*I bet there is a sad story behind this*

Yesterday I left Paintersville, heading east. That’s about as much as I had planned—a direction. I ended the day with more questions than answers about Appalachia.

I started the day with a fun interaction with Joe Allen Evans, owner of Pawn Stars of Inez. Joe and I met by accident, but it ended up being the best part of the day. I was heading out of Inez, a neighboring town to Paintersville, when I passed Pawn Stars of Inez, which had about a hundred assorted yard care implements in front, three barking dogs, and a heavily muscled guy sitting on a walker. I was supposed to make a left in front of the store, but Joe’s small dogs started chasing me down the street.

I’ve been chased by a lot of dogs on this trip, but Appalachia is where chasing old men on unicycles is taken to a new level. Joe used alliteration in naming them, so all I heard was “Peaches, Petunia, Patty- all you all come back here.” I thought Y’all was plural, but I guess you throw in the extra all for emphasis. I’ve heard my Texas raised wife do that when yelling at kids. Together they probably weighed 20 pounds, but they had Appalachian spirit, and I respect that.

I wheeled back after they were corralled, and Joe yelled, “Hey, I’ve got some questions for you!” Being a man with a lot of answers—some even true—I rode up, dismounted, and left my helmet on. (Remember, I only take my helmet off for weddings, funerals, and the launching of tall ships.)

He said, “What is that thing? Come on in. I need you to show that to my dad!”

I’d never been in a pawn shop, so I figured—what better way to spend my time?

I walked through a corridor of weed whackers and rototillers into a smorgasbord of stuff. Joe’s dad, quite infirm, was sitting behind the counter on oxygen, watching a black-and-white movie on TV. Joe said, “Hey, bring that thing in and show my dad what you’ve got there.” It was a tight squeeze, but I got it behind the counter where dad was sitting. Dad asked how fast it went and how far on a charge. Then we started talking about the business.

I told them about my blog and asked if I could film. Joe was all in. Dad didn’t seem to mind. I’ve never done a pawn store interview—clearly a lapse in imagination on my part—but I had no idea how much depth you could plumb in such an establishment.

First, Joe showed me their tagline on a big piece of wood. Something like, “If you don’t get top dollar, you can holler.” (That’s not it exactly, but I’m typing this in a Hardee’s and there’s a guy behind me on the phone negotiating for a used mower. He sounds like he’s getting a good deal and doesn’t want to cheat the seller. In my opinion, when buying a used mower, you’re buying a cat in a sack, so negotiate heavily. I think playing this video out loud would be distracting and could throw off his train of thought. )

Sorry…back to Joe. I asked the obvious question: “What’s the most interesting thing ever pawned?” Joe and his dad both lit up and pointed above my head to a taxidermied fish with false teeth in its mouth.

“Those false teeth,” Joe said. “Old guy pawned them for 50 bucks. Never came back.”

Naturally, I asked the two follow-ups: “Has anyone tried to buy them?” and “Are they still for sale?” Joe explained that dentures are custom-made, so you can’t just shove them into any mouth. I wondered if they knew that before giving the guy $50. Maybe it was just a nice gesture.

Then Joe pulled out a real ball and chain, moved the dog barrier to free the “3 Ps,” and demonstrated how hard it would be to run in one. I held it—heavy. Would’ve looked great hanging in my house with the teeth, but I didn’t have room even for a hairbrush in my 40-pound pack. Who knows, it could have been one of my relatives. Maybe it could fit me.

We somehow got to talking birthdays—Joe, his fiancée, and I were all born within a day of each other. He FaceTimed her and said, “Get on over here and see this dude from California that rode all the way here on a unicycle!” She agreed to come.

While waiting, Joe showed me photos from a cruise he took with his fiancée and dad, out of San Francisco. A gambling cruise. He proudly showed me the $10,000 he won—first in chips, then as a mountain of cash on their cabin’s couch. He’s a high roller who only paid $450 for the whole cruise.

His fiancée showed up in a nice blue Cadillac. She was very polite, admired the unicycle, and then I said my goodbyes. Joe and his fiance wanted to film my departure. Before i left, the last thing Joe asked was, “ Hey do you have enough money, do you need some money. I’m worried about you”. I declined, but the offer spoke volumes.

After leaving Inez, I rode to Williamson, West Virginia. I rode by a small cemetery with fresh flowers in front of all the graves. It attracted me like a magnet. I saw some hand made grave stones that were heart wrenching.

My friend Bill’s wife’s sister is the First Lady of West Virginia, so naturally, I took a picture with the “Welcome to West Virginia” sign—because it had her husband’s name on it. Seemed right.

At a nearly empty sports bar, a kind young waiter gave me excellent service. When I asked for the check, he said he’d bought my lunch. It floored me. A 32-year-old father of six, struggling to keep his phone turned on, paying for my lunch—me, a guy with a Rolex and enough privilege to unicycle across America.

That generosity hit hard. I’ve seen that kind of selflessness over and over—especially from people with the very least. Today I was at a convenience store where they tried to buy my lunch again. The generosity of these people is astounding.

I offered to buy anything from him and left a very good tip. Hopefully he got his phone reconnected—and didn’t give the money to the next guy who didn’t need it. Please watch this respectfully.

I was charged up, headed east again to get to Richlands, Virginia. I had accidentally entered that I was a bicycle in Google Maps, and it routed me on a Mr. Toad's wild ride through 60 miles of steep, winding, one-and-a-half-lane roads through hollers. It was a scene like I had never seen before. Unlike eastern Kentucky, the terrain here was made up of steep, heavily forested ridges—canyons, really, though that’s not quite the right word. At the bottom of each was generally a small creek, and in the narrow swath on either side of the road sat clusters of small houses and trailers. Some of the structures reminded me of what I’ve seen in Guatemala.

