Blue Ridge Parkway Overlook at Groundhog Mountain, Meadows of Dan, VA
April, 2024: Vol 1, #2
Howdy, and welcome to the April 2024 edition of the Blue Ridge Tales newsletter. I hope you enjoy my selections for the month.
Wayne
Community Schoolhouses: What We Gained, What We Lost
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series. The newspaper clipping is yellow with age. Beneath a photograph of a simple brick schoolhouse, a headline announces the end of an era: Last Two-Room School Goes, But Without Tears. The reporter described excited children looking forward to cafeteria lunches, waxed floors, and more space. Progress had arrived, and no one seemed sorry …
Appalachian Grist Mills: The Machines That Fed Communities
An installment in our Appalachian Foodways series If you've ever visited any of the restored mills scattered across Appalachia, you've probably thought what most visitors do: What a pretty place. The wheel turns. Somebody takes a picture. It's easy to see why mills end up on postcards and calendars. But the people who built them weren't interested in scenery. They were interested …
An installment in our Appalachian Foodways series The cabbage has been gathered. Apples rest in barrels or baskets. Smoke rises from a few chimneys on cool autumn mornings. Another growing season is winding down. Yet one harvest remains. Wagons loaded with sorghum cane roll toward a local mill. The crop looks more like corn than something destined for the kitchen. Its tall …
Rural Mail Delivery: Opening the Mountains to the World
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series. The letter had probably arrived days ago. That was the frustrating part. A family living along a mountain road in 1900 might know that a son in Roanoke had written or that a husband working railroad construction had mailed word he was coming home. The letter had likely reached the local post office …
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series. A farm truck pulls up at the edge of an orchard in the Shenandoah Valley. Men climb from the back wearing dusty work clothes stenciled with large white letters: PW: Prisoner of War A few local workers pause long enough to look them over. Then the ladders come down, buckets are handed out, …
Well, that's it for this edition. I hope you enjoyed it. If you would like me to cover a particular topic, drop me a line at the address below. And don't forget to "like" our Facebook page.
