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[cars revving] [instrumental country music] [Joshua Deel] Smyth County, a county in Southwest Virginia, that is home to three major valleys, carved out by the forks of the Holston River, and today is fed by two major interstates, 81 and 77.

[♪♪♪] This place has seen a lot of history, and its allure is certainly not hampered by nearby outdoor distinctives like Mount Rogers, the highest natural point in Virginia, as well as Hungry Mother State Park, which sees over a quarter million visitors every year.

But what's the story behind this place?

Why do people choose to stay here?

[♪♪♪] I've heard it said, "Where we are affects who we are."

And I think we have the chance to understand ourselves better if we understand where we come from.

Hi, my name's Josh, and I'm producing this series with PBS Appalachia to explore the towns that so many people still call home, their hometown, to unearth remarkable stories and the people behind them.

Hometowns is about exploring the communities that make small-town America unique.

This season, I'll take you on a journey off the beaten path through Southwest Virginia, and don't get me wrong, this place has its warts, but if that's all I showed you, you'd miss out on the remarkable beauty of its natural wonders, and the rich depth of its cultural heritage that, in a sense, are at the heart of what it means to be an American.

[♪♪♪] [♪♪♪] Marion is a town located in Southwest Virginia, named after Revolutionary War General Francis Marion, and is the county seat of Smyth County.

Nearly a fifth of the entire county population lives here.

[♪♪♪] I've visited Marion now multiple times, and get a sense that a changing of the guard is taking place.

Previously, on one occasion, I was here to interview one of the kindest gentlemen a person could ever know, but who has since passed away.

William Fields, or Willie, as he was known by his friends.

-So, there are not a lot of us still left in this area, per se, and yet at the same time, when I say history repeating itself, today a lot of folks who are not of African-American descent, you know, Black, are having their families, their children are growing up in an area which used to be farming, textile, furniture, you know, et cetera.

Those industries are no longer.

So even when they complete college or get away, they have to leave here.

So regardless of their race, creed, or color, so it's almost like history repeating itself.

But our story is not just to restore their voices, but there are other voices that are passed on.

There's a saying, "I am able to see as far as I can see because I'm standing upon the shoulders of those who've gone before me."

[Joshua Deel] The thought of Willie's passing left me sad and wandering, looking for direction to understand the story of Marion, of those who call it home.

I like to visit small-town barber shops, like I did in Tazewell, if you watched that episode, because so much conversation is had in a barber shop.

Stories are told here, and community is shared.

And as if fate would have it, through a chance encounter, I met Willie's son, Ammi Fields, here in a barber shop.

-Hey man, how's it going?

-Fine yourself?

-Yeah, good, good.

Welcome, welcome.

-Is this your artwork?

-Nah, this is my dad's, man.

My dad, he painted all these.

He did the frames and everything.

[Joshua Deel] Wow.

-Yeah, man, he was really talented.

He was a great guy.

-Yeah, definitely talented.

-This is a painting my father was commissioned to do for Crooked Road Magazine .

It's a juke joint in Bristol called the Sue King Inn.

Back when things were segregated, a place in Bristol called the Sue King Inn, who was owned by my Uncle Ben and Aunt Sue, who I wasn't related to, but that's how my father addressed them, created this juke joint that Black people could come together and listen to music, have a drink, get a sandwich, and people could just interact, you know, and we all need those places.

This is the Bread of Life .

My father painted this, one of his most colorful paintings.

It's an apple orchard, my granddad and uncle there in Chilhowie, Virginia.

My grandfather, who always wore bibbed overalls, and in a lot of my father's paintings, you'll see the men wearing bibbed overalls, drove a tractor trailer for Bonham Brothers' Apple Orchard in Chilhowie, Virginia.

You know, my father really valued the job that my granddad had because, back then, there wasn't a ton of jobs for uneducated Black men.

And they were able to provide for my family, my granddad, and my dad.

Inside the bread, there's nothing.

So, the meaning of the painting is, we don't have everything, you know.

We don't have the meat, the potato, the tomato, the lettuce, but we have enough.

We have something to eat.

This painting was painted by my father before I was born.

It's called the Mercy Seat.

It's, I think the model of it was a church that was right beside my parents' house.

This painting represents a man who is genuinely coming to God and offering himself up and letting God know, by himself.

Nobody's around.

He's not doing it for show.

He's not doing it to get people's attention.

He's having a genuine moment with God, and asking for forgiveness.

This is a painting of the train tracks in Marion, Virginia.

