主题：【原创】西佛吉尼亚，天堂隔壁 -- 元亨利

almost heaven,

West Virginia

A long time ago, when I told friends I would go to West Virginia University, every one said, Ah, John Denver, Country road. Yes, in the 1990's, every Chinese college student knew John Denver and this song. His name and song were permanently linked with West Virginia although it was said his name came from Denver, Colorado, his hometown. Tell this to a West Virginian and he would kill you.

It was the first time I set foot in America. For no apparent reason, I had always had an image in my head wherein a young man with long blond hair talked on a road in the mountains, a guitar box in hand. One day, not long after coming to West Virginia, I rode on a bus and really saw a man walking on the road, exactly like the image I had, leather jacket, long hair and a guitar box swinging in hand. I was so excited I almost jumped out of my seat.

blue ridge mountain

Shenandoah River

life is old there older than the trees

younger than the mountains growing like a breeze

West Virginia was the second poorest state in The States. It was third world in a first world America. In the 1950's The then First Lady, Mrs. Roosevelt visited Wets Virginia. She was profoundly shocked by the conditions of the coal mine workers there and changes came afterwards. Still this was the backwater of America. People were pristine and honest. You walked into a shop, the owner would come up to shake your hand and tell you he was part of the place. They were also very proud of their being West Virginian. The West Virginia University's basketball team's mascot was a mountaineer. Every game there would be a young student dressed up like a mountaineer hunter, shooting his shotgun whenever his team won a score. I remembered that while I was there there was a state governer's election. A guy lost and said West Virginia was a working state, it should be governed by a person wearing jeans instead of suits. Small wonder he lost. He would not last one day in America politics.

country roads , take me home

to the place i belong

I had just stayed in West Virginia for one semester and left for the big world --New York City， never turning back. At the time I was so eager to leave that it seemed West Virginia was just a passing fancy, as an old American would say. It was some time when I stayed in the Big Apple and heard West Virginia again. I was on an N train to Astoria where I called home then. The train was crowded and the scene was a typical New York one, people were tired and bored, a car of expressionless working stiffs. All of a sudden, a guy began to sing. He was obviously a retarded person. But the song he belted out was, oh my god, Country Road. Tears welled in my eyes. People from all over the world came to New York City to make it big here,thinking they're the best. You had to fight nail and claw to get there. Along the way, you lost your sense of emotion and maybe your sanity. But a gentle touch in your soft spot, the floodgate would open and you would morph back into your little self. Such a place I only dabbled briefly on my journey, and a foreign land to boot, did actually etch its mark deeply into my heart of hearts. She became my home away from home. West Virginia, mountain mama!

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