Wild West Virginia

Who—or what—exactly is buried here? (Wytheville, Va.)

Happy belated birthday, Murica! Rob and I celebrated the occasion by observing the many contradictory qualities of this alternately great and appalling nation, at least to the extent they were evident in Virginia, North Carolina, and West Virginia. On our earlier trip to Florida, Rob had posited that it isn't possible today for someone to say "Murica" without some kind of ironic self-consciousness. I disagreed, saying that lack of ironic self-consciousness is precisely what's being revealed. Did our trip to Greater Appalachia resolve or illuminate this question in any way? Greater minds than ours—i.e., yours—will have to decide.

Now, come on in and let's have some real fun again!

That, you might possibly know, if you're a devoted traveler, is the slogan painted outside of the town of Shadowhawk, North Carolina. Or, to be more precise, it's what's scrawled on a piece of wood at the edge of the property of the deceased Mr. Bill Drake, a nominal Hollywood actor who built a cluster of structures that purport to be a traditional town of the old American West. (Or, as the great Sonny Boy Williamson might have said, "A little village, motherfucker, a little village!")

Another notice at the edge of Shadowhawk

Shadowhawk, it must be said, has seen better—or perhaps worse—days. Drake apparently hosted many a shindig on his property, featuring card games, heavy drinking, and maybe, just possibly, with a little imagination, illicit sexual activity. I can't say, I wasn't there then. But our host at Shadowhawk, a caretaker of sorts named Tony Manning (an expert in shed construction, it seems), underlined for us several times that when you're on your own property, you can pretty much do whatever you want, especially if the local constabulary is, shall we say, somewhat compromised by their own predilections. Exactly what kind of fun are we going to be having again? And why did we ever stop in the first place? The world is full of questions that you might be better off not asking, so we treaded lightly.

Down these mean streets an owner of private property must go.

As Rob observed, this isn't a man cave, it's a whole man town.

We very much admired the attention to period detail inside the buildings.

Wow, how did we get into Jeffrey Epstein territory so quickly? Let's back up.

After an interminable drive down to Richmond, we arrived at the Flying Squirrels game just in time to be plunged into shadow.

We first came through Richmond in 2007 when the triple-A Braves played here. It's been a double-A affair since 2010. The stadium's brutalist sensibility has grown on me, but nothing will ever reconcile me to this:

We later appreciated the banh mi brewpub experience of The Answer, though the beers were generally better in concept than in execution. Our travels then took us to Lynchburg to see the Hillcats, but not before a stop in Yogaville and its giant sherbet teat, which sadly was in the midst of reconstructive surgery.

There are many paths but one truth.

We beat feet that night, heading south. Our route coincidentally took us—in pitch darkness—past the site of Shangri-La, which we visited in 2015, as well as, the next day, back to Wilson, NC, for the third time. What's so attractive about Wilson, which has no minor-league baseball team? The evolution of the Vollis Simpson Whirlagig Park, of course.

When we first came through in 2007, the idea of a folk-art park was just that—an idea. Vollis Simpson was still alive, living on the outskirts of town with all his wind-driven junk. By 2015, the park was well under construction and we spent a memorable time being shown through the manufactory across the street. Now it's done and... well, it's done. It's what they said it would be, and it's more than any other depressing burg in eastern North Carolina has going for it, but it's just a little bit sterile. Maybe that was inevitable.

That afternoon brought us, after a phone call or two, into Shadowhawk, from which we skedaddled in search of another grossly inauthentic product of one man's mania, the Hattadare Indian Nation. But despite driving back and forth in the town of Bunnville to the point where we risked violating an anticruising ordinance, we couldn't find it.

I hear you asking, "If this is right next to the road and a big sign that says, 'Hattadare Indian Nation' [which indeed it is], how did you miss it the first time? The answer, of course, is bad intel. Perhaps even fake news.

Except the next day we did! In the meantime we'd met up one of the inadvertent founders of the Byways enterprise, Haldeman (last seen on the 2017 Trans-Appalachain Evidentiary Expedition), and spent a quite pleasant evening at the new park in Fayetteville. The park is part of a larger redevelopment effort aimed at making downtown "Fayettenam," as it's apparently called, into something more than a cluster of payday loan joints and gun stores abutting one of the country's largest military bases. There are some signs that this might actually work, though no thanks to the dreadful food and inept beer at the Huske Hardware House, around the block. (The decor of HHH, incidentally, is definitive proof that the faux Edison bulb craze is as dead as Tyler Skaggs, whose demise we learned of while there.)

Anyway, Hattadare! It might have once been home to a group of like-minded individuals seeking refuge from America, like our friends at Oyotunji, but now it's just an assortment of vaguely Native American–themed concrete statues in the woods, begging for explanation.

This is what passes for an explanation.

Man, we've got to pick up the pace or this trip will never end. Our visit to Greenbrier bunker is going to have to await for another, more paranoid post. So; we visited a creationist museum masquerading as a museum of hardware and a museum of taxidermy (or perhaps some other way around)...

...and a hillside full of stone critters...

...and an enormous granite quarry, and a ghoulish tunnel full of dead railroad workers (that was back in Richmond, actually), and a town that wants to be Mayberry, in part to see the tomb of Chang and Eng ("Are they buried together?" asked Watson cheekily), and a giant pencil, and Mrs. Woodrow Wilson:

There was plenty of baseball, too, of course, despite some rain, but heroic driving by Rob meant that we have now crossed off all three states we visited on this trip—which in the case of affiliate-rich North Carolina is saying something. (I believe this was our fifth trip there.) The details begin to blur, however.

The Pulaski Yankees, obviously.

Between the time of year and the geography, it would have been amazing if every night hadn't been some form of military appreciation night, with rousing choruses of "God Bless America" all around.

End times in Princeton, WV?

While I greatly enjoyed reading Steven Stoll's book Ramp Hollow on "the ordeal of Appalachia" in preparation for this trip, and as a result have a much richer understanding of why things are the way they are there (hint: capitalism; also, land enclosure), that doesn't translate in much wanting to spend too more time here. Three Appy League teams to go!

As the sign says, exit now.