My grandmother and grandfather taking my father to the hospital to have surgery on his eye.

This train station is still there.

The wagon seen in the front is also still there.

My father in the painting actually drew his entire life.

He was very artsy from the time he was born.

He was gifted with it.

You see in the painting, there's a bandage over his eye.

My father was a hoodlum as a child.

He had actually cussed a man out, and he was hiding, and the man threw dirt and rock at his head, and my father turned and caught it in an eye, which he lost his sight.

Another deeper meaning of this painting, you know, if my father didn't lose his eye, when he turned of age, the draft began for Vietnam, and there's a good chance that he might not be in here, or I might not be in here.

Pictured in the painting is also my grandmother Mattie, and my grandfather Claiborne.

You see the bibbed overalls that he always wore, and you know, you can see my father's genuinely upset, but yeah, there's a deeper meaning.

You know, who's to say what's good or bad?

This is a painting of my father's home, which is behind McDonald's in Chilhowie, Virginia.

In the painting, you can see the very large train tracks.

That's the first thing that most people probably notice.

They're really big.

The community lived on top of the train tracks, and it was a big part of my father's life, whether they'd walk on the tracks or cross the tracks.

This community is no longer there because in that part of Chilhowie, it flooded a lot, and they asked all of them, they gave them a settlement and moved them all, relocated them to new homes.

This is actually where my dad's ashes are spread in Chilhowie, so very, when I look at the painting, it reminds me of where my dad's at.

It's more than just art.

It's my family history, you know, and it's not just my history.

It's the history of the people in this area, you know, especially the Black population in Appalachia, and sometimes that story gets lost.

You know, a lot of these people that lived here, once they got their checks for their houses and they moved to more urban areas, they don't live here anymore.

You know, the population kind of dwindled down, but this is where it was.

This is the history.

[♪♪♪] [Joshua Deel] After listening to Ammi recall the stories behind his father's artwork, it all clicked.

I understood Marion better.

Things began to come clear in a town that at first seemed hospitable, yet siloed in its success stories, from business owners to intrepid organizers and community leaders.

It all finally clicked.

[♪♪♪] Somewhere I once read that we are, all of us, tied down, most of our days, to the commonplace, but I think that contact with great ideas, literature, and art helps us, while living our everyday lives in the ordinary world, to begin seeing it with different eyes, where the genius and vision of others, in some small way even, becomes our own.

Recalling other conversations I had, I began to see the individual stories I previously saw as disjointed now through the interwoven tapestry of Willie's art.

The story of Marion, the story of Smyth County began to come together.

[Ken Heath] I was born here in Marion and went to Marion High School, and it's one of those things where I'd never dreamed that I would be in a position to help in any way, to shape things here in town.

I grew up, my dad was in the Hamburger Company, and the rest of the chain went broke in the early 1980s, there was a big fire, and we ended up moving back.

And that's when you really couldn't buy a job in the factories, you had no jobs at the factories or anywhere, so we got by the best we could.

And I always felt kind of a debt back to the community, the people here in this town that took care of us when they didn't have to.

Marion's traditionally was lumber.

There was a plant here that started making axe handles, they made wagons, they made TV cabinets, a little bit of everything, and that was another business that was destroyed by fire, a huge area where the town parking lot is now.

And as things switched away from that, and also tobacco farming, the economy really took a hit.

Smyth County mainly was clothing, textiles, sock factories down in Chilhowie.

And as a matter of fact, when NAFTA was signed into law, the Wall Street Journal ran an article and it talked specifically about Chilhowie, and it was called "A Town Traded Away."

And it talked about, literally overnight, with a stroke of a pen, the number of jobs in Smyth County equaled the population in Chilhowie that were just gone when it went offshore.

And you know, that's the other thing about Marion.

In the early 1960s, there was a fellow named Bill Jones that ended up either buying or winning the recipe for Mountain Dew in a poker game.

It depends on whose story you tell.

It's interesting.

It originated down in Knoxville, Tennessee, and the guys down there made it as a liquor chaser because back then, every little town had their own bottling company.

And Bill Jones ended up working for the Tip Bottling Company here in Marion, and he ended up getting the rights to Mountain Dew, and Mr.

Hull, who owned the Pepsi Cola Bottling Company here in town, would go out of town.

He would go over and put a broom handle in the works and stomp everything and run his own through there and let people taste it.

And they said he would put a lot of caffeine in there and a lot of citrus, and said some of the caffeine just blows the top off your head.

It was just super strong, just makes you just excited and run up and down the street.

