Inheritance The Lincoln Journal 4-29-87

A Cobalt-Blue Sugar Bowl

There were two things that used to make Griffithsville, West Virginia, different from any other stretch of Route 3. There were those large, beautiful, silver maples that lined the road next to the old Osborne home tennis courts. Those trees were majestic and took a long time to get that way. Suddenly one day they were gone. When I saw the naked stretch that used to be so comforting I got an empty, sinking feeling almost like a friend had died.

You can destroy something if you own it, I guess. Beautiful old buildings, and even eucalyptus trees in San Francisco, have been declared state or national treasures and historic sites to shield against the I can do anything I want with my property attitude. A cheap looking Wal-Mart can’t replace a priceless piece of architectural history or a beautiful piece of unique nature with protections in place like in San Francisco. Graveyards, Native American burial grounds and Civil war battle sites all coupled with citizen outrage has sometimes been all that stopped some greedy “developer” or bull-dozer happy money grubbers from tearing up everything in sight. The love of money has no sense of reverence. It all looks like money to “developers.”

Like the trees, Osborne’s Store is now gone, burned to the ground by a troubled teen-ager. The spirit and soul of that store disappeared years ago. The new world order or “progress” in the form of convenience stores and franchised grocery stores made it impossible to turn a profit with an old fashioned country store. And Osborne’s was old fashioned.

Osborne’s was our favorite place when we move here twenty-one years ago. Harnesses, shotguns, plows, bulk nails, seeds, groceries and clothes were all available at Osborne’s. Tobacco farmers charged their purchases for a whole year until they sold their crop. It was normal to go into Osborne’s and take a half an hour buying four or five items and savor the time spent. Tuck and Mabel Roberts, Marita Thornton, Louise Janes, Janette Saul or Mrs. Dragoo took our order and got each item one at a time. They patiently wrote the orders in a little bill book and gave us a carbon copy.

While we were being waited on other people came in and we traded stories, joked, laughed and sympathized with one another. We discussed the weather, who was related to whom, who was getting married, who was sick, who died, what time was the funeral and county politics. We could get just about anything we needed at Osborne’s plus enjoy good company. People seemed warmer and happier there in Osborne’s, talking and remembering and laughing. We never went in expecting or wanting to get out in less than half an hour.

We found a house to rent on Sugar Tree Creek through the Osborne store high tech communication network. We had to move and mentioned that to Janette Saul, a clerk at the store. She told us that a family from up sugar Tree was just in thee getting boxes to pack their stuff in for moving.

Some older boys broke into Osborne’s. They did it the hard way. First they stole acetylene and oxygen tanks. They crawled under the floor dragging the tanks behind them. They connected stolen hoses and a torch to the tanks, cut a hole in the store floor and climbed in. They must have reconnoitered carefully because they came up in a part of the floor with nothing standing on it. They could have easily burned the building down burning a hole through a heavily oiled wooden floor. They mainly stole cigarettes, which couldn’t have equaled the value of the tanks, hoses and torch nor the time they put in on the job. Maybe it was for the adventure.

It is told that Huey Elwood Hager, my son’s great grandfather on his mother’s side, came over to Griffithsville in 1925 from Hewitt’s Creek in Boone County. He drove a wagon of corn to be ground at the mill. He slept the one night of the trip under the wagon with his dogs. Huey went down to Osborne’s and bought a pretty cobalt-blue sugar bowl for his wife. We had that bowl when Huey’s great grandson started his life three miles from Osborne’s. Osborne’s is gone now and the silver maples are cut down. What used to make Griffithsville pretty much different now leaves it looking like any other run-down stretch of country road.

A Hidden Treasure

How is it that two unelected boards have so much control over our lives? How do you get rid of members of the State Board of Education and the School Building Authority if they go against the will of the people? I know we would get some losers on those boards if they were elected, but at least we could vote them out, as we did in the county commissioners’ race.

These two boards are now made up mostly of people who gave money to Caperton’s campaign. How can we expect justice and due process from people who bought their positions?

Vote buying is the School Building Authority’s specialty. They usually give about one-half the money a county needs to consolidate on the condition that the county pass a bond issue for the rest. If the people in a county vote the way the SBA says they get the money for their votes. Did they learn this from Lincoln County politicians.*

Consolidation is on us because the Legislature passed the Super Tax Credit so that coal companies and other large corporations like Wal-Mart, get close to one hundred million dollars per year in tax write-offs—in ten years that’s a billion dollars! With the Super Tax Credit the coal companies use the kick-back to buy long-wall machines** and put miners out of work. The intent of the law was to increase employment, but it is doing just the opposite. They ought to cancel the tax credit and tax the long-wall machines. If we had one-hundred million dollars per year for schools every community could have a new school.

The perfect school system for the SBA would be one giant school in Braxton County for the entire state—it would only be a three hour bus ride for most and rest could go to school in neighboring states. Actually, there would probably have to be two schools—one at Flatwoods in Braxton County and one on the Steele Farm…***