Fairmont, WV
Born in Fairmont, WV. Lived in or around Fairmont until joining the US Navy.
About half my years around Fairmont were spent wa-a-ay out in the sticks on Bunner's Ridge. I went to a very interesting grade school: one room.
The school had electric lights, but that was about the only modern amenity. Just one step up from the "Little House on the Praire" schoolhouse. Heating in the winter was a Burnside coal stove, which was also part of our hot lunch program (bring a potato wrapped in foil and put it on the stove in the morning). No bathroom: two outhouses that got pushed over every Halloween. Running water? Run out to the well, pump like crazy, and run back with the water bucket.
One teacher. Thirty-plus kids. And everyone was related in one way or another, directly or indirectly, to the Bunner family.
First High School: EFHS
1965 Orion - Yearbook of East Fairmont High School (huge: over 100MB)
Favorite WV Foods
There are a few foods that are only, or are most readily, available in West Virginia.
WV Hotdogs
The first time I was really away from home was when I joined the US Navy. Whereever I went I ate hotdogs. But I was very disappointed: no one had my favorite kinds of hotdog. The closest I ever got to a WV hotdog back then was a chili dog with tomatoes and beans and other kinds of fillers.
A WV hotdog has a sauce that would qualify for a Texas chili cookoff in terms of ingredients:
WV hotdog sauce chilis consist of ground black pepper and grocery store "crushed red pepper".
The bun should be a plain whitebread steamed bun. The steamed weiner should be long and skinny, and should not squirt grease when bitten into. The skinny version of Hebrew National works just fine.
Assembly: weiner in bun, sauce, hefty dose of freshly minced sweet onions, and maybe a squirt of yellow mustard.
The only place I found WV style hotdogs outside of WV was at the Vienna Inn, in Vienna, VA when I was in the area during the 1990's. Good, but their onions were generally pretty rancid and metallic tasting (not freshly minced).
Here is my WV hotdog sauce recipe.
Pepperoni Rolls
If you ever find a pepperoni roll, there is probably a West Virginian from northern WV around somewhere.
More info on pepperoni rolls: Bob Heffner's Pepperoni Roll HomePage.
Here's my current pepperoni roll recipe. It will change from time to time as I experiment with it.
Wise Potato Chips (deceased)
This was not really a WV food, but rather a regional food. Wise Potato Chips was a Pennsylvania company that made the most wonderful, thin, dark, salty, greasy potato chips in the world. And there were always a few super dark, super tasty, chips in the bag; my brothers and sisters and I always competed to get these special prizes.
But once the Wise company was sold in the mid 60's, the original Wise Potato Chips faded away into oblivion. The new owners of Wise gradually replaced the original Wise chips with yet another ho-hum me-too potato chip indistinguishable from Lays Classic. Very very sad.
Sometime in the 60's I remember seeing a newspaper article about the acquisition of Wise by Borden in which a spokesman said that essentially, they would not mess with a good thing. They realized that it was a regional favorite, and did not want to lose their faithful following. But the spokesman went on to say that all they were going to do was to introduce quality control to make the product more consistent. Huh? As a potato chip gobbling teen I saw NO need for "quality control", as the product was wonderful as it was. I knew then that this would not end well.
Today potato chips are sold under the Wise name, and in the distinctive bag with the Wise logo, but they are not "real" Wise potato chips. Think "Invasion of the Body Snatchers": the look is the same, but the person is not.
But, Wise keeps getting sold and resold and reorganized. I have not had a Wise chip since around 2005. Maybe they have Wised-up and gone back to their roots?