And so, he came up with a recipe that ended up making it pretty big, and people around here started drinking it, and then regionally, a group over in North Williamsburg, North Carolina, picked it up and started carrying it.

Charlie Gordon down in Johnson City had a hand in it.

So, a lot of people had a hand in it, but the original recipe that you drink today came from Marion, Virginia, and we still argue with Johnson City about that.

It's ours, it's not theirs.

If you love snowboards, the snowboard was actually invented by a company called JEM, J-E-M Manufacturing, and they had a plant here in Marion, and they made them for years.

And this guy took one ski and made it a little wider for his kids and put industrial staples in it and a rope.

So, it was about the most dangerous, it was like lawn darts of the day, and kids would get them and ride them, and I was always too heavy to ride one.

That never would balance with me on there, it was like putting a bowling ball on a pencil, it didn't work out.

So... we had snurfers, and that was the big thing to get.

If you got one at Christmas time, you were set.

And Tony Hawk and people who are legends in snowboarding now recognize that as being the first snowboard.

In 1977, November of 1977, we had a huge flood, and it washed out Industrial Road, so everybody got a snurfer for Christmas because it washed out the factory.

It pretty much ended the snurfer business in Marion.

The quirkiest thing to Marion is the baseball stadium.

It's where Nolan Ryan pitched in 1965, and the baseball stadium is virtually untouched.

It's exactly the same way, your first baseline is in the end zone of the football field, which is kind of weird, but that's where he pitched.

And there are people who make a pilgrimage here to see where Nolan Ryan pitched his first baseball, which is really cool.

One of the things I'm really encouraged about, in the past six months, especially after the pandemic, we're getting a lot of people who move here that are in their 20s and early 30s, that just, this is where we're going to go to, for whatever reason.

And there's not any rhyme to it, it's just they end up here.

We're really robust still in manufacturing, still about 32 percent of our economy is manufacturing.

But one of my favorite places to go was Carnegie School.

And this was the African American school, and I was born in '62, and so segregation, I was too young to remember segregation, thank goodness.

But my grandfather certainly wasn't.

But he never taught us any of the hate that went along with that.

-If you consider Marion as the hub of a wheel, Blacks from a 10, 15-mile radius, Saltville, Rich Valley, Sugar Grove, Chilhowie, had to come to Marion to go to school, to attend a school, which was called Carnegie High School, which was founded by a gentleman by the name of Amos Carnegie.

When he-- also, he was a minister that pastored in this particular church, when it was a church.

When he came to this area, he saw the school for Blacks, which was called the Old Red Barn.

He saw the school, the conditions of the school, and basically said, "This place ain't fit for animals."

He began to lead an effort to raise funds to build a new school for the Blacks in this area.

He had all of the Black men, and I'm sure there were women as well that assisted, but mainly the Black men, they were brick masons and tradesmen, to donate their labor.

They all agreed and signed a contract to donate their labor for free if the school system here would provide the materials.

The school system agreed to donate the funds.

They built the school, and in 1931, they had a dedication ceremony.

And one of Marion's favorite, I understand, adopted sons, Sherwood Anderson, you know, gave the closing remarks, you know.

So again, when I talk about the relationship, even between Blacks and whites, you know, there was a line of demarcation and whatever else, but... division, but there still was a mutual respect.

[Joshua Deel] That adopted son, Sherwood Anderson, became a famous American author, and he is buried here in Marion.

But before he died, he and his son created one of the greatest myths in Southwest Virginia, a myth that has become legend.

-Originally, when Hungry Mother Park was first envisioned back in the '30s, it was going to be called Forest Lake State Park.

And there's two legends.

The legend you read on the postcards is about a Native American raiding party that came through here and killed a bunch of white settlers, and they found a baby that was crying, "Hungry mama, hungry mama."

That's why they called the park Hungry Mother.

That's baloney, no truth to it at all.

Sherwood Anderson, the American author, was with a newspaper here.

His son, Robert Lane Anderson, was actually running the newspaper at the time.

And the story is, they got together with a bottle of liquor one night and said, "You know, Forest Lake State Park just isn't going to get the buzz, so we're going to call it--" and made up the whole legend.

And so, they called it Hungry Mother State Park, and that's where the legend came from.

[♪♪♪] [Joshua Deel] I've held a common interest with Sherwood for a long time, as he and I both examined the history and life of small-town America at the turn of the 20th century, which segued nicely to my next conversation with another small-town local, Sarah, who shared what life is like in her hometown of Saltville.

