The following was written by my late wife Elaine. She wrote a long book, a diary really, from which this is one passage:
One day I was in the steel building, surrounded by a confusion of boxes and furniture, enjoying playing my Steinert piano for the first time in several weeks. Unknown to me, Charlie and Madeline Kidd had driven up for a neighborly hello visit – the first visit of a very special friendship – and were standing in the doorway.
I’m sure they were the ones who got word to their church that there was a new piano player in town. More about that, later.
Anyway, it was a couple years before we had everything in the Stran building sorted out, and everything in the little red house moved up into the new house.
When the house was finished enough for us to move “to the top” around Thanksgiving 1977, mud season was beginning and we couldn’t move the trailer out of the valley until the ground dried up in late spring of 1978. A neighbor hauled it out then, and we sold it to someone in the area and got our $1500, and more, back out of it.
What I worried about the most that summer was that Jonathan’s senior year would begin in the fall, and it didn’t seem fair to move him at that time, although he did have an offer to live with friends in Warrenton if he chose to finish his senior year at Fauquier High school. The biggest drawback to that, which Dave and I kept to ourselves, because this had to be Jonathan’s own decision, was that if he stayed in Warrenton, he wouldn’t have a real home, in a way; we’d all be gone from Warrenton, and he might feel like a stranger here in Union.
He decided to stay and see how it all felt by the end of the summer, and would make up his mind then whether to return to Warrenton.
Jonathan always makes sensible decisions. (Another disadvantage of returning to Fauquier was that the high school halls were so crowded already because of Warrenton’s growth that students had to go outside and around the building to the entrance nearest to their next class.) If Jonathan had wanted to return to Fauquier, though, I realized that the fast-growing crowding would not stop a teenager from going back, if that was going to be his decision.
The children all felt at home here, and liked the smaller schools, and they easily made friends. Kids are nice here. Warrenton had its share of “Snoots” – kids and adults both – and in 25 years I haven’t come across any snoots in Union. What a relief! We read in The Monroe Watchman that the Senior band at Union High School was going to meet for practices in the summer, and Jonathan, an excellent trumpet player, signed up for that.
He kept in touch with his friends in Warrenton, and met a lot of nice kids here, too. He liked the small school very much and decided to stay here for the 12th grade.
To be continued…
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About the Author: RD Blakeslee is a nonagenarian in West Virginia who built his net worth by only investing in that which can be enjoyed during acquisition and throughout life, as opposed to papers in a drawer, like stocks and bonds. You can read more about him here.
Photos: Courtesy of the Blakeslee Family
Not what the “conventional wisdom” (i.e. “progressive” stereotype) would have you believe about contemporary West Virginia.