thought I heard a Cardinal Sing,” which showcases Appalachian writers in Ohio, as well as eight volumes of “Women Speak,” an anthology series featuring the work of women writers and artists from across Appalachia.
Producer Bill Lynch spoke with Gunter-Seymour about poetry, getting published, and the Appalachian part of Ohio.
When To Consider Assisted Living For Your Parents
One of the hardest parts of caring for aging parents is deciding when they need professional care. Whether that’s in-home services, assisted living, or something else. Families have to consider what’s best for their loved ones – and how to pay for it.
WVPB’s Eric Douglas spoke with Chris Braley, the owner of an assisted living and memory care facility in West Virginia.
There’s A Bus On A Rock In A River
Anna Sale. Credit: WNYC
If you listen to the popular podcast Death, Sex & Money, you know Anna Sale. Back in 2005, Anna was a reporter for West Virginia Public Broadcasting. She got curious about an old bus that sits on a rock at the confluence of the New and Gauley rivers, just past the town of Gauley Bridge. It’s not far from one of West Virginia’s best known roadside attractions, The Mystery Hole.
In 2005, Anna traveled by boat with former WVPB Video Producer Russ Barbour to meet the man behind the mystery. With warm weather and summer travel not that far away, we brought this story back.
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Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by…Kaia Kater, Jeff Ellis, Erik Vincent, Eck Robertson, Chris Knight and Tyler Childers.
Bill Lynch is our producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens. Zander Aloi also helped produce this episode.
You can send us an email at InsideAppalachia@wvpublic.org.
Juan Ríos grew up in Mexico City where frijoles charros are ubiquitous. Frijoles charros — or charro beans — is a dish that originated in the ranching communities of rural northern Mexico. Growing up, it’s a dish that Ríos ate regularly. Yet when he opened a Mexican restaurant in Wellston over a decade ago, Ríos didn’t include frijoles charros on the menu. But recently, he’s started offering it.
This story originally aired in the Feb. 24, 2023 episode of Inside Appalachia.
A bowl of brothy pinto beans is a comfort food for lots of folks in Appalachia. In the former coal town of Wellston, Ohio, one man is serving up soup beans that remind him of his childhood home.
Juan Ríos grew up in Mexico City where frijoles charros are ubiquitous. Frijoles charros — or charro beans — is a dish that originated in the ranching communities of rural northern Mexico. Growing up, it’s a dish that Ríos ate regularly. Yet when he opened a Mexican restaurant in Wellston over a decade ago, Ríos didn’t include frijoles charros on the menu. But recently, he’s started offering it.
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WELLSTON, OHIO — As I walked off the quiet streets of downtown Wellston, Ohio and into Viva Jalisco, all my senses lit up. Lively mariachi music played throughout the dining room. The walls and booths were decorated with brightly colored depictions of agave farms and Frida Kahlo paintings. The scent of garlic and onions and chillies wafted through the air.
I was greeted by Juan Ríos, the owner of Viva Jalisco. Ríos took me back into the kitchen where a pot of frijoles charros was simmering on the stove.
“This is for frijoles charros,” Ríos said, showing me the pinto beans. “Right now, we cook for probably another 20 minutes.”
Ríos moved to the United States when he was 20. Since then, he has primarily worked in restaurants. He started out bussing tables and washing dishes. Then he learned to cook, and eventually he opened his own restaurant. Ríos’s mom gets a kick out of the fact that he has learned to cook because it wasn’t something he did while living in Mexico. He said when he was growing up, his mom and sister cooked.
“And we come here, you see, we’re cooking now here,” Ríos said. My mom laughs at me because, ‘You see, you’re in the United States and you’re cooking now yourself.’”
When he was learning to cook, Ríos sometimes called his mom to ask for advice. “Sometimes I say, ‘Mom, can you tell me how to make this?’ If she knows how to make it, they tell me how to make it,” Ríos said.
One dish that Ríos remembers his mom making back in Mexico City is frijoles charros or charro beans, the same dish he was making that day in Wellston. “Charros” in Spanish means “cowboy.” So the name “frijoles charros” harkens back to the stew’s history as an important food tradition in rural ranching communities of northern Mexico. In order to sustain the workers during long days of herding cattle, the stew was packed with protein. Along with beans, frijoles charros is heavy on the meat.
In his version, Ríos cuts up three different kinds of meat to add to the beans. “Bacon, hotdogs — we call salchichas — and ham,” Ríos said.
Ríos explained that growing up, frijoles charros was something the women in his family made for special occasions or large gatherings. Like weddings, holidays, and quinciñeras. He said the soup beans were served at the beginning of the meal.
“Before you got your meal, you got your frijoles charros,” Ríos said. “And you can get your chips, your tortilla. Just pour hot sauce — you pour onto your frijoles charros, and start eating before your meal comes.”
