The Roanoker - July/August 2014 - 42

"It all spelled home to me. I had
more children. I wrote articles. I
did Good Works in a town that
relied on Good Works for its
survival. I was part of this town,
and the town was part of me."
Clockwise from top left:
The Masonic Amphitheater
in Clifton Forge was
designed and built by
students in the Virginia
Tech Design/Build program
and opened in 2012; the
Virginia Highlands Pipe and
Drums performed at the
July 4th celebration which
ended with a magnificent
fireworks display; the C&O
614 steam locomotive
is on display at the C&O
Heritage Center in Clifton
Forge.

42 JULY/AUGUST 2014

there was a community college. A collection of young
professional families with lots of kids. A Leggett department store. Upscale men's, women's, and men's
clothing shops. A tony French restaurant run by a
former White House pastry chef. There was a furniture store and a movie theater and two grocery stores.
There was a Beaux-Arts post office and a city school
system. A library.
And the mountains. The trains.
It all spelled home to me. I had more children. I
wrote articles. I did Good Works in a town that relied
on Good Works for its survival. I was part of this
town, and the town was part of me.
In the mid 1980s, the C&O began moving its diesel shops from Clifton Forge to Huntington, W.Va.
And things changed. One by one, the young families
left. The stores closed, and the paint began to peel. I
am guessing that the people who came off the interstate looking for gas or food in town were most likely
thinking that they were mighty glad they didn't live
here.
Then there was the Kim-Stan Landfill, on the edge
of town. Built by a former stripminer from Norton
and a local partner, the landfill grew deep and wide

on a site riddled with underground springs near the
Jackson River. On bad days, more than a hundred
semis loaded with garbage from Northeastern cities
rolled through the chainlink Kim-Stan gates. There
was not a single thing good about the landfill, and
the battlelines were drawn in indelible ink. I took my
three children and joined the pickets across the road
from the dump. It was invasion, pure and simple, and
when your home turf is invaded, there's not much to
do but fight . . . and write.
I TELL MYSELF THAT IT WAS NECESSARY for
me to leave Clifton Forge in 1990...that I never would
have written my first novel, "Solitary Places," if I had
stayed. On my youngest child's first day of kindergarten, I sat down in Roanoke and began to write the
story of the people and place I'd left behind.
I'd planned to write a nonfiction book, a southern
version of Jonathan Harr's "A Civil Action." The story
of penny ante environmental villains against smalltown activists trying to save their place, their lives.
What I found was that it wasn't the legal battles that
needed to be chronicled - it was the lives of people,
and the survival of a town that needed to be told.
THE

R OANOKER.COM

http://www.THEROANOKER.COM

The Roanoker - July/August 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Roanoker - July/August 2014