{"id":98245,"date":"2016-05-17T11:28:37","date_gmt":"2016-05-17T15:28:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=98245"},"modified":"2016-05-17T18:20:19","modified_gmt":"2016-05-17T22:20:19","slug":"letter-from-west-virginia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/17\/letter-from-west-virginia\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter from West Virginia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"GregNull_OldBlue\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cA newspaper for people who can\u2019t read, edited by an editor who can\u2019t write\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jim Comstock (1911\u201396) was the iconoclastic editor of the\u00a0West Virginia Hillbilly<\/a><\/em>, a \u201cweakly\u201d paper based in Richwood, a former logging boomtown in Nicholas County fallen on hard times. I spent the first years of my life over the mountain from Richwood, where Jim\u2019s stunts were much discussed. The Hillbilly <\/em>wasn\u2019t just a paper\u2014it was an art project, a platform for historic preservation, a conservative wailing wall, and, above all, an exploration of the West Virginian id. Once, in early spring, Jim famously added \u201cramp oil\u201d to the ink at the printing press, a tribute to Richwood\u2019s Feast of the Ramson, which celebrates the wild leeks that sprout in the mountains after a hard winter. They give off a terrible stench. Warehouses full of mailmen were made to gag. To his delight, Jim received a stern rebuke from the postmaster general. \u201cNow we\u2019re the only newspaper under orders from the federal government not to smell bad,\u201d Jim told the Associated Press. \u201cThat\u2019s an awful thing to do to a striving newspaper.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Hillbilly<\/em>, brimming with social and political commentary, was governed by a prankster spirit. Mocking the do-it-yourself craze of the seventies, Jim printed an ad for a remove-your-own-appendix kit and received serious inquiries from as far away as Britain. He featured letters, probably faked, from concerned lady readers who thought he should change the paper\u2019s name to the\u00a0Mountain William<\/em>. When the Kinsey Report came out, Jim measured its veracity by polling the female population of Richwood, door-to-door. And he published unsigned vignettes such as this one, titled \u201cA Boy\u2019s Best Friend Is His Mother\u201d:<\/p>\n

\n

A man from the city stopped his car real fast in front of a mountain shack and ran into the yard to stop a young fellow who was beating his ma. He pulled him off the old lady and asked him why he would do a thing like that. And the young fellow said it was because she was fixin\u2019 to wean him, that\u2019s why.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Jim has been one of the few to capture West Virginia\u2019s humor\u2014absurd, fatalistic\u2014in print. His politics were terrifying\u2014he loathed the New Deal and opposed new mining safety regulations on the grounds they were burdensome to small coal operators\u2014but he had a point when he remarked that West Virginians never felt impoverished or backward until the outside world told us about our depravity. \u201cOne nice thing for West Virginia,\u201d he wrote, \u201cis that when all the interstates go through, traveling newspapermen and magazine writers won\u2019t be able to see a thing.\u201d He loved nothing more than tweaking the elite\u2014Senator Rockefeller (whom he accused of speaking \u201clike a leaky bee-tree\u201d), the national press that misunderstood his \u201csatirese,\u201d and the drive-by politicians who appeared every four years to kiss babies.<\/p>\n

Jim had the look of a Presbyterian elder\u2014lean, puckered, with thinning white hair and undertaker suits. You won\u2019t find a picture of him smiling. A tight-fisted child of the Depression and a former teacher at Richwood High, he was an unlikely newspaperman, but not an ineffective one: even with its precarious finances, the Hillbilly <\/em>survived for decades, with Jim and his prot\u00e9g\u00e9, Bronson McClung, raising hell week in, week out. To raise money, Jim offered the first subscribers twenty-five year subscriptions for twenty-five dollars apiece. At its height, circulation reached thirty thousand, with many subscribers out of state or abroad. Of Richwood\u2019s three thousand residents, Jim claimed, only nineteen held subscriptions.<\/p>\n

\u201cJim Comstock had two papers,\u201d my dad\u2019s old law partner, Steve Davis, for many years the chairman of the Nicholas County Democrats, wrote to me:<\/p>\n

\n

The Richwood News Leader<\/em> for money and the\u00a0West Virginia Hillbilly<\/em> for fun and money. Back in the day, the law required that each county or judicial circuit post certain legal ads in newspapers of opposite politics. So Jim and Bronson McClung\u2019s News Leader<\/em> was the Republican paper and the Nicholas County Chronicle<\/em> was the Democrat paper \u2026 You are from a small town so you well know you have to have moral courage or suffer from narcissism to write anything meaningful in a small-town paper. Jim did and was not the most popular guy in the county. He ran for Congress one time and didn\u2019t even carry his home precinct. Over a few decades of writing and editing you manage to offend everyone in town or, at least, their relatives. \u00a0As you know feuding is a strong point and forgiveness is a weak point of [West Virginians] \u2026 The weak give in and just print baby pictures and obituaries.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

