Sidetracked Charley

I found myself thinking of Elkins, West Virginia this week. Elkins was just a sidetrack in my life but it is a recurring theme. For instance this blog is titled Sidetracked Charley probably due to Elkins. I was living and working in Washington, DC. Home was 604 A street NE and I worked in the New Senate Office Building (New SOB for short). I was a mountain girl trying to work through the system for political change. Off hours I marched for peace (Vietnam war), saving the mini skirt (our right as women to chose our fashions) and the ERA (Equal Rights for Women which we never got). When I got sick of politics and homesick for mountains like Heidi I went to the Monongahela National Forest just outside Elkins, West Virgina. The ability to climb a mountain and see for miles did a lot for my homesickness and urban claustrophobia but it rains a lot in the Blue Ridge Mountains of West Virginia. And even when it isn't raining the mists make you feel wet. Instead of doing a lot of h...

The history of my area is a lot of things that might have happened. There was a lot of mining here but never the mother lode. Lots of ranching here but no easy way to get the cattle to market. Lots of outlaws here like Black Jack Ketchum and Bat Masterson but none of them died here. Just killed others here. And for years when the mining and the ranching was going at full tilt there were talks of railroads to get ore to grinding mills and cattle to slaughter. The closest trains got were Ute Park to the East and the Denver and Rio Grande to the east. The spur connecting the two never materialized though there was a huge double wide tunnel built just 20 miles from here so the trains could make it through the Cimarron canyon. The Texas cattlemen were heavily behind this train because it would allow them to ship their cattle up to greener summer pastures and back to winter feed lots with greater efficiency. That now happens with cattle trailers and semi-tractor rigs. In may we will see the...