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John Henry Legend
Radio Documentary
The Setting
In a remote West Virginia town there's an abandoned railroad tunnel. People say it was here that the legendary John Henry raced the stream drill, won, and then died.
This part of the country is a topography of hollows and steep ridges that, in the words of Appalachian singer Jean Ritchie, "unfold, one after the other, like petals in a rose." Through the deep valleys the Greenbrier River winds to the south and west, the railroad track and state road running alongside: three parallel paths from the east toward West Virginia's coal country.
If you follow the river to where it runs headlong into the steep face of a cliff, you'd be at the Great Bend Tunnel, birthplace of the John Henry legend. On the hilltop directly above is a boarded-up caboose that once was a souvenir stand, and a bullet-dented bronze statue of John Henry, his back to the panoramic view of the river and railroad tracks below.
John Henry's ballad has always moved me, so when I found out that the legend got its start in a real place only an hour's drive from my father's farm, I made plans to explore. On a grey day we followed the Greenbrier River to the rural outpost of Talcott, then made our way along the crossties toward the mountain. It's isolated and wild down there, with towering green weeds, old whiskey and soft drink bottles, railroad spikes and sections of steel rail. The last thing we expected -- or hoped -- to see was another human, but a grizzled man suddenly emerged from the bushes and approached us. "Y'all should stay away from there." He nodded toward the rocky slope. "That place is dangerous. There's some even say it's haunted."
I could believe it. Beyond him the black mouth of the tunnel dripped with water and moss, and a heavy mist floated out. It was easy to imagine the place in 1870, alive with hammering and shouting and drilling and dynamiting. Tunnel building was dangerous work. One scholar says that hundreds of laborers may have died during its construction, and that it wasn't uncommon to bury the nameless workers where they fell. Whether or not there are ghosts I don't know, but there at the tunnel, history is palpable. The memory of the place never left me.
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Contact: ginna @ wormlips [dot] com.