Woodboogers, wine, a homecoming and smoked swine were highlights of a recent trip to Wise County.
It was a lucky weekend for a Sept. 26 work trip. The excuse for rolling to far Southwest Virginia was a technology story with a University of Virginia’s College at Wise component. Readers can keep an eye out for that story in a future edition.
That the jaunt fell on a Friday fit with the next day’s homecoming football game at UVA-Wise, and a drive around the area — to get bearings on the high-elevation county — revealed a billboard advertising neighboring Norton’s Woodbooger Festival. That event celebrates an Appalachian Mountains cryptid known in other regions as Bigfoot, Sasquatch or the Abominable Snowman.
In between were trips to a winery and vineyard high in the hills above Wise, a barbecue and catfish restaurant between Wise and Pound, and an east Tennessee fast food institution with a location in this Southwest Virginia county.
Catfish, football and woodboogers, live and on camera
For more on Tad’s visit to Wise — including reviews of his meals at Pal’s Sudden Service and Piggy Went A Smokin — check out his videos at @cardinalnewsva on YouTube.
All told, the journey was a showcase for a recreational destination not four hours from the Roanoke Valley.
There’s a lot more going on than there was in the years when UVA-Wise was known as Clinch Valley College, a passel of 60-somethings remembered during the homecoming game.
“There was no development here,” Brian “Enos” Reilly, of Swansea, South Carolina, said. “You didn’t have fast food places and restaurants.”
Two of his former classmates interjected.
“You had Hardee’s,” said Jace Cuje, a Northern Virginia resident.
“You had Pizza Hut,” Frank Pyanoe of Staunton added.
That got them reminiscing on other places that aren’t around anymore, in particular the Dairy Barn and Jim’s Minute Mart, the latter right across the street from the campus.
“Go over and get a case of ‘The Beast,’” aka Milwaukee’s Best, Cuje recalled.
“And Jim Dogs,” Reilly said.
“Yeah, that’s long gone,” Cuje added.
There are still plenty of markets stocking adult beverages in Wise County. There is only one vineyard, though.
Grapes grown over coal seams
It’s rare-to-never that a technology reporting assignment will lead to a wine tasting.
Turns out, a UVA-Wise class working with a grant from the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative did security analyses on several county businesses, including MountainRose Vineyards. Suzanne Lawson, whose son David opened the business in the early 2000s, was happy to talk about it.
A ride up winding roads well outside town — courtesy mathematics professor Karen Carter, via speedy Mini Cooper — ended at a mountaintop vineyard, winery and vacation rental house that is under construction. Lawson said the property has been in husband Ron’s family since at least 1860. About the same time the career educators retired, David Lawson — then a biological systems engineer with a seriously green thumb — decided he wanted to grow grapes and make wine.
“I told him, ‘Are you crazy? We live in Wise County,’” Lawson said. “The long story short is, you see who won that argument.”
The business features a dozen wines, with the whites grown on site, she said. MountainRose has another vineyard in Lee County, where most of the reds grow at a lower elevation that is less susceptible to frost. Several, including Pardee and Dorchester, are named for coal seams.
The property had been mined in the 1970s, but David Lawson worked to make the land suitable for vineyards. More than 20 years in, the land looks like it was made to grow grapes. If you go, check ahead — the business invites people to pick grapes during the harvest.
‘Do you want to try a fish bite?’
Lots of folks complain that every town looks the same, their highways lined with nationwide franchises including superstores, golden arches and the like. But almost every area you visit has its unique spots, and Wise County doesn’t fall short.
A two-day jaunt with a work assignment doesn’t allow time to explore them all, but word was that Piggy Went A Smokin is a place to hit. Barbecue pork and catfish are the specialties. It was so good that it rated two trips.
The locals will vouch, too. During a work interview with the UVA-Wise folks, accounting instructor Ning Zhou’s face lit up when she heard the eatery’s name.
“I love the fish bites!” she said.
Those items seemed to have been destined. On Friday night, staff member Felicia Lane asked: “Do you want to try a fish bite?” with the pork sandwich order. Instead of a single sample, the staff added a whole sack of them, gratis. (Full disclosure: I did not identify myself as a reporter or conduct an interview. This is apparently just how they do business.)
Zhou was right about the flavor, but as part of an order featuring a high-stacked mound of pulled pork topped with cole slaw, plus a cup of creamy macaroni and cheese, the diner wound up feeling stuffed near to explosion.
The next night, the catfish sandwich with slaw, tartar sauce and house-made hot sauce was the feature. Again, the mac and cheese was a must. Cole slaw comes as one of two sides, but next time, a double order of mac might have to be the move.
In an interview last week, owner Danny Craft said he smokes the pork and the staff breads all the fish and chicken by hand. Craft, who bought the restaurant six years ago from the previous owner, said he has just added a food truck.