About that run: imagine southern West Virginia circa 1964, when it was dense with union coal miners and yellow-dog Democrats. Republicans were scarce, and Jim was of the cranky, sharp-tongued variety that political isolation breeds. His tongue-in-cheek campaign included a platform against the institution of motherhood, since \u201crelief agencies encourage unmarried females to become mothers to get a dole.\u201d He drowned in the predictable landslide. A few years earlier, he\u2019d penned a satiric article during the 1960 primary election between Hubert Humphrey and JFK called PA WON\u2019T SELL HIS VOTE TO NO CATHOLIC!<\/small>, a comment on the open secret that Joe Kennedy was pouring money into West Virginia sheriff\u2019s departments to buy votes. The New York Herald Tribune <\/em>picked it up as fact in a piece about West Virginia\u2019s anti-Catholic bias. Later, a slick New York magazine referred to the Hillbilly<\/em> as a \u201csophisticated\u201d newspaper. Jim demanded a retraction.<\/p>\n

And yet he was a true believer in West Virginia. He pushed to save Pearl S. Buck\u2019s homeplace and other historic buildings; when Richwood\u2019s clothespin factory was set to close because of foreign competition, he called on every politician he knew in an attempt to save it, despite his free-market ways; he organized nature walks to see the rare arctic plants of Cranberry Glades, now a protected botanical area. Most important, he channeled the existence of those West Virginians who had \u201cdonned shoes,\u201d as he would say, who had gone to college and wriggled above our station to become country lawyers and newspaper writers, dentists and nurses, bureaucrats and mine engineers\u2014no longer the redneck proletariat but not quite ruling class. We straddled both worlds, enjoying our brick homes and security but never quite sure where we fit into the scheme, so we laughed at ourselves, which was acceptable. We were too sophisticated for the holler up Hominy Creek, but Yankees still laughed at us, no matter how much they coveted our electoral votes and our cheap coal.<\/p>\n

\"HillbillySubscription\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Painter<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some old-timers are still pissed off about Jim\u2019s most elaborate caper, but it must be recorded for posterity. As in all West Virginia tales, there are conflicting versions of what happened, but all involve the \u201cpainter\u201d (aka panther, mountain lion, cougar), that roamed the West Virginia mountains until the late nineteenth century, when it was extirpated under the bounty system. But rumors of its existence have persisted. It is our yeti. The editor of the neighboring county\u2019s paper, a Hillbilly<\/em> rival, was particularly vocal in his claims that \u201cthe painter still walked these hills.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Jim was a realist, and painter fantasies were not for him. One day he received a visit from a man involved with a pathetic little zoo, soon to be shuttered, and he had a panther. If a buyer didn\u2019t turn up, he was going to have it put to sleep. The gears began to turn. Jim called up a local mountain man and told him about the situation, working the angle that this marvelous beast must live on, and besides, wasn\u2019t the volunteer fire department\u2014of which the trapper was a charter member\u2014short on cash?<\/p>\n

They brokered the panther\u2019s sale, and the mountain man put it in a cage on Kennison Mountain. That afternoon, Jim brought several men to see it. The news nearly tore the town in two. The Kennison Mountain panther was put on display at the firehouse, and they charged admission for a quarter.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the same one broke into my chicken coop!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt run cross the highway last year, but I didn\u2019t want to tell nobody! None of you would have believed me!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI almost shot it in deer season. I didn\u2019t pull the trigger.\u201d<\/p>\n

When word got out that it was all a fake, there was much gnashing of teeth and rending of hair, and even worse. My source tells me, \u201cWhen a fellow is laughed at enough, he will strike out \u2026 The local dentists and sawbones made a lot of money off the fights that occurred \u2026 It\u2019s still a very sensitive topic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jim was always pulled between civic engagement and \u201cpure devilment,\u201d as my grandma would say. He embarrassed everyone, yes, but at least that Richwood fire truck would keep on shining.<\/p>\n

Jim, the archconservative, arranged for the panther to live out its retirement at French Creek Game Farm, a state-run zoo.<\/p>\n

\"PantherStory-1024x812\"<\/a>

\u201cThe Kennison Mountain panther was put on display at the firehouse, and they charged admission for a quarter.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Case of Old Blue<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the early eighties, my dad and his law partner, the aforementioned Steve Davis, got sewn up in some hard-hitting journalism courtesy of the Hillbilly. <\/em>A law firm is a moneymaking proposition, but to my dad\u2019s chagrin, Steve would sometimes take up cases that could be classified as entertainment. My dad was out when an angry hunter appeared. He had bought a defective coon dog.<\/p>\n