-I grew up in Rich Valley, Virginia, which is the farming community in Saltville, Virginia.

-[Joshua Deel] Okay.

-[Sarah] And after being gone for a while, I've moved back to our family farm in Rich Valley, and I'm thrilled to be back in Smyth County.

You know, when you're young, you can't wait to get away.

As I got a little older, I couldn't wait to get home, closer to my parents, closer to home, and I have really deep roots here.

-Yeah.

-Not just because of agriculture.

And so, I was ready to come home.

I knew I wanted my son to grow up and have those same kind of deep roots in that small-town community, where you go to the post office, and everybody knows who you are.

I grew up on a tobacco farm.

Of course, you know, we raised all the produce and things like that, but as tobacco kind of was phased out, we had a tobacco allotment, which allowed a lot of folks around here to go to college, because some money went towards their educations for those tobacco allotments.

And now we've taken that tobacco farm and we've turned it into a pick-your-own blackberry farm.

And we raise goats and cattle and all the different produces that you might want to buy, and we just keep expanding to things like pick-your-own flowers and blueberries and things like that.

Well, I work for the Chamber of Commerce, so I'm all over the county all the time.

I love having a job that's different every day.

It takes me all over my community.

My home office is in Chilhowie, so that's where I'm on a daily basis.

But I work with lots of businesses here in Marion, and also lots of businesses in Saltville.

Saltville is the cutest little downtown.

It's really grown a lot.

We've been very fortunate to have some entrepreneurs that saw its potential.

So, the Main Street has grown a ton.

You won't see empty buildings any longer.

Our newest addition is an ice cream shop that's doing amazing.

We've got some Airbnbs popping up downtown, small little restaurants.

Of course, we have the Museum of the Middle Appalachians, which is a gem.

You know, we're this small community, and Saltville's this small town, and we have this amazing museum that covers everything from Space Age to Ice Age .

So, it's one of my favorite things.

And there is a mammoth, a life-size mammoth there.

It's a huge hit with kids.

So, the salt marshes there, the animals would come there for the salt marshes, but also because of the salt marshes, fossils are super well preserved.

So ETSU comes and does digs every year, and there have been lots of fossils found there, everything from the Paleo-Indians that were there up to the Ice Age animals that were there as well.

So, all those fossils can be found there.

Also, birding is amazing in Saltville.

If you are a birder, it's one of the places you have to go.

Because of those inland marshes, you can come there and see species of birds that you're not going to find in other places in Virginia.

So, especially if it's after a big storm with all these hurricanes and things that we've had, you're really going to find some unique birds there.

And it's really nice too, because a lot of times with birding, you have to get out on the trails, you have to walk to find things.

This one, you can car-bird, or if you need handicap accessible birding, you can also do that on the Helen Barbrow Trail.

So, it's very unique for its birding opportunity as well.

[Joshua Deel] I love that.

So, if I want to grab some lunch in Saltville... [Sarah Gillespie] Buck's.

You have to go to Buck's.

We think it's the oldest drive-in in Virginia, and they are famous for their footlong hot dogs and chili.

They once tried to change the chili recipe, and I think there were riots.

And so, they've gone back, and it's the original recipe.

My favorite tater tots anywhere are at Buck's.

[laughter] The Dip Dogs is on the way to Marion.

[Joshua Deel] Okay, it's on the way to Marion.

In Smyth County.

[Sarah Gillespie] It's in Smyth County.

Yeah.

[Joshua Deel] Is there going to be a rivalry here between-- [Sarah Gillespie] There might be a little bit, but they're also spaced out enough because, you know, you've got the dip dog and the hot dog.

They're two very different ways to serve a hot dog.

[Joshua Deel] Okay.

Okay.

[Sarah Gillespie] You can drive down the interstate and see "got Dip Dogs?"

bumper stickers that came from the Dip Dog, which is kind of fascinating.

Mr. Pickles, he is Marion's community cat.

He is like the Main Street ambassador.

[laughter] Everyone on Main Street feeds him.

So, if you're visiting a restaurant and you see a cat food bowl outside, it's not because we have multiple cats.

It's because we have Mr. Pickles, and he eats where he pleases and goes where he pleases.

And he, he's the unofficial cat mayor of the town.

[♪♪♪] We're also able to offer that quality of life here that really welcomes people in.

Folks visit and they often either come back, or I can't tell you how many times someone stops in the visitor center and is like, are there houses for sale?

Because they're looking for ways to come here.

