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gone too? Where is Raven? I wonder as I leave Richlands. Where is Red Jacket? And what was the name of that big company town with the large houses over in the bottom by the river? Deel! What has happened to Deel? To Vansant? All the outlying communities seem to have disappeared as I approach Grundy. Signs read WE BUY GOLD AND SILVER now, instead of WE BUY GINSENG. Sleek metal coal trucks have replaced the old self-owned and decorated trucks with personal signs like DON’T LAUGH, IT’S PAID FOR and names like “Tennessee Stud.” The coal company offices have disappeared or been turned into “energy” companies, i.e., gas, with Consol Energy predominating. I note several locations. The coke ovens are burning again, but now run by SUNCOKE ENERGY, JEWELL OPERATIONS , a sign proclaims. The former bowling alley is a well-drilling business. Big pipes for pipelines lie in stacks everywhere. At Oakwood, the old Garden High School has become the new Appalachian College of Pharmacy, and there’s the impressive Twin Valley Middle School, too.
    The closer I get to Grundy, the heavier the traffic is; we crawl along bumper to bumper on the newly widened and raised Rt. 460, which is still under construction. Huge machines lift red dirt and rocks into huge trucks; dust fills the air. My old neighborhood, Cowtown, looks totally shocking. Only my own house has not been raised up to the level of the new highway (it can’t be, I later learn, due to its frame construction). It looks fragile and dingy, so much older and smaller and lower than the other houses, each of them sitting up on its own divot of earth, like toy houses set up on stands for display. At the end of the driveway behind “my” house, I catch sight of the last incarnation of my writing house, poised on the riverbank with a glint of the river behind. The mountainside across 460 where we used to run so wild and free has been sheared off, a red wound with rock at the top.
    Finally the traffic crawls around the bend of the Levisa to Hoot Owl Holler, filled with personal meaning for me as the setting for my novel
Oral History
. A new green road sign reading POPLAR GAP PARK, FOURTEEN MILES points across the Levisa River Bridge and up the mountain, where a large mesa created by mountaintop removal mining has now—in a brilliant stroke of public relations—been turned into a public park. It boasts picnic facilities, athletic fields, playgrounds, tennis courts, and the state-of-the-art Consol Energy Stage for large events such as concerts. Sunsets viewed from atop Poplar Gap are said to be spectacular. Operated by the county, the park was much needed and is heavily used for everything from the “Race for the Cure Relay” to fireworks and horse shows. I have been reading about it in
The Virginia Mountaineer
, to which I have always subscribed.
    Slowly I pass the attractive Comfort Inn at the bend of the river, a new Italian restaurant, and the 24-hour Waffle Shop. I don’t check into the Comfort Inn yet, afraid that with all this traffic, I won’t have time to see “the new Grundy” before my program begins at the library. There’s only the one road, route 460, to get anyplace. Finally the traffic inches down the hill and Walmart comes into view, a behemoth on its big flat lot. It is enormous! Any letter on its sign WALMART is taller than any of the tractor-trailer trucks bringing it merchandise. It looks more like a huge alien spacecraft than like a building. Traffic flows across its bridges, a steady stream in and out of it, back and forth from town, which is still a construction site, though the existing stores and buildings on Maple Street and the courthouse area are busy. The sidewalks are thronged with people, all kinds of people! I don’t see one single person that I know. Finally I find a parking place in the public lot where the old stone Methodist Church once stood. I have to grin as I remember our