........yes, that is right, my grandfather, A. M. Wade, yes, he  was a Baldwin-Felts agent.... My  aunt, Irene Ferree Harris, spent 6 years of her childhood in the Felts home in Galax, Virginia. They helped rear her because my family was very poor. Later Irene Ferree married Sam Harris, and, together, they were the proprietors of the Citizen's Drug Store in Welch. My grandfather gave me a photo of 2 men that he said were Baldwin-Felts agents. I never asked him their names. The two men look like they are standing in front of the McDowell County Courthouse, but I am not positive. The Citizen's Drug was just a couple of doors down the street from the courthouse. Fifty years ago, as a small child, I often played in that block where the courthouse, the bank, and the Appalachian Power Co. office were.

 

My mother, Ethel Wade, was born in Davy, West Virginia, in 1912, the daughter of a Baldwin-Felts agent who worked as an enforcer for the mine owners, and his wife, a widow with four daughters from her previous marriage. My grandfather took little heed of his family and left them to struggle for survival. Nonetheless, McDowell County always felt like home to my mother.

So when my father, an officer with the 65^th Infantry Division was shipped to Europe soon after my birth, my mother and I returned to McDowell County to stay with my aunt and uncle.

My brief time with them was a magical time for me. Even now, when I am awakened by the rattle of the Amtrak train that runs near my Florida home, I recall the train whistles echoing through the hollows near Welch and smell my uncle's cigar and my aunt's Blue Grass cologne.

My aunt, Irene Harris, whom I called Iney, and her husband, Sam Harris, whom I called Uncle Papa lived in an apartment building with maybe four stories along the river bank on Virginia Avenue across from Fanning Funeral Home. My uncle was a pharmacist and the owner of the Citizen's Drugstore.

When my mother and I came to live in McDowell County, the world was at war, and McDowell County was an important part of the war effort because it mined the coal which literally fueled the war effort. Almost everyone had a loved one whose life was in peril because of the war. Many consumer goods were strictly rationed. Much of the world was on the brink of the Apocalypse. But no more than a toddler, I was oblivious to this; the only grief I knew was the daily one that occurred when my dear aunt and uncle left for work.

As a child, I thought Welch was a garden of delight. Next door to Fanning's was the home of Warner Hutson Williams, a beautiful, stylish woman who taught in the McDowell County Public Schools. Each day my mother took me to Warner's to play with her many cats, especially the legendarily fecund mother cat, Alice. At this moment, as I look in my living room at my five cats snoozing in various postures, I know Warner is to blame.

Warner's father, Mr. Hutson, lived with her. He was probably very elderly, but I greatly enjoyed his company. One day he gave me a tiny china bride and groom that had been on the top of his wedding cake around the turn of the century. I still have it--it is displayed in my living room on a table that was once in my aunt and uncle's drug store.

Edith Hurley, another of our neighbors on Virginia Avenue, was a pillar of the Presbyterian Church and one of the smartest people I have ever known. She lived in a cottage across from Johnny Hall's garage and worked as a legal secretary. Every week she worked the New York Times crossword puzzle in about an hour without the aid of a crossword puzzle dictionary. She loved opera .and was an expert on it. She never had much money and could never afford a stereo. Someone gave her a discarded record player on which to play her cherished opera records. On a warm day, when her windows were open, grand opera reverberated along the blocks of Virginia Avenue near her house.

Every day I spent many hours at the back window of the apartment watching the trains go by. In those days, the tracks ran right along the river and through the center of town. The railroad engineers were heroes to me. Just as children now may idolize fighter pilots or astronauts, I worshiped railroad engineers. I waved at them as I sat at the window, and many of them waved back at me. One day after I had a bath and was dressed in my finest, Mother and I started to walk downtown to the drugstore. As we neared the tracks, I spied a stopped train and recognized the engineer as one who regularly returned my wave. He must have recognized me, too, because he motioned us over and lifted me into the cab of the train engine. He let me spend a few blissful minutes pretending that I was the engineer before handing me, encrusted with coal dust, back to my horrified mother.

Nearly every day my mother or my aunt took me "down the street," by which they meant downtown. Murphy's Five and Dime was usually on our itinerary. Another stop was the Corinne Shop, where the proprietor, Marie Hiltie, indulged me by calling me "Mrs. Jones" and pretending I was a grown-up.

On Saturday mornings my uncle would put me in the car and take me to Brown's Creek to feed sugar cubes to the mules that worked in the mines. But my happiest moments were spent in the Citizen's Drug. They would hoist me up to the soda fountain and let me mix my own fountain Coca-Colas with enough Coca-Cola syrup in each for a whole six pack of today's Coke.

In the afternoons when classes ended at Welch High School, the store would fill with noisy teens having Cokes and Nabs. My aunt's teacher friends would gather there, too, to visit and chat. To my child's eyes, far the most glamorous denizens were several women who used to drift in for a Coke around mid-afternoon some days. They had flawless, heavily powdered complexions and brilliantly colored lipstick and nail polish. Much later I learned how they earned their living at a neighboring hotel.

At age three fun and games were over me: my uncle put me to work. We sold cigarettes, which someone had to unpack and stack in bins very close to the floor. Since I was cheap labor and short, that became my job. The only problem was that it required a modicum of reading ability to sort the cigarettes by brand. So, at age three I began learning to read with a vocabulary consisting solely of words like Camel, Lucky Strike, and Old Gold.

Weekends we spent much of the day and a long evening at the Gary Country Club, where my uncle and aunt played golf. After the golf game we stayed for supper, and, later dancing and cocktails. In those days the club had slot machines. To keep me out of trouble they would put me on a stool in front of one of them and give me a fistful of coins so I could gamble the night away.

Slot machines were not "one-armed bandits," they were one-armed babysitters. Late at night I would be driven back to Welch along the treacherous, crooked road between Gary and Welch by a slightly inebriated driver. That we arrived safely so many times is probably one reason I believe in God.

Finally, my father, James Wade returned safely from Europe. He was a stranger to me, and the last thing I wanted to do was to leave with him. My mother and I went back to Virginia with him, and I never returned to Welch to live. At some point Iney and Uncle Papa moved about a block down the street to an apartment with a wrought iron balcony that filled up each summer with window boxes full of petunias. Every summer I would board the Powhatan Arrow and wind my way back to Welch to the place that would always be my home, where I was always welcomed and loved.

In the 1960's I spent the summer at Grace Hospital watching my uncle die of cancer. In 1985 I returned to get my aunt to take her home with me where she died of lung cancer. I flew her body back to Welch for her funeral at the Presbyterian Church. I packed her belongings and began the long drive, alone, back to Florida.

As I drove out of Welch, I saw a sign that said "Davy, 5 miles." I pulled to the side of the road and hesitated. I figured I might never return and maybe should visit the place it all began, to the place my mother was born. In the end the pain was too great, and I just drove on.

Sammie Wade