Storytelling Road Trip: Prickett's Fort, Athens and Onward

We started early Friday morning, knowing we had a 2 1/2 hour drive to the Prickett's Fort Storytelling Festival. There is a magic in the air just before the sun comes up, that hazy half-light when the world is soft and fresh and waiting to begin. I felt the same, fresh and ready for a day of stories.

This festival is a new event for the WV Storytelling Guild, planned in cooperation with the Prickett's Fort staff and local Fairmont State University. Student volunteers were on hand to help set up and to act as guides as busloads of students from four area schools arrived. Adult volunteers were there too, and acted as site monitors and general help for all sorts of unexpected tasks.

The children filed into the amphitheatre for the first event of the day, the "olio" storytelling, which is another name for a program featuring several storytellers, each telling a short story. A few buses were late arriving, so we got a later start than planned, but we rolled ahead. I told my story of my childhood creation, Mr. Skinnyhead, and then hurried to my site for the day--the porch of Job House where I was joined by storyteller Mikalena Zuckett to wait for the olio to finish and the classes to be divided into groups and sent to the various sites. We had four storytelling sites set up, and schools also had the option to include a tour of the replica Revolutionary War era fort.

I had excellent sessions with the three groups sent our way during the day. The groups ranged from 100-150 students per group and from 2nd grade through middle school. I liked our site very much--the old tools on the porch of the historic house were the perfect backdrop for my Appalachian stories and ballads.

We had two sessions in the morning, broke for lunch, and then one more session init was time for gthe children to head back to their schools. I was sad to see the last students leave; then it was time to take down my sound system and take a break! A few of us joined forces to make a tour of the antique stores in the area, and then had dinner before going back to Prickett's Fort for an evening concert for the public.

We wondered if we would have turnout for this first-ever event, but need not have worried. A good group turned out to listen as we presented our stories. I met two ladies from a local book group who had seen the event's publicity in the paper and decided to come because they had never heard storytellers before. They were well-pleased with what they heard! They each bought a copy of Self-Rising Flowers, the collection of Appalachian women stories that includes my story, "Yellow Roses."

Another family saw the concert listed in their local newspaper's events column and decided to come and see what storytelling was. They loved it too, and we talked a good while afterwords as they asked about the stories and told me their own family stories (including the one about the grandmother who was a madam!). They also bought a book and one of my CDs. A few other CD and book sales added to my sense that this was a very successful evening. For my performance, I decided to tell my story "Gracie's Cabin," a haunting original tale I wrote based on the name of a road I passed one day as we were traveling to my oldest's son's home. Stories can come from anywhere, can't they?

The co-conspirators--I mean storytellers! From left, Judi Tarowsky of St. Clairsville, OH, Mikalena Zuckett of Charleston, Katie Ross of Ridgeley, me, Kevin Cordi of Columbus, OH, Jason Burns of Morgantown, June Riffle of Fairmont, and Jo Ann Dadisman of Preston county, WV (June and Jo Ann perform together as the Mountain Echoes). Not present is the man responsible for the work of organizing the event so successfully, Rich Knoblich of Wheeling.

Larry and I opted to drive home rather than getting a motel room for the night, even though it meant getting home around midnight. I had another performance Saturday morning about an hour from home and preferred to sleep in my own bed, even if it meant a shorter night because I never rest well the first night away from home. So Saturday morning we were up and out early again, although this time not before daybreak! We arrived in Athens, Ohio in plenty of time for me to set up and take a few minutes to tour the library. It really is a lovely space, well-maintained with friendly staff and a perfect setting--near high-traffic areas but in a quiet dead-end location with an small outside amphitheatre, windows out to the surrounding gardens and a quiet neighborhood around it.

The event was the library's 19th anniversary in this location. They had to build on not long after building the library because business boomed so quickly. Completely ADA accessible, the library offers meeting room space, an area for teens, a nice children's area and all sorts of activities on a regular basis. I was one of the special events planned for their anniversary celebration and was advised that my audience would probably come and go as people moved from event to event. The group was small when I started, but soon grew to a good-sized audience, mostly adults. I shifted my stories accordingly. No photos from Athens, unfortunately, because I forgot to give my camera to Larry. Ah well.

