By Bob Weaver 2024
Now 84 years old, I rarely have problems in searching for gratitude.
Growing up in the backwoods of Calhoun County, most of my habits and beliefs were related to who and where I was around - a person of place.
My tendency is to drive to the end of a holler, usually to connect with somebody I've never met, putting more miles on a car without leaving the county.
In more recent years I've discovered that most of them are transplants from the bigger world, and its clear they love the backwoods. Most of them keep a low profile and they'll tell you over and over again how much they like their mountain life.
While Calhoun has dropped population from 12,000 in 1940 to less than 6,000 in 2024, it would seem that "Transplants" have almost reached a number exceeding people of place.
Among them in the past year, a theologian, a surgeon, a NASA scientist, FBI employ, a chemist, and dozens of others from all walks of life.
James Haught, the now deceased longtime editor of the Charleston Gazette, proclaimed backwoods West Virginia position is being far from the madding crowd, away from the noise and hubris, away from sardine living.
Calhoun and many West Virginia counties were mostly bypassed, at least with jobs, by the Industrial Revolution, the current crop of Calhoun politicians want to "Make Calhoun Great Again," when it was never great by development standards.
Besides we have have one of the lowest tax rates in the USA and live in an area where most natural disasters skip over us.
It's greatness likely peaked about 1940 with the agricultural era, the last of the pioneers who had a survival gene that never gave up and how to survive the Great Depression.
God bless them, everyone.
A few of us are aware we live in a great forest, underdeveloped and peaceful.
It is now midnight in the garden of good and evil, the wobbly-kneed Great American Experiment moving toward demise, hopefully a few remaining to rejuvenate some survival skills, having a life.
Hopefully they will be able to gander across the hills and hollers and be grateful to God for being in one of the most wonderful places to live.
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