Jim Walker: Travel combined with political commentary - is it possible?

I woke up this morning and headed to Ritter Park here in Huntington, West Virginia for my usual four mile walk up and down hills, and then to the Marshall University Recreation Center, there to lift weights for an hour and a half.  All the while I was thinking about how I could write a travel column and at the same time offer political commentary that can somehow blend together cogently?

Ritter Park Flower Gardens – Huntington, West Virginia

First let me say that giving up my summer hiking in Montana to visit my home town of Huntington/Barboursville, and the state of West Virginia, for what is probably the last time was not easy.  I love Montana, I love hiking it’s mountains, I love fly fishing it’s streams and I love skiing Montana.  But, I will be back in Whitefish, Montana in September for the last few hikes in Glacier National Park, and maybe a wilderness horseback ride, before the weather sets in and the fall winds blow. 

I will begin with West Virginia. 

My little town that I grew up near on a farm prior to entering high school is Barboursville.  Barboursville is 200 years old this year having been founded in 1813.  To bring that into perspective, Ohio was not made safe for the White Man until one of the last battles of the War of 1812.  On October 13 of 1812,Tecumseh was killed at the Battle of the Thames.  With the great Shawnee’s death, Ohio and Western West Virginia was pacified completely, and Barboursville (then Virginia) was born.  The two were not necessary connected but never-the-less concurrent events.

In Tecumseh’s defense, he was a brilliant leader and commander, but the British were retreating into Canada at the time and the British Army had abandoned him at the Battle of the Thames.  Just a month prior on the morning of 10 September 1813, the American Navy on Lake Erie under the command of Oliver Hazard Perry met the British Navy at Put-in-Bay, Ohio and defeated them handily, reducing the British fleet to hulks.  The British were seeing the handwriting on the wall at that point.

As a travel note, “Put-in-Bay” at Port Clinton, Ohio is the Walleye capital of the world and if you like fishing and a great fish to eat, go there sometime during the first week of June.  It was one of my favorite “father & son” vacations of my life, and we caught a ton of fish to boot.  See – I got travel into that historical episode. 

What’s so special about Barboursville, West Virginia? 

After 200 years not much has changed.  The town is still clean.  There are no ghettos.  The homes are old but well painted and well maintained.  Welfare recipients with food stamps aren’t lined up at the grocery stores buying luxury goods with taxpayer money in Barboursville.  There are no homeless people on the streets, no one standing on street corners with nothing to do.  It is the America we once knew where no one complains about their lot in life, just works hard, and are self-reliant. 

It is what we wish America still was – but will never be again.

Barboursville is my headquarters for the summer while in West Virginia.

Last week I drove two and one-half hours to the east in West Virginia to another remarkable and small West Virginia town worthy of mention.  Lewisburg, West Virginia was first settled in 1751 but was formally established in 1782.  Home of magnificent architecture, including an Andrew Carnegie endowed structure used as a theater and art gallery, Lewisburg is pristine in look and is also devoid of ghetto creep (there is none) with well maintained homes and building throughout. 

Carnegie Hall – Lewisburg, West Virginia

Amazingly this self-reliant community has over the years seen two major educational facilities close; a major military prep school called Greenbrier Military Academy and The Greenbrier College, a well known woman’s college – all with no loss or degradation of the properties.  Each has been converted to quality uses, one as a medical college and one as a community college, and the buildings maintained as originally designed. 

Lewisburg is the site of “The Battle of Lewisburg”, a civil war battle, fought right in the town.  A cemetery devoted to the Confederate dead is located on top of the hill overlooking the city.  Although part of West Virginia today, Lewisburg was part of Virginia until 1863, and was a mostly Confederate stronghold during the war between the states. 

Again, as in Barboursville, you won’t find whiners, people looking for government handouts, welfare, food stamps, ghettos, people standing on street corners with nothing to do, or homeless people in Lewisburg, West Virginia. 

It is also the America we once knew, the one that will never be again!

North House in Lewisburg, West Virginia – guests watched the Battle of Lewisburg during civil war from portico! 

Right next door to Lewisburg is a cathedral of capitalism, the “Greenbrier Hotel” located in White Sulpher Springs, West Virginia.  You really have to see it to believe it.  It is a city in itself built within a Hotel.  It is the site of “The Greenbrier Classic” a PGA Tour event scheduled for the first week of July.  It is a must visit to walk the grounds, check out the shops, and for sure the AMTRAC Station which is a Christmas Store year around.

http://www.greenbrierclassic.com/

I said the Greenbrier is a cathedral of capitalism.  Built by the C&O Railroad and most recently owned by CSX, it was not doing well financially for many years.  Private enterprise stepped in the form of Jim Justice, a coal mining entrepreneur, who bought the hotel and “walla” the rest is history.  No government bailouts, no union payoffs by Obama, no under the table deals with bureaucrats; just old fashion American ingenuity, hard work, and capitalism. 

The Greenbrier Hotel – White Sulpher Springs, West Virginia

If you want extreme beauty, pampering with the southern touch and to see an America as we used to be, visit Lewisburg and the Greenbrier Hotel; you won’t be disappointed. 

Well, I said it might be tough to combine travel with political commentary, but I tried.  Trust me, over the last two weeks I have visited several towns that harkened back to a more self-sufficient America where people do not look to government for their every need.  But I also spent four days in Washington, D.C. and witnessed the enormity of the Federal Government with it’s voluminous unnecessary federal departments.  Departments filled with overpaid bureaucrats, staffed with millions of union employees in self-perpetuating positions, all sucking up hard working taxpayer’s money for no good reason. 

BUT FOR TODAY AT LEAST, I AM REVELING IN THE FACT THAT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA, OUR DICTATOR, IS IN AFRICA.  I CAN SMILE AT LEAST UNTIL HE COMES BACK TO LORD HIS GREATNESS OVER US IN HIS INDEPENDENCE DAY PHOTO OPS; THE SAME INDEPENDENCE THAT HE APOLOGIZED FOR IN EGYPT IN 2009, AND DISGRACEFULLY SO, IN THE NAMES OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

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