As I have mentioned before, I spend any time I can at our lake house in my home state of West Virginia.  After we purchased this house eight years ago, I realized that novelist Thomas Wolfe was wrong, you can go home again.  I tell friends I exhaled for the first time in thirty years the day we signed the contract. These mountains are in my bones and this is the land of my people. I have always felt like a bit of a visitor living in the flatlands of the Midwest.

You see, West Virginians are fiercely loyal–to each other and their state. In fact, more West Virginians return to their home state to be buried than any other state in the union. The joke they tell here is the one where St. Peter is escorting a soul through heaven and is asked why there is a section that is walled-off. He replies: “Oh, that’s where we put the West Virginians. Otherwise they try to go back home on the weekend.” I don’t know a West Virginian on earth that doesn’t tear up, stand up or dance it up at the sound of the state’s now official state song, “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

Because of our mountains and sparse population, West Virginia is somewhat of an enigma to the rest of the country. And beauty is, West Virginians don’t really care. They like their state overlooked and underappreciated.  Leaves more room for them to live as they please.

As a whole, Mountaineers are completely uninhibited and comfortable in their own skins. If you ask a West Virginian for the time, they will tell you their name, their kids’ names, what they had for breakfast, their mother’s maiden name and how long the neighbor’s dog barked last night. And maybe get around to finally looking at their watch.

Unlike some other states that think pretty highly of themselves–California, New York, Texas, California–West Virginia doesn’t take itself that seriously. There is an unexpected candor and lack of pretense among West Virginians not often found in adults.

I was standing by the dryer sheets in Kroger recently and this voice beside me launched into an explanation of the many uses of Bounce, least important putting it in a dryer.  She said she had wasps on her back porch and she nailed dryer sheets all over her screen door and not only did the wasps disappear, the bees did, too. I was afraid to ask her where she had hung her Tide.

I actually found out later this a valid use of dryer sheets and had one friend tell me her allergist told her to keep them in her purse and car close to her allergic son’s epipen. Good sound horse sense and an unaffected ability and desire to share it with others. That’s a West Virginian.

My housekeeper, Trina, and her husband, Dean, told me that they were in Walmart last week in the ladies’ intimate apparel department. A lady engaged Trina in conversation beside the underwear, or “drawers” as Trina calls them. The woman said she had the hardest time finding the right size in stores. In fact, she told Trina, “I’m wearin’ my daughter’s bikini underwear right now.” “Why would I want to know what her underwear looked like?” Trina asked me as Dean added, “If she ain’t been so ugly, I would’ve asked her to seen ’em.”

Trina smacked his self-tattooed wrist (with her initials, by the way) and giggled. She cleans houses and he mines coal, both for 36 years.  One of the best marriages I know.

Many West Virginians are connected in some way by their shared livelihood, coal.  Whether you own it, mine it or cart it away, coal mining touches most families in the state. The mean income per capita and per household in West Virginia both rank forty-ninth out of our fifty states, with averages hovering around $22,000 to $38,000 per year over the last ten years.  Only Mississippi ranks lower on both counts. With this sort of struggle in its residents to stay afloat, one might suspect an “every man for himself” mentality when, in fact, it is quite the opposite. There is a common bond to keep their coal industry, and their beloved mountains that hold it, alive.

I was checking out at Walgreens and when the check out girl asked me if I had any coupons. I said I did not, lowering my eyes and thinking about what a lazy, spoiled person I am. With that she pulled out a black, plastic-lidded box with index card dividers delineating products. Shuffling through, she pulled one out and said brightly, “Here’s one for your razor blades.  And here’s another one for those batteries.” “Where do you get those I asked?” as she continued gliding her blue polka dot fingernails across the tabs. “A lot of the time I cut them out of the Sunday paper to bring to work. Just to help people out,” she replied.  She was all of 25.  I exited saving $7.00 as she waved me off with a smile.

In it together.

I suspect some of this unity is derived from the fact that West Virginia was the first, last and only state ever granted the right to secede from another state.  Passionately divided by northern and southern viewpoints during the Civil War, President Lincoln allowed western Virginia to separate from Virginia to become a new state, West Virginia. Something he safeguarded in the young nation’s Constitution to never be allowed again.

And so we were free.  Free to be the wild, wonderful state that we are.  A beautiful mountainous state with bountiful natural resources–the least of which is its people.

And I’m damn proud to be one.