\u201cGuy told me it run straight coon,\u201d he said. \u201cHell, it run off chasing deer every night!\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, a well-trained hound is a pricey thing. Even then, one could demand a couple thousand dollars. You wanted one that ran \u201cstraight coon,\u201d so it wouldn\u2019t lead you after foxes, deer, and other undesirables in the night. Steve asked to see the dog, and by the time my dad returned, it was too late. The firm of Breckenridge, Davis, Null, & Sproles had taken on the Case of Old Blue.<\/p>\n

There was no written contract, but the client had purchased Old Blue for three hundred dollars and a good pump shotgun. After a few botched hunts and frustrating nights, the client had gone to the coon-dog impresario and demanded his money back, as well as his gun. Let the buyer beware, said the impresario. Besides, the money had already been spent.<\/p>\n

Inevitably, the Hillbilly<\/em> was out in force at the Nicholas County Courthouse on the day of Old Blue\u2019s trial. Here I include a picture of the proceedings. You can see the bailiff leading Old Blue in front of the counsel\u2014Steve and my dad, who has much hair and is despairing that his legal career has taken such a turn.<\/p>\n

The magistrate found all this entertaining, until Old Blue, being displayed to the jury, paused to piss on the base of the flag. The magistrate was perturbed not so much by the hound\u2019s sedition but by the circumstances: it was a new courtroom with good carpeting.<\/p>\n

Steve called local good ol\u2019 boy Clennie Workman as a character witness for Old Blue. The buyer had also complained that Old Blue wouldn\u2019t bark, and of course a man can\u2019t follow a nonbarking hound through the night. Clennie, a hunter of great renown, took the stand and claimed the impresario had \u201cwhooped the bark out of it.\u201d Well! Much jumping up and shouting then. The bailiff had to calm the place down. A man had been impugned as a dog abuser.<\/p>\n

In the end, partly in thanks to Clennie Workman\u2019s reputation as a man who knows a good dog when he sees one, the magistrate found in favor of the buyer, though it was a partial victory: he was refunded the gun but not the money, and the impresario took back Old Blue. No one was pleased\u2014except the reporter from the Hillbilly, <\/em>who had documented the trial with the vigor of the Post<\/em> covering Watergate. In the Winter 2000 issue of the state publication Goldenseal<\/em>, Clennie Workman mentions the case as one of the highlights of a life spent among hounds. The article is titled STRAIGHT TALK ON COON DOGS<\/small>. Steve tells me,<\/p>\n

\n

I saw him not long afterward at the Go Mart. He was driving a little VW Beetle. I complimented him on his expertise in dog flesh. He said, \u201cOh, I got a top notch coon dog now.\u201d He popped the hood and this big hound was laying all squished down in the VW trunk in front. After a little admiration and relief for the dog, he slammed the hood down again.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Matthew Neill Null is a writer from West Virginia, a graduate of the Iowa Writers\u2019 Workshop, and a winner of the O. Henry Award, the Mary McCarthy Prize, and the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is author of the novel\u00a0<\/em>Honey from the Lion<\/a>\u00a0and the recently released collection\u00a0<\/em>Allegheny Front<\/a>.\u00a0Next year he’ll be in residence at the American Academy in Rome.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cA newspaper for people who can\u2019t read, edited by an editor who can\u2019t write\u201d Jim Comstock (1911\u201396) was the iconoclastic editor of the\u00a0West Virginia Hillbilly, a \u201cweakly\u201d paper based in Richwood, a former logging boomtown in Nicholas County fallen on hard times. I spent the first years of my life over the mountain from Richwood, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":880,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4393],"tags":[22399,22393,11292,22394,9627,22390,17494,22396,22392,22395,22143,9685,22397,2754,22391,2426,9691,22398,20924,22389],"class_list":["post-98245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person","tag-bronson-mcclung","tag-clennie-workman","tag-congress","tag-coon-dogs","tag-hillbilly","tag-hound-dogs","tag-hunting","tag-jim-comstock","tag-kennison-mountain-panther","tag-local-papers","tag-matthew-neill-null","tag-media","tag-old-blue","tag-painter","tag-panther","tag-politics","tag-pranks","tag-steve-davis","tag-west-virginia","tag-west-virginia-hillbilly"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nJim Comstock\u2019s \u201cWest Virginia Hillbilly,\u201d A Newspaper for 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