Autumn Begins In Martins Ferry, Ohio by James Wright

For another look at Wright's poetry, one that is somewhat easier to digest... Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio In the Shreve High football stadium, I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville, And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood, And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel, Dreaming of heroes. All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home. Their women cluck like starved pullets, Dying for love. Therefore, Their sons grow suicidally beautiful At the beginning of October, And gallop terribly against each other's bodies

In Response to a Rumor That the Oldest Whorehouse in Wheeling, West Virginia Has Been Condemned by James Wright

No collection of references to Wheeling in literature would be complete without the poems of James Wright, from Martins Ferry, Ohio. Wright's work is difficult for me to read. Wheeling is a city that is hard to love at times, but certain people, myself included, have a fierce loyalty to this corner of the world. I can complain about Wheeling all I want, but to hear an outsider do so hurts my pride. Although Wright is an Ohio Valley native, the truth is that he left and seldom looked back except to criticize. To see Wheeling's flaws exposed harshly to outsiders is a tough pill to swallow. Nonetheless, Wright is the Ohio Valley's most celebrated poet, and an open-minded read of his works is worthwhile. Without further ado... In Response to a Rumor That the Oldest Whorehouse in Wheeling, West Virginia Has Been Condemned I will grieve alone, As I strolled alone, years ago, down along The Ohio shore. I hid in the hobo jungle weeds Upstream from the sewer main, Pondering, gazing. I saw, down river, At Twenty-third and Water Streets By the vinegar works, The doors open in early evening. Swinging their purses, the women Poured down the long street to the river And into the river. I do not know how it was They could drown every evening. What time near dawn did they climb up the other shore, Drying their wings? For the river at Wheeling, West Virginia, Has only two shores: The one in hell, the other In Bridgeport, Ohio. And nobody would commit suicide, only To find beyond death Bridgeport, Ohio.

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

Karen Russell's fantastic, darkly imaginative debut novel Swamplandia! is set in the swamps of Florida, far from Wheeling. Surprisingly enough, though, Russell's Bigtree family has Ohio Valley roots. Grandpa Bigtree, "the white son of a white coal miner in Ohio", left for the Florida wilderness, only to find "the farmland he'd bought, sight unseen, at the Bowles and Beaver Co. Land Lottery in Martins Ferry, Ohio turned out to be covered by six feet of crystal water."

Afloat on the Ohio

Looking for an audiobook to fill the hours at work, I turned to an app which republishes free books in the public domain. I was very pleased to find Afloat on the Ohio ; an historical pilgrimage of a thousand miles in a skiff, from Redstone to Cairo by Reuben Gold Thwaites, first published in 1897. After all, the river is right in our backyard, and I've spent plenty of time walking and biking along it, boating and swimming in it, and staring at it daydreaming when I should have been studying or working.

In the first pages, Wheeling and Steubenville are mentioned as being important shipping ports in the steamboat days. Later, half a chapter is devoted to Wheeling. Of Wheeling, Thwaites writes "The town has 50,000 inhabitants, is substantially built, of a distinctly southern aspect. Well stretched out along the river, but narrow, with gaunt, treeless, gully-washed hills of clay rising abruptly behind, giving the place a most forbidding appearance from the water. There are several fine bridges spanning the Ohio, and Wheeling Creek, which empties on the lower edge of town, is crossed by a maze of steel spans and stone arches. The well-paved wharf, sloping upward from the Ohio is nearly as broad an imposing of that of Pittsburgh." The chapter also has a terribly racist description of the "negroes" the author encounters for the first time in Wheeling, as well as a portrayal of Wheeling Island as a place of pleasant cottages.

The author continues with an account of the Zanes and the founding of Wheeling. Think you know your local history? Thwaite writes "Everyone who knows his Western history at all has read of the three famous seiges of Wheeling in 1777, 1781, and 1782, and the daring deeds of its men and women which help illumin the pages of border annals."

Thwaite doesn't have much nice to say about the "begrimmed villages" below Wheeling, and describes Moundsville as an "old, faded, countrified town" of 5,000. He goes on to give detailed descriptions of the Moundsville penitentiary and Grave Creek Mound before sailing on to points south.

My Heart is an Idiot by Davy Rothbart

From pages 155-56:

"These days, it still happens from time to time-I'll get bowled over by a dizzying love for a girl I've only glimpsed: the bartender with tattoos on her neck who fills in some nights at the 8-Ball Saloon, just down the street from my house; a Denny's waitress in Wheeling, West Virginia working a mop and bucket in back when her shift is through; a girl with pink hair on the Greyhound bus from Chicago to Detroit, wearing two hoodies and listening to headphones, writing in a journal, taking long sad looks out the window at the passing scenery."

Note:  There is no Denny's in Wheeling, WV.  The closest one is in St. Clairsville, OH.