TAKING A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

No long post this week. I'm off on a kind of family history tour of the tiny West Virginia community of Squire where my parents were born and raised. My older brother wanted his adult daughter to see the "home place" and get a sense of where we all came from, so I'm tagging along. Since he's the family historian, I expect to learn a few interesting tidbits I haven't heard before.

My kin are a colorful bunch, distantly related to the Hatfields of Hatfield-McCoy feud fame. My second cousin was the Miss Riley who taught the "rocket boys" of OCTOBER SKY. And my grandfather was part of the last armed insurrection against the Federal government of the United States--a union-organized coal strike in McDowell County WV in 1920. (He also delivered moonshine through the mountains during the strike to make ends meet.)

So, though the picture below may or may not have any of my relatives, it is, well, symbolic of my mountain clan.

Devil Anse Hatfield (center) and the boys.

See you next week.

Cheers, Donna