And so, um, you know, one of the things that I always think about Smyth County is, it's like a 'welcome home' kind of place.

[Joshua Deel] As much as Saltville is finding its footing moving into the future, I'm fascinated by the history of the Saltville Valley, how this same valley has been attracting life to its fold for thousands of years.

The abundance of salt here is at the heart of its appeal.

In fact, during the war between the states, this was the site of historic salt works that produced up to two-thirds of all salt used in the Confederate war effort, dubbing Saltville the "Salt Capital of the Confederacy."

Multiple battles were waged over this strategic location.

[♪♪♪] Perhaps it was all this thinking about history or even Marion's role in taking a whiskey chaser and turning it into Mountain Dew, but when I saw the Highlands Distillery, I knew I had to stop for a visit to see this age-old Appalachian tradition of distilling, firsthand.

-This is Revelations.

It's a 95 proof, and it kind of honors the heritage of Southwest Virginia, in all of Appalachia for that matter, because the distilling and whiskey production skill set came from the Scots and the Irish that settled this region.

I happen to be Scottish on my mom's side.

So, I kind of wanted to do this fictitious ancestor who came to the Virginia Highlands and made something that reminded them of home.

And I'm a real fan of smoked whiskies.

So, this is, this is what I made.

And Revelations, kind of a weird name, but it's for the good times, the bad times, or the end of times.

It's up to you.

[laughter] I started distilling, actually it was potato chips.

My wife and I had a potato chip trailer.

I had all these potatoes left over.

So, I figured I might try my hand at making alcohol as a fuel source.

We lived off the grid on top of a mountain.

So, here I am in a storage container with a little hole cut out in the back so I wouldn't die from asphyxiation.

And I started making alcohol, allegedly.

And my alleged moonshine handle was mash.

So, I started making this stuff, and it turned out to be better drinking than burning.

And that is the start of all of this.

So, I was going to do fuel, and I ended up with national award-winning spirits.

Pretty much everything I've done has been a gold medal winner.

Yeah, I'm kind of proud of it.

I don't know, I guess it's my DNA.

So, if you know the rules, you can break the rules.

My equipment's kind of backwoods, shall we say.

[laughter] But it works.

"Frankenstill" works.

[Joshua Deel] [chuckles] "Frankenstill", love it.

[Scott Schumaker] Yeah.

It's all good.

I chose this area to live in.

I didn't want to go back to New England because I love the people.

And I love this area.

It looks just like home to me.

And it is, in that fact, it is my home.

[Joshua Deel] The tradition of distilling in Southwest Virginia dates back to well before the 1800s, but certainly got a foothold during Prohibition in places like the juke joint that Ammi and his dad told me about.

-It was a place people came to socialize, let's say.

And they also came, when I say socialize, there was bootlegging going on and this, that, and the other, whatever.

And they had some issues with the local community.

And the article even speaks about that even the colored folks and the white folks of the community complained about some of the activities that was going on there.

But then, he also made a point that speaks to what you ask.

He said, but, you know, we don't have the racial problems that they got elsewhere around this country.

Again, it's not a perfect place, not a perfect people, but there still was a mutual respect and understanding for the hard work ethic of folks and the communities that existed here.

[Ammi Fields] This is the last painting my father ever painted.

Actually, my son was present from when he completed it.

There was a photograph of me and my father, him holding me in the rocking chair.

He didn't have the bibbed overalls on in the picture, but I know why he did it, you know.

He did it to remind me of my granddad.

Like that's where I came from.

We didn't come from Gucci.

We didn't come from, you know, Dolce & Gabbana.

We grew up in bibbed overalls, you know, and in the, in the painting, you see the man's looking at the child, and the child looks just like the man.

And Dad said, when he looked into my eyes, he saw himself.

Three months before he died, he presented this painting to a man that works at Emory by the name of Scott Sikes.

And he told that man, he said, if I died today, I would be happy because I finished this painting.

-To quote Marcus Garvey: "A people without a knowledge of their history is like a tree without roots."

Two words people often use in their life, love and friendship.

Most people fail to realize the definition of the word, and the depth of both-- definition of both of the words.

And my belief is that if you have ever loved someone regardless of what they do or don't do, you'll always love them.

If you ever have a true friend, you'll always, time, a thousand years could go by, they walk through the door, it's like time stood still.

[♪♪♪] [music fades out] Nestled in the heart of Appalachia.

The University of Virginia's College at Wise is where students experience unique regional culture and the great outdoors.

UVA Wise empowering students to learn and lead in their communities and the world.