Hi, I’m Wayne Jordan, curator of Blue Ridge Tales. Here, you’ll find a collection of the things I love best about the Blue Ridge Mountains: the history, scenery, folklore, food, recreation, and anything else I find interesting.
I have an abiding love for the Blue Ridge Mountains. Although I was born in Washington, DC, both sides of my family were from the hills of Western North Carolina. During the Great Depression, my grandparents moved their families to Washington, seeking work. My parents met and married there. My home life centered around family gatherings, where I heard stories of my Scots-Irish ancestors and other Blue Ridge tales.
My paternal grandmother, Thetus (aka “Mama Pete”) worked for the Baltimore-Ohio Railroad and got to travel free. Each summer from the mid-1950s through the mid-1960s, she would take me to “Carolina” to visit relatives. I stayed at my great-grandmother’s cabin, sleeping in a feather bed and using the outhouse in the backyard. That was quite an adjustment for this city boy. When asked why she didn’t have an indoor toilet, she said she wouldn’t have one of those stinky things in her house.
I helped G-Grandma collect eggs each morning and work in the garden. We ate a lot of biscuits and cornbread, chicken, grits, and whatever came out of the garden. A new treat for me (it tasted good, but I had no idea what it was) was chitterlings (chitlins). When it came to hogs, Blue Ridge Mountain families used “everything but the oink.” Nothing went to waste.
It was a great way to grow up. My wife, Jill, and I raised our family in Maryland. We owned and operated a piano shop in Annapolis. When I retired, we moved to Southwest Virginia, and we now reside in Galax, the “World Capital of Old-Time Mountain Music.” We are here for the duration. We love it here.
