The BSOB Years - "Small Town Life"

"Small Town Heroes"
by Rycherox

By now you've read El Gee and KD's essays on what things are uniquely West Virginian. I should probably add another, which is the constant explanations one has to give when trying to explain where we're located on the map. You see, we're not in Western Virginia. No, good people, our state split from the esteemed Commonwealth in the latter 1800s. There was this little matter concerning a civil war, if my history lessons serve me well. We're from a Panhandle state that's filled with some of the greatest mountain views, rivers and hospitality you'll ever find. That's not some lame excuse for a tourism trap. It's the honest truth.

It's been said that if you were born in WV, you will return for your final days. I remember hearing those words over and over as a child. I scoffed at them, as young know-it-alls are wont to do. "I'll get out of this place," I remember thinking. "I'll make my way in the big world. I'll show them all!"

What I've done so far, however, has been quite the opposite. Sure, I've been fortunate enough to travel cross-country. I've even spent time outside the US, and that includes outside North America. I've seen lots of places, met lots of great people, but in the end I'm proud to say I keep my base of operations right here in the Mountain State. If I want the big-city life I can travel a couple of hours and be in hubs of humanity such as Pittsburgh, Columbus, Baltimore and Washington D.C. When I've had my fill, I can return to the peace and relative tranquility of my home town. I'll probably spend the rest of my days as a West Virginian, and you know what? That doesn't bother me a bit.

Things unique to WV, that was our topic for this round. Here's what I'll list -

New River Gorge Bridge - longest span bridge in North America.
Mothers Day Shrine - located in Grafton, Taylor County, it is the internationally recognized birthplace of the Mothers Day holidays.
Morgantown - home of the WV Mountaineers, a college football team ranked consistently among the top 25 teams in the nation.
Snowshoe Mountain - some of the best skiing in the country, and home of one of the best chili cook-offs in the land.
Blackwater Falls - a majestic waterfall nestled in the heart of WV.
Green Bank National Radio Observatory - hosts one of the largest radio observatories in the US.
Oglebay Park - A state park in Wheeling that's known throughout the country for its Christmas Festival of Lights.

The list goes on and on, but I'll end this with one more thing that's unique to WV. Everyone born here comes with their own map of the state. Those who've been here know what I mean. Find someone and ask them!

Rycherox
May 12 2007

One of these Things Does Not Belong
by Knightmare Duck

This tale will be as West Virginian as Hot dogs with chili, pepperoni rolls, and fugi-ball. Today we are going to talk about things that are unique to West Virginia, as far as we know.

Lets start with an easy one, Hot Dogs with Chili. Now I'm not talking about the chili with beans although it is close, just take away the beans, add a little hot sauce, and thicken it a bit and your there. Add some mustard and onions and that's it. No ketchup, no relish, no cole slaw, and definitely no sour kraut. I don't know why, but if you venture North to Pennsylvania, you still get chili, but it is just the kind with beans slopped on top. If you keep going North to New York or West to Chicago you get just a wiener on a bun or worse yet a sausage. Go too far North and you end up with sour kraut (yuk!). Go South and you get cole slaw. Cole Slaw is made with milk, isn't it? Milk on a hot dog? That is wrong on so may levels I can't possibly explain. I know Rycherox will have a problem with this one because he is a ketchup/bun only hot dog guy but he is the exception to the rule in WV.

Pepperoni rolls are sliced pieces of pepperoni baked inside a dinner roll sized piece of bread. They can have cheese on them and sometimes pepper with sauce but that's it. As far as I know, these are unique to WV. They are best eaten while hot but are sold wrapped in plastic on the bread shelves of our stores. They have a pizza like taste to them and keep about the same. As they age they just get harder. I have been told by people from other states that the reason they don't have them in their states is because of their health laws. They don't let them put meat in bread then leave them at room temperature for days on end. Pepperoni rolls are good eating so if you get a chance you should try one, they show up on some local restaurants menus.

