John Henry’s strength abides in Talcott community

By Jeffrey Kanode for RealWV,

(TALCOTT, WVa)—John Henry lives forever in the fog lingering between history and myth, his narrative always emanating from the sometimes porous boundaries between fact and fiction. Perhaps the details of that story and the themes those details embody are of first importance, more critical even that concrete history, cold reality.

A former slave named John Henry might have worked for the C&O Railroad from 1870-1872. He might have raced a steam drill digging the Big Bend Tunnel, Henry’s muscular frame and intrepid soul victorious in the contest, but his heart overexerted to the point of death. It’s man versus machine. It’s labor versus capitol. It’s a black citizen striving for a new life in a finally-free America.

Fact or fiction, history or myth, truth or tall tale, the spirit of John Henry lives in a little town in southern West Virginia, Talcott. The Summers County community gathers for three days the second weekend of July for John Henry Days, and the people welcome the world to join them.

“Believe what you will,” Linda Huffman said, regarding John Henry. The Talcott native and retiree from the federal prison system has been a John Henry Days volunteer for nineteen or twenty years. “I’m a citizen of this town. It’s something I can get involved in. I am a member of the community so I need to be involved. I want to be a part of it,” she noted. According to Huffman, in recent years John Henry Days was in danger of dying. This year, more people have gotten involved, and Huffman hopes greater visibility will lead to new life for this Talcott tradition.

Stacy Ford, the Circuit Clerk of Summers County, stood nearby Linda Huffman, helping to greet people and guide them across the railroad tracks to find good vantage points from which to watch the Saturday morning parade. Like Huffman, Ford passionately expressed the importance of John Henry Days for the culture and to the economy of Talcott. She pointed to a West Virginia DNR (Division of Natural Resources) vehicle leading the parade, and she pointed specifically to the driver, DNR officer J.C. Wheeler.

Wheeler is twenty-five years old. He’s worked for the DNR for about a year-and-a-half.

A new member of the John Henry Days committee, he’s been a volunteer for the event practically his entire life. He remembers helping his dad mow grass around town in preparation for John Henry Days, among many other jobs around the town. They are memories dotting the summers of his childhood and adolescence. “It’s a heritage thing,” Wheeler said. “It shows what even a small community can do. People from all over know Talcott through the John Henry story and legend.”

Louise Tabor and her husband Warren received the honor of being named grand marshals of this year’s John Henry Days parade. Louise reported that she has been active in the event “for twenty six years, since the beginning.” She reflected on all the stories she heard about John Henry over the years. “For instance, where he’s buried,” she said, “…there are so many tales about where he’s buried.” Laughing about the conflicting stories about the competing gravesites of John Henry, Tabor summed up her feelings about John Henry, and the days her community dedicates to him, with broad strokes. “It [the John Henry narrative] shows what people can do.”

Over one hundred-fifty years after the drama of John Henry’s victory, Louise Tabor feels that John Henry Days itself represents a victory for Talcott. “I love the people getting together in this town,” she noted. “It’s phenomenal. People are so glad to help us keep this thing going.”

Behind the parade route, on a grassy knoll bordered by train tracks and river, Mike Toney demonstrated an unlikely kinship to the spirit of John Henry. Whereas Henry’s ultimate battle pitted him against machine, technology, Toney embraces machine—albeit a small one–and technology. Through them, he makes art.

Toney can be classified as a wood worker who takes timber from various West Virginia trees, and carves them into intricate pieces—from a West Virginia black bear peeping up from a tree stump, to a perching red cardinal, to a strutting yellow duck—with a chain saw.

With his wife Janie, Toney founded Hobby by Heart in honor of his daughter in law who died of brain cancer in 2016. Toney recounted that one day his son and daughter-in-law’s children were watching the television show “Carver Kings.” As they sat entranced, Toney said he heard the children utter an unexpected exclamation. “My grand boys said, ‘Papaw can do that!’ Well, of course, I had to try.”

His “try” has proven very successful, indeed. Just last week in a festival in Pennsylvania, Toney placed third in a “chainsaw masterpiece” contest.

Toney’s chainsaw artistry remains a hobby. He works full-time with Pike Electric. “I do this [the chainsaw woodwork] for my grandsons. We haven’t looked back. The good Lord has blessed us,” Toney reflected.

Michaela Wynes works at the Summers County Visitors Center, working closely with Rebecca Peterson, the executive director of Explore Summers County. Growing up in Talcott, Wynes spent a great deal of time helping out around John Henry Days. Now in her young adulthood, she has chosen to become deeply involved. “I’ve been attending John Henry Days since I was born,” Wynes noted. “I had the opportunity to help, so I decided to take it, to help get it done.”

The “it” to get done is a three-day celebration where a small town embraces its part in a unique American story—whether the details of that story chronicle historic facts or recount richly embellished tall tale… or perhaps something, somewhere in the middle of those two poles. Whether real or imagined, as a black man, as a West Virginian, as a laboring man, as a courageous man willing to sacrifice strength and self to prove a man’s–a person’s–eternal worth over and against the forces of mechanization, John Henry always stands tall.

“I think John Henry means a story of everlasting strength, persistence, and courage,” Michaela Wynes said. “I think that speaks to what Talcott is all about.”