Road Bowling

OK, I've yet to try road bowling, but it does look sort of fun (link from the Brooklyn Hillbilly). Apparently it's established enough of a foothold in WV to merit a story in the Christian Science Monitor.

I think old Route 14 over Elizabeth Hill would make a good track for something - either luge or extreme road bowling.

Telescopic

The Greenbank Telescope - not a WV image you often see promoting the state, but it's going to be featured on 26 U-Haul trucks. I think that's cool. Gives us a high-tech, X-Files kind of image.

The graphic is part of the Venture Across America series that centers around "mystery and mystery revealed."

New Online Exhibit Unveiled for WV's Birthday

Just heard about this new online exhibit at wvculture.org that was announced today. WV's birthday is tomorrow, June 20, and the exhibit, "A State of Convenience," explores the creation of the state. I'm going to have to peruse this when I get to a faster internet connection (eh hem).

A Funeral, Sort Of

I was in the homeland over the weekend for Father's Day, so I became one of the tragedy tourists and went into Elizabeth to see the destruction.

I wasn't the only one there. There was also a couple there videotaping, and I saw several cars driving by slowly, the passengers craning to inspect the debris. On the sidewalk, it was sort of the same mood as you'd get at a funeral home visitation ("I can't believe it's gone"..."after all these years..."won't be the same"..."what a shame")

What really struck me was how small the footprint of the building seemed. That store had always seemed so huge to me.

It seems truly remarkable that the fire didn't spread to the other buildings on the block. When I first heard on the radio that the store was burning, I envisioned the whole block going up in flames.



Effects of the fire extended well across the street -- see the melted street sign (above) and heat-damaged trees on the courthouse lawn (below).

Goodbye to a Landmark

Roberts' Store had served the Elizabeth community for 120 years, and today, perhaps because of arsonists (if the latest reports are correct), the store and two neighboring buildings are gone.

Maybe it was its central location near the courthouse and right at the bend of Route 14 as it ambles through town, or maybe it was the experience of stepping into the past whenever you entered the store - something made the store a landmark, one of the symbols of the community.
As I was growing up, I remember going there with my parents to get hardware (nails, nuts, bolts, pieces of pipe). When I got older, I was sent in by myself to buy bags of feed corn for our pet ducks while my parents pulled the car around back to have it loaded into the trunk. And in high school, it was a convenient place to stop in and pick up some candy and chips at lunch.

I'd been thinking that I need to take my new digital camera and get some new pictures of Elizabeth, but of course I hadn't gotten around to it. I looked through my old pictures for a black & white picture of the store that I thought I took back in 2003. I've yet to locate it, if indeed it exists. (Update: The Hur Herald has a picture of the store posted with their article about the arrests.)

As an AP story I saw earlier today pointed out, Elizabeth is the latest small town in WV damaged by massive fires; Salem and Sutton have also been hit in recent months.

It's going to be very strange and sad to go back to my hometown and not see that store.