Fugi-ball is baseball with a tennis ball. You play it on a standard field but there are only four players to a team. Caught fly balls are two outs and extra outs carry over to the next inning (catch two fly balls in one inning and the next inning the opposing team only gets two outs). If you hit the ball to the opposite field it's an out (if you bat right hand and hit the ball to right field you are out). You have to get a double or nothing too (if you hit the ball in play you have to run to first base then to second before the fielders throws the ball to second base or your out). You can lead off but no stealing bases. Pitching speed is medium, nothing real fast but not softball like. You can strike out but can't walk. The game is played for the full nine innings. That's it. I've heard of other games close to this (stick-ball, whiffle-ball) but I was taught to play fugi-ball by older kids in the neighborhood and I passed it on to younger ones (kids too little to play get to play catcher). I was happy to see as the weather is warming up here in WV that there was a new group of kids playing fugi-ball on the field this weekend. It's been around as long as I can remember and is still going.

There are a few language issues too , accents being one. I think most West Virginians don't have an accent (except southern WV). Go North and you get the Yankee speak, go South and you get the southern draw, go too far West and you get "valley girl" but most of WV is neutral. Lets look at some words; do you have pops, sodas, or soft drinks, maybe just Coke or Pepsi? Have you every put your groceries in a poke, a sack, or just a bag? Did you ever carry your car to a garage for service or did you just take it there? If you live in WV, you drank pop, which your mom brought home in a bag, when she took the car to the store.

When I went to college in Ohio, my first night alone in a big city, I walked to the local store and bought a few items. I went to the check out counter with my money in my hand. The cute cashier rang up my purchases and then said "Do you want a poke for that?" I smiled and said "Sure what time do you get off work?" She smiled back and said "I mint a bag for your stuff". I was let down and took my "poke" and headed for the door, but as I got close to it she hollered "I get off at 10pm, don't be late". My smile came back. (I will explain, a poke in Ohio is a bag for carrying stuff in. A poke in WV, is a sexual act, as in "I poked her last night" or "Why did you guys let me get drunk and poke that fat thing?", I thought the cashier was offering to trade "goods" for "services" ) When we went out that night I try to talk her into that WV poking, but she told me that I had to have a special Ohio poke to put my goods in before we could try that WV poke. I told her I did not have a special Ohio poke, but really wanted to try that WV poking. She said "it looks like your poked". "Damn" I said "this must be the poking I get for poke I ain't got!"

I'm sure I've missed a whole lot of things here but I just can't think tonight. Alright guy's I'm gonna leave this one a little short, carry me.


Knightmare Duck
4-29-2007

"Small Town"
by El Gee

Small town America is a unique experience. If you have only lived in the city or the 'burbs, you cannot appreciate the nuances of living Small Town, USA. Country folk can appreciate to a degree, but they still look at small town USA differently than the citizens do.

I grew up in a small town. At its peak, my town had about 22,000 people...a city (albeit a small one) with a small town attitude. I liked living there for the most part. If Clarksburg or one of the other small towns did not offer it, then we did not need it.

Small towns have character. The tend to offer things that are difficult or impossible to find anyplace else. They draw in people from the surrounding areas who can appreciate the nuances of the town and add to it.

My home town is nestled in the hills of WV. The residents are of mostly Irish and Italian heritage, so Catholicism is very prevalent in the area. That does not mean that Protestantism is unheard of....but a small city of 20,000 people with its own Catholic High School, several large Catholic churches and days care centers obviously has a large group of Catholics to attend to.

Having large numbers of Italian residents means that the local fare will include an Italian spin on common everyday food. One of my favorite items fits in this category...sandwiches...more specifically, steak sandwiches. I am not talking about a "Philly Steak and Cheese" (we have a version of that we call a "Hoagie"). No I am talking about a Giovanni Steak Sandwich. I have been all over the United States and have not found anything even close to this Clarksburg creation.

A Giovanni, if you have not been paying attention to previous "The BSOB Years" installments, is a piece of cubed steak, pounded very tender and fried. That piece of steak is placed on two grilled/buttered pieced of Texas Toast and dressed with provolone cheese and stewed hot peppers. It will melt in your mouth. Actually, just saying the word "Giovanni" to anyone who has enjoyed one in the past will get their mouth watering, cursing the day "The Canteen" (the home of the Giovanni) went out of business.