Return of the patty melt
National chains are one thing, and regional chains are something else. Pal’s Sudden Service, founded in Kingsport, Tennessee, has grown a devoted cult following in East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia.
The 31 locations include Abingdon, Bristol, Gate City, Lebanon and Norton. All but the first two locations in Kingsport are drive-thru only, and they are cranking out burgers and dogs with speed and consistency.
It’s no different at the Norton location. For someone who grew up in a Kingsport suburb, it’s the flavor of nostalgia, and this brand of nostalgia tastes good. An oft-recurring item, the patty melt, hit the spot along with “Frenchie” fries and a “plain” tea with lemon (I swear I’m Southern, but I don’t really love sweet tea).
The old ball game
A belly full of Pal’s requires a walk, and there were plenty of steps to be had in Wise County.
At UVA-Wise, the football stadium parking lot is atop a hill, and the walk down to the field was filled with tailgate partiers, mostly under tents due to the heavy cloud cover and steady drizzle. Above the stadium’s home-side bleachers, a long row of tents lined a walk that led to a multitude of Clinch Valley grads.
They had extra time to catch up on Saturday because lightning reported nearby had delayed the 2 p.m. game time.
Most of them had come from elsewhere to Wise in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Cuje grew up in Alexandria via the Bronx, New York, and was looking for a small college after having spent a few years working after high school. One of the Cavaliers’ coaches, Bruce Lowe, encouraged Cuje to come down.
“Bruce was, let me just say, he was instrumental in a lot of ways, beyond baseball,” Cuje said. “He was an ambassador for this school.”
Pyanoe, New Jersey born and bred, had come to visit his brother, who came to school here with a friend from Wise whom he’d met in the Navy. He decided to stay. Reilly wound up in Southwest Virginia when his parents retired and moved from Nebraska — his mom is from Dickenson County.
A contingent of Virginia Beach kids made their way to Clinch Valley in the 1970s, via a connection between the admissions office and Floyd Kellam High School, said Vincent Marshall, who graduated from Clinch Valley in 1980.
“They were looking for people to come down this way, and they made a big push for Virginia Beach,” Marshall said.
Marshall had been a football star at Kellam, said Amy White, his classmate in both Virginia Beach and Wise. Clinch Valley didn’t field a football team in those years, Marshall said, so he played basketball for a year, then switched to baseball.
White, who recently retired as a nurse in Michigan and moved to Norfolk, said that coming to Wise after growing up in Virginia Beach was a “culture shock.”
“We did have a group of us, at least, to kind of support each other as we reached out and embraced the community, or they embraced us, I don’t know which,” White said. “But it was a pretty good town of people that, like, accepted the college.”
She met the man she would marry, a Lee County native, while she was at Clinch Valley. They have returned frequently and watched both the college and the surrounding area grow and change, she said.
After a 90-minute delay, alumni and the rest of the crowd got to see a pretty action-packed small college football game, with the home side beating Greeneville, Tennessee’s Tusculum College, 35-21.
The improved weather was also good news for a family festival at Wise’s next-door neighbor to the southwest, Norton.
Woodbooger town
Before the game, the rain was pounding Norton, where the streets looked sadly empty, despite all the activities set up for the annual Woodbooger Festival.
Jake Baine stood alone on a Park Avenue sidewalk, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a Yeti-looking critter. He knew a lot about the Norton cryptid.
The legend dates to 1910, when a woman who lived in a cabin on High Knob complained of strange noises and shadows in the woods at night, Baine said. A reporter from the Coalfield Progress came to ask her about it.
Baine said the reporter asked her what it was, to which she replied: “It’s that old woodbooger out there, causin’ trouble.”
The city has turned it into a tourism draw, he said.
“Norton is an actual woodbooger reserve,” he said. “We protect the woodbooger here.”
Has he ever seen one? “There’s some stuff out there in the woods,” he said. “I believe the woodbooger’s up there. Why not? There’s a lot of caves, mountains, hollers all over the place.”
Baine, 39, is a musician and business owner, whose Imagination 3-D prints items including woodboogers of different sizes. He handed out a small one, about the size of an old plastic toy soldier, calling it a “pocket booger.”
The conversation moved inside as the rain began to pour in increasingly heavy amounts, before it was time to drive back to Wise for some football. During the second half, the weather got so nice that a trip back to the festival was in order.
It was growing dark, and the main drag was still pretty quiet, save for one children’s play area and the festival stage. There, former Folk Soul Revival frontman Daniel Davis was leading his band through some bluegrass country music on a cool evening.
The elusive cryptid may never be seen, but the town and county that celebrate it use the woolly legend to tout the hiking, biking and fishing all around them.
