Every few months, someone from Virginia or Maryland discovers a map, listens closely to “Take Me Home, Country Roads” and decides it is finally time to explain the song to West Virginians.
They arrive carrying evidence.
The Blue Ridge Mountains are mostly in Virginia. The Shenandoah River spends more time there, too. The road that helped inspire the song may have been in Maryland. John Denver wasn’t born in West Virginia. The songwriters probably weren’t staring out a window in Boone County when they wrote it.
All of that is interesting.
None of it matters.
The song opens with the words “Almost Heaven, West Virginia.” Not Virginia. Not Maryland. Not “the general mid-Atlantic region surrounding Interstate 81.”
West Virginia.
Case closed.
This has never stopped our neighbors from constructing elaborate theories involving maps, historical records, songwriter interviews and geographical boundaries. Virginians will point toward the Blue Ridge Mountains as if they have uncovered evidence in a murder investigation. Marylanders will mention the road that inspired the song and expect the entire Mountain State to surrender immediately.
Meanwhile, West Virginians simply wait for the chorus.
“Country roads, take me home, to the place I belong.”
And where does the song say that place is?
West Virginia.
We understand that other states would like a piece of it. “Country Roads” is played at weddings, football games, family reunions, funerals and bars where nobody has been capable of locating West Virginia on a map for at least three hours.
The song has become bigger than any one place—but that does not mean everybody gets to claim ownership.
Virginia already has plenty. It has beaches, presidents, battlefields and an entire side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Maryland has crabs, the Chesapeake Bay and a flag that appears to have been designed during an argument.
West Virginia has “Country Roads.”
Let us have this.
Besides, songs are not legal property surveys. Nobody listens to “Rocky Mountain High” and demands to inspect John Denver’s elevation records. Nobody hears “Sweet Home Alabama” and launches an investigation into whether every verse occurred within Alabama’s state boundaries.
Only “Country Roads” receives this treatment because certain people cannot accept that West Virginia owns something beloved by the entire country.
So, to our friends in Virginia and Maryland: We respect your mountains, your rivers and your carefully assembled folders of evidence.
But the next time “Country Roads” starts playing, put down the map and sing along.
You already know which state comes next.
The Holler Herald Sunday Editorial
The opinions expressed here belong to Josh Scott and any West Virginian who has ever shouted “mountain mama” louder than necessary.