The peppers alone that are used on this masterpiece are rather unique, as I have never seen them any other place than WV. While I have seen hot peppers sold in other areas, they are always made in WV and usually they are Oliverio's Italian Style Peppers. Yummy. To borrow a common phrase, "Often imitated, never duplicated". I have not had any of those in a long time and I think that my next trip back home should include a case or two.

Knightmare Duck has already mentioned Pepperoni Rolls, another WV treat. Pepperoni Rolls are fist sized (or larger) loaves of bread that have chunks of pepperoni baked inside. I have only seen them in a few places (Kroger in Durham, NC and Double Dave's Pizza in Dallas, TX) and while I cannot substantiate KD claim of not putting meat in bread at room temperature, I guess it makes sense. I am not sure why they are not sold in other states...eaten warm with cheese and/or Italian style peppers and you have a something that is almost as good as a Giovanni! There are not many bakeries that make them, but the loyalty to one bakery over another is very sincere. I worked for one of them (Tomaro's Italian Bakery) for about a year around the same time Carp worked next door at an audio/video store as a car system installer. The bakery and the A/V store were owned by the same family...the dad owned the bakery and the son owned the A/V store. That, however, is another story.

Once I went to Washington, DC and ordered a hot dog from a vendor. He asked me if I wanted chili and I said, "Of course! How else do you eat one?" He then proceeded to ladle some bean laden (not to be confused with bin Laden) goop on my dog. Yup, that was the way it was served. The chili was bland and tasteless and the paper tray it came on offered the most taste. WV hot dogs (an culinary work of art, I might add) have chili sauce on them, which is similar to the kind of chili that is traditionally served in Texas (no beans). While the style is the same, you will find more varieties of hot dog chili in WV than you can possibly count. While T&L hot dogs makes a good chili sauce, I am a bit biased to my mom's recipe. To bad she does not cook anymore...that stuff was awesome. And by the way, no self respecting Hillbilly (someone born in WV) would EVER eat canned chili. That is simply sacrilege.

I mentioned earlier that WV has a version of the "Philly Steak and Cheese", something that we call a hoagie. A Clarksburg hoagie is made on an Italian roll about 8-12 inches long. Italian rolls are used because they have a chewy crust that toasts up very nicely. Inside this roll you can put one of two types of steak, thinly sliced flank steak or the frozen "Steakum" style steaks. I prefer Steakum, but purists may prefer the natural flavor of real unprocessed flank steak. Once you have decided on your meat, you then add provolone cheese and sauteed onions and green peppers and pile it in toasted bun.

Not all "things WV" are based on food. While I suspect that some of them are just small town mentalities, I only saw them when I lived in a small town. For example, in my home town, 80% of the people who live there were born there. Try getting that in the city or the 'burbs. It is not uncommon to be born, live, and die in the same part of town and believe it or not, even in the same neighborhood or the same house!

Directions take on a new meaning when you travel in WV. You learn to accept directions like, "Go down to where The Canteen used to be, keep goin' straight and turn at left at the bridge...". Never once will you be given a street name. I am not sure anyone there knows the names of the streets they travel on. Heaven help you if you find a real old timer that tells you something like, "Go past the old A&P..." A&P has not been in WV (or in existence) in 35 years.

Of course if the location you are looking for is not "in town" you will be directed to take Rt 19, Rt 20, or Rt 50 out into the county and then instructed to turn down some "holla" (Hollow or Holler, depending on where you are), which is an unpaved country road. Cars with out of state plates on their cars are in for a real treat.

Many residents of Clarksburg "sweep" their carpets, "worsh" their clothes, panel every room of their house, and tend to use "those" and "them" incorrectly ("Them are the best hot dogs I have ever ate"). It took my wife about 6 months to break me of that (she survived the re-training process, but barely).

Something that I miss a lot about small towns are the older homes. Almost everyone had a front or back porch and after the workday was done, the porch was where you retired to read the paper, drink iced tea or lemonade and watch the kids play tag in the yard. Until I left small town USA, I have never been in a house with whole house A/C. Growing up no one had that and very few people had window units and if they did, it was for the living room or the adults bedroom...the kids didn't need it.

El Gee
May 1, 2007