Once you enter the maze of hollers that make up eastern West Virginia, you're left with more questions than answers. There is no retail. Where do people buy stuff? There is no visible industry. Where do people work? There’s no cell service. How do people communicate? Some of the structures look like they've been there for centuries. Many had people sitting on the porch, watching the occasional drive-by. Some houses were well cared for. Others looked like a trash truck had dumped its load in the front yard. Some looked like they never threw anything away—just moved it to the porch or the lawn. Cars and car parts, trucks, random metal scraps, children’s toys, walkers—just strewn about their small property.

*American squatters in an abandoned building*

The valley’s beauty was spectacular, but the poverty was stifling. All I could ask myself was: How long have their families lived in this area? What keeps them here when there are no jobs? Where do they get fresh food? Very few had enough land for a garden. Were they staying to take care of aging parents or grandparents?

I spoke with a couple of people, and they warned me: Be careful on the roads. Watch out for the meth heads. They said they were everywhere.

The hills were more brutal than anything I'd ridden so far, and my battery was getting low. The sun was setting, and I needed to find an outlet. But I struggled with the idea of bothering one of these folks—who had so little—to ask to charge my unicycle. How do you explain that you're traveling across the U.S. on a unicycle, without an agenda, just looking for meaning? I'd shoot me if I were one of them. Seriously. Knowing them, they probably offer me money and food.

Eventually, I found a volunteer fire department that wasn’t occupied but had a bench out front and an outdoor outlet. I opened the outlet cover and found the hide-a-key for the station. I didn’t use it, but I did think about how nice it would be to get out of the cold while charging. I called my friend Skip and we joked around. He asked where I was staying that night. I said I’d called around—there was nowhere to stay in Richlands. Skip said, “Let’s find you something.” And he did. Once again, someone else pulled me out of trouble.

The hotel he found was 20 miles away. I was cold and exhausted, but I took off. Unfortunately, it was now pitch dark and deer were popping into the road at nearly every corner. The road was single lane and as dark as the inside of a cow. Because I had accidentally told Google I was a bike, it tried to route me down a gated dirt path. There was no “No Trespassing” sign, so I started down it—figured I had no other choice. No cell connection, so if I re-routed, I’d be flying blind.

Luckily, it dead-ended. I turned around and let the Force be with me. After about five miles, my GPS kicked back in. I rode another 45 minutes in the dark, dodging deer and other critters. I got to the hotel around 11:30.

I’ve started blog posts that late before, but I just couldn’t. I didn’t know how to process what I’d seen. Sure, you could make fun of how backwards the area seemed, how much of a mess it was—but these are Americans. And for those with a religious leaning, all God’s children.

After riding through those hollers, I felt like a voyeur in someone else’s human tragedy. I felt guilty filming. I saw a lot of kids standing around in yards filled with squalor and rusted tin-roof shacks. What will their lives be like? Will they be stuck in the same holler, taking care of their Meemaw and Peepaw?

At one point, coal was the thing. You could dig it. But judging by what I saw, even when coal was there, people were barely surviving. Now with coal going away, what do you do with folks who only know how to dig it?

I passed a few schools scattered in the hills. They looked beat down. Their athletic fields were unusable. In the afternoon, I saw a surprising number of working-age men and women just sitting around on porches. Unlike Hazel Green, there was no farmland to work. I saw almost no gardens.

When you talk to many folks here, the vernacular is so strong it’s hard to understand. In many rural communities, companies have set up call centers to provide work-from-home jobs. That wouldn’t be possible for many people here.

This region has always been poor. Maybe some would say just write it off. But the problem is, people without hope or education are easy pickings for anyone with a simple message: “Bring back coal.” “It’s the immigrants taking your job.”

The only industries I saw were a single lumber operation and one mountaintop removal coal mine. Mountaintop removal mining is a form of surface mining where the top of a mountain is blasted off to access underlying coal seams. It’s cheaper and faster than underground mining, but it permanently scars the landscape and devastates ecosystems.

Beyond that, I saw a couple of Family Dollar stores and people selling old stuff off card tables in their front yards—rabbits, chickens, and everything from used shoes to toys. Even in Inez, home of Pawn Stars of Inez, folks were selling strange assortments of things from the trunks of their cars, laid out in empty parking lots.

If I were my friend’s brother-in-law, the Governor of West Virginia, I wouldn’t know what to do. How can any political leader in this region be against big coal when the alternative is squalor and meth?

I know a lot of attention and funding goes toward addressing urban poverty. The military has long been a path out for many of the people in these hollers. But is putting your life on the line really the only option to escape this prison of poverty?

Years ago, my wife and I did a bike trip from Saigon to Hanoi. We stopped at a guys house who had fought for the Viet Cong. At one point, one song was played.

We heard the same song enthusiastically played by the staff of our dive boat when we were Indonesia two months ago. It seem seems like the world all knows knows about West Virginia.

West Virginia is more than a subject for the worlds beloved song. It is a place filled with stupidly generous people facing a problem. It is an American problem.

P.S: When I was finishing writing this in a Starbucks in Blacksburg, VA, I got a call from Joe Bowen. During the call some how my dog stealing relatives came up and he suggested that I should find out where they were from. Guess what, about 30 miles from Hazel Green. I did notice they had some nice looking dogs around there.

https://www.appalachianhistory.net/2018/11/maupins-walkers-and-tennessee-lead.html

Country Roads

Stand with California

Seeing Hazel Green