When we left, we intended to drive straight home. But then I remembered that it was the Volcano Days Festival, a celebration of West Virginia's oil and gas boomtown called Volcano and the industry that developed around the discovery of this natural resource. We'd attended the festival before and loved it; I wanted to go back but have alays been busy on the festival's annual weekend date. Although I was seriously tired (and almost had Larry turn around and go home when we were halfway there) we made the trek to the festival.

And boy did we have fun. I'll have pictures and more in my next post, including some mysterious tools, a flaming teapot, a ramble through wild terrain in quest of a once-boom town called Petroleum, getting lost, meeting strangers in some lonely backwoods place called Crane's Hole, and finding a new ghost story. As I said above, stories can come from anywhere.


Copyright 2012 Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Volcano Days

The days have gone by so fast, I almost forgot to write about the Volcano Days Festival in Wood County, WV. The festival celebrates the oil boom town of Volcano, named for the geyser-like oil wells discovered there. There is a rich history of drilling in this state, and in recent months the activity has picked up once again as gas wells are being drilled all over the western side of the state. We traveled the back way, driving from the Molasses Festival in Arnoldsburg through Calhoun and Ritchie County to the back side of Wood County. On Rte 16, the sign on this house didn't seem like a good omen for the trip--I wonder what happened here to prompt the sign? The house looked deserted, although the grass had been mowed. Weird.

Still on Rte 16, we spied this swinging bridge. My patient husband turned around so I could take a picture of it. Turns out there were quite a few of them along this road, but I liked the sign on top of this one. (Click on the photos and they should become full-screen).

Little green car (registering 209,000 miles on this day)and patient husband, waiting for me to take my pictures. Not much traffic.

We turned off the paved road to take the back way to the festival, passing this abandoned house. What a shame that such a beauty is being left to ruin. There were many outbuildings around the house, signs of a prosperous farm at one time. The straight roofline means the house isn't doomed yet, but someone better do something for it soon or it will be lost. Probably tied up in heirship, and probably a relic of the boom days in the area. (The camera was crooked, not the house!)

We finally made it to the festival after a couple of hours traveling some of the most beautiful country imaginable. Men and their toys filled the grounds, old engines chugged, puffed and smoked all over the place. It was a wonderful sight!

A working oil well, brought to the festival on the back of a flatbed truck. I remember many of them still in operation when I moved to West Virginia in the 70's but these old wells are gone now.

Inner workings of the well. The craftsmanship in these wooden wells is astonishing.

Inside the visitor's center, I happened on these fellows talking about the glory days of drilling in West Virginia. I listened, fascinated to find that there is another aspect of this state I have yet to learn about--oil and gas drilling history.

Brownie Amick (left) and James Richards agreed to let me take their picture in front of the working model of an oil well, built by Brownie. Although he never worked in the oil fields himself, he's become an expert on their history because his wife's father worked in the fields for years. I realized that I was in the presence of history, and that someone better capture what these two know before it's lost. Mr. Richards worked many years in the oilfields, and could tell many a tale. They both told stories of drilling outfits that would get New York investors to back them and come to West Virginia to drill. But what they would do was set up the rigs, bore a small hole, pull up, and move on without actually drilling a well. The outfits collected from the New Yorkers who were none the wiser, and the poor landowners were left with shallow holes and no royalties.
Gas engines of all kinds were on display. Larry drooled over this old-timer, while I liked the juxtaposition of old and new (and I'm not talking about Larry!) in the photo.

Finally, on the way home, the sky gives us one more treat to enjoy. I snapped this through the windshield, which produced some interesting effects.

Volcano Days are held at Mountwood Park in Wood County, WV the last weekend of September. There were lots of things to do: a Civil-War era encampment, live music, flea market, local history books for sale, a "madam" running about propositioning the men, exhibits of all kinds, and many old-timers willing to share their history with a willing listener. Add a beautiful setting and good food, and the festival becomes a must-do for next year.