Virginia Mountains Blog - Share Your Experiences

Tell us about your experiences while visiting Smyth County, Virginia. Submit your story - complete the form below..

One never really knows how much they enjoyed living in the country until they move away to the "big city." I grew up in The Valley of Many Deer, but due to my husband's work location, we now live in Atlanta. Sure, it's nice to have several large shopping malls and just about any restaurant you can imagine within a short 15 mile radius, and great paying jobs, but with those conveniences come the things I miss about living in Chilhowie. This would be not having to deal with TONS OF TRAFFIC and TONS OF PEOPLE on a daily basis. I live less than 3 miles from work, and some days, it can take up to 25 minutes to get home just because of traffic. That's something that I never had to deal with growing up in Chilhowie. Not to mention when driving down the road in Smyth County, it was rare to not pass someone that you knew who would throw their hands up and wave hello. People in the city seem to honk their horns a lot, but not usually for a friendly greeting. Plus, most people in Smyth County have yards and fields! It's so uncommon to see an open space of land undeveloped here in Atlanta. Smyth County is so beautiful with the vibrate colors of leaves changing in the fall, snow on the ground in the winter, and trickling brooks and streams to fish from in the summer and the crisp fresh mountain air in the spring - and there's no skyscrapers to ruin the view. I was shocked to find out most of the kids here in Atlanta have never been sledding down a snow covered hill because it doesn't snow enough for them to do so! But the thing I miss absolutely the most about Smyth County is being close to my family, especially with a little one on the way. I grew up living beside my grandparents and aunts and uncles, with several cousins just minutes away, and down here, my closest relatives are my in-laws in Knoxville. One last thing that I have to mention before I end this blog is how much I miss the Dip Dog Stand! Every time we go home for a visit, a trip to the Dip Dog Stand is a must!

Becky Taylor Wild
Atlanta, Georgia

Just like the saying "Land of the free and home of the brave. This land is your land; this land is my land." This is very true. I will never forget my roots, where life all started for me.

I've been away from my home state and hometown of Saltville, Virginia, and the small hollow of Buckeye, where I was born and where I grew up. I lived in the hollow when the roads were dirt and then topped with some gravel. My home place is still there in the hollow. My mother gave birth to all of her fourteen children with the help of a few midwives. I was the thirteenth child. My saying in the past has been "You can take the girl out of the country but you'll never take the country out of the girl." This is very true in my case. I moved away from my hometown and family to go live in a big city thirty eight years ago. I usually visit Saltville three or four times each year. Even after three decades have passed and many different companies, residents, and various other things have come and gone, the people and the town are still the same to me. I come home now more often than I used to. It seems to me that the Saltville area is beginning to really develop. Every time I'm there it still seems like it was just yesterday or the day before that I had left with my many memories of me as a young girl, running up and down the dirt roads and over the hills and up the hollows.

It's great to see Saltville is still a strong surviving town. I think our two hometown TV Survivors, "Big Tom" Buchanan and Steve "Chicken" Morris have contributed a great deal to the community.

My father, Arthur Graham Totten, retired from Olin Mathieson Company when I was very small. I had always remembered him being at home tending to our small farm raising me and my other siblings. I remember the heavy wash loads on the days Mom and my sister Stella did the wash and all of the ironing to have to do afterwards. I liked helping with the animals and having to gather hen eggs.

I discovered a love for writing. I began writing articles and poetry and sending it to the Saltville Progress newspaper, which published my written material. In 1999, I wrote by first book entitled: Salt Mountain Girl. In 2005, during a brief six months of living back around my hometown and family, I wrote and published two more books: Return to Salt Mountain and Buckeye Hollow, Home Sweet Home. In 2006, I received a signed certificate from the Mayor of Saltville, Virginia, Jeffrey L. Campbell, who presented me with my designated hometown title of "Salt Mountain Girl". Presently I'm working on another book in the form of a cookbook: Salt Mountain Girl Cookbook, A Taste of Country, by Brenda Totten Croan.

I still have a big dose of country inside of me that's there to stay. I will always remember my childhood and the beautiful mountains in Virginia where I still call "Home." I'm living on a big farm now. Last year, I experienced how canning is done. It's been many years ago since I watched my mother do the canning.

On a closing note, I would like to add a bit of advice for the younger children attending school. "It's much easier to get your High School Diploma while you're still in school and have the ability of learning while you're young. Don't wait until you're fifty years old and then try. You'll begin to realize just as I already have that the Algebra and Geometry don't quite sink in too well into your mind. Stay in school while you still can get that High School Diploma."

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