In addition to being a staple at family gatherings, frijoles charros is a common side dish in restaurants throughout Northern Mexico and along the US-Mexico border. But historically, it’s not something that is often seen on menus at Mexican restaurants in southern Ohio.
Elena Foulis grew up in Northern Mexico and moved to Ohio at the age of 17. Foulis lived in Ohio for about 30 years, where she went on to teach at The Ohio State University. These days, she’s at Texas A&M, but is also working on a digital oral history project about Latines in Ohio, which is being archived at the Center for Folklore Studies at Ohio State. Foulis thinks one reason that charro beans aren’t as visible in southern Ohio might have to do with spice.
“I would say that the fact that traditionally charro beans have been spicy, that might be what maybe makes Mexican restaurant owners not make as much or not have it on their menu. Because of the level of spiciness,” Foulis said.
Foulis explained that when she first moved to Ohio around 30 years ago, a lot of the Mexican restaurants in the area were white-owned. And they catered to a mostly non-Mexican, non-Latinx audience. So they were cautious about not making their food too spicy. And the food they did serve was often a kind of Tex-Mex.
“When I say Tex-Mex, it’s the meals that always come with rice and beans and maybe cheese right on top,” Foulis said. “The influence of chips and salsa always at the table, which you don’t always find in restaurants in Mexico.”
Foulis said that over the past decade or so, more and more Mexican-owned restaurants and taquerías have popped up in Ohio. And they’re offering dishes geared more towards Mexican and other Latinx consumers. Things like menudo and tacos made with tongue and tripe.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been to a traditional American restaurant that ever has tongue on their menu,” Foulis said. “So I think that a lot of the Mexican restaurants that are Mexican-owned in Ohio have this sort of mix of dishes on their menus… So you do have some dishes that have more of a Tex-Mex flavor. And then you have other dishes that are clearly more for the Mexican consumer.”
Foulis said that having that mix of dishes is a way for restaurant owners to survive while also maintaining a taste of home. And she said it’s an invitation for non-Mexican customers to try something new.
Juan Ríos stirs the pot of frijoles charros in the kitchen at Viva Jalisco. Ríos offers the dish once a week on the buffet line, and he plans to add it to the menu. Credit: Nicole Musgrave/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Back in the kitchen at Viva Jalisco, Ríos added a large can of jalapeños to the pot to give his soup beans some heat. “So we pour jalapeños with the juice. You see the juice?” Ríos said. He explained the jalapeños make the beans a little bit spicy.
When Ríos first started working in restaurants around southern Ohio, he noticed that most of the customers were weary of spicy foods. So frijoles charros was not something he put on the menu when he first opened his restaurant. But now that he has been in the region for a couple decades, he has seen a shift. People are requesting more spice.
“We’re here for almost 20 years,” Ríos said. “A lot of people have started asking for hot sauce, jalapeños.”
And customers have actually started asking for frijoles charros by name. Sometimes it’s Mexican or Mexican-American customers who are in Wellston for travel or work.
“Customers come from Texas, California, Florida,” Ríos said. “They probably travel in United States or work construction.”
Ríos said they often ask: “Hey amigo, you have frijoles charros?”
But sometimes it’s non-Mexican customers who ask for the stew after having tried it at another restaurant. Ríos has also noticed people requesting other traditional Mexican dishes that are becoming better known throughout the United States. Things like tacos al pastor and elote or Mexican street corn.
“A lot of people — a lot of American people love it now, traditional Mexican food,” said Ríos.
With changes in customer base and customer preferences, Ríos has started serving frijoles charros once a week on the buffet line at Viva Jalisco. And he plans for the dish to become a permanent fixture on the menu.
“I got a new menu coming, probably in the next few weeks. We’re going to add frijoles charros to the appetizers,” Ríos said.
And he said that there are also a lot of days when there’s a pot of frijoles charros simmering on the stove at the restaurant — customers just have to know to ask for it. For Elena Foulis, she encourages non-Latinx customers to seek out these foods that might not be as familiar to them.
“You can have your, sort of, traditional comfort food, or what you associate with Mexican or Tex-Mex,” Foulis said. “But look for other dishes that might interest you. They might become your favorite. So why not give it a try?”
A bowl of frijoles charros sits to the right of a bowl of refried beans. While refried beans are a standard side dish in most Mexican restaurants in Southern Ohio, frijoles charros often accompany the main meal at restaurants in northern Mexico and along the US-Mexico border. Credit: Nicole Musgrave/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
In the kitchen at Viva Jalisco, the day’s pot of frijoles charros finished cooking. Amidst the sound of the on-duty cook cutting onions, Ríos ladled me out a piping hot bowl. “So you can try the frijoles charros. But be careful, it’ll be hot,” Ríos said.
As someone who isn’t too keen on spicy food, I was a little nervous. But the smoky flavor, the rich broth, and the acidity of the pickled jalapeños won me over.
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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.
