{"id":3574,"date":"2018-07-18T13:57:38","date_gmt":"2018-07-18T17:57:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=3574"},"modified":"2018-07-18T20:51:12","modified_gmt":"2018-07-19T00:51:12","slug":"john-lingan-puts-the-spotlight-on-berkeley-springs-and-the-troubadour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=3574","title":{"rendered":"John Lingan Puts the Spotlight on Berkeley Springs and the Troubadour"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">John Lingan is out with his first book.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-3575\" src=\"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/homeplace-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/homeplace-199x300.jpg 199w, https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/homeplace.jpg 331w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Homeplace-Southern-Country-Mountaintop-Honky-Tonk\/dp\/0544932536\/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1531936357&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=homeplace\">Homeplace: A Southern Town, A Country Legend and the Last Days of A Mountaintop Honky-Tonk (Houghton Mifflin, July 2018.)<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The southern town is Winchester, Virginia \u2013 although Lingan sees Berkeley Springs, West Virginia and Winchester as a pair.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The country legend is Jim McCoy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The mountaintop honky-tonk is the Troubadour Lounge. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The book revolves around the Triple J \u2013 Jeanne, Jim and Joe. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jeanne Mozier, who almost single handedly has turned Berkeley Springs from a sleepy rural town into a tourist spa destination. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jim McCoy, who as a 19 year old radio disc jockey in Winchester, was the first to put the then 16 year old Patsy Cline on the air and who later went on to own and operate the Troubadour Lounge on Highland Ridge \u2013 where he was born and raised. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iyKX3AofTe8\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And Joe Bageant, who grew up right here in Morgan County off Shanghai Road and went on \u2013 in his classic book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Rainbow-Pie-redneck-Joe-Bageant\/dp\/192164091X\">Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir (Scribe Australia, 2010)<\/a>\u2013 to lament about how the county \u2013 and the country \u2013 was transformed, in just two or three generations, from a self-sufficient tight community (think grow your own, hunt, fish and survive) to a people at the mercy of the corporate state (think Dollar General and Wal-Mart, with most everything from China.) <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bageant also went on to use Winchester as a launch pad for a speaking and writing career.<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He would accurately predict that the white hot anger he saw and wrote about in Winchester against the failed corporate Democrats would fuel the candidacies of the likes of Donald Trump. (See <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Deer-Hunting-Jesus-Dispatches-Americas\/dp\/0307339378\/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1531936506&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=deer+hunting+with+jesus\">Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America\u2019s Class War (Random House 2007)<\/a>) <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But Lingan\u2019s book is not just about Jeanne and Jim and Joe and a bar on a mountaintop in Morgan County. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s a book about the transformation of America \u2013 from a place that saw people coming together \u2013 to share trucks to get tomatoes to market, to party together late into the night at the Troubadour \u2013 to a place where cookie cutter brew pubs and coffee shops take your money and give you beer and coffee.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe are losing organically, locally networked culture,\u201d Lingan told Russell Mokhiber of <em>This Week in Morgan County.<\/em> \u201cThat\u2019s just not how communities run as much anymore. We are much more connected across space with people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lingan longs for what the Troubadour represented \u2013 what urban sociologist<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pps.org\/article\/roldenburg\"> Ray Oldenburg and his Project for Public Spaces<\/a> argues are the great good places \u2013 bars, coffee shops, general stores \u2013 \u00a0\u201cwhere people can gather, put aside the concerns of work and home, and hang out simply for the pleasures of good company and lively conversation \u2013 are the heart of a community&#8217;s social vitality and the grassroots of democracy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But Lingan also has a keen eye for the fault lines that will determine the future. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the book, Lingan writes about an out of towner approaching the bar at the Troubadour. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Codi Ford is the waitress.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cCan I get a bourbon neat?\u201d he says to Codi.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWhat\u2019s that mean?\u201d Codi asks.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cNo ice,\u201d the man says.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cOh,\u201d she said, grabbing the handle of Jim Beam and setting a plastic cup on the scuffed bar top.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe call that a shot.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lingan comes from the neat side of town.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But he sides with the shot people.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Worth a read.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>[John Lingan will be signing his book at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.winchesterbookgallery.com\/event\/book-talksigning-john-lingan-homeplace\">Winchester Book Gallery this Saturday July 21 from 6 pm to 8 pm.<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Lingan is out with his first book. It\u2019s called Homeplace: A Southern Town, A Country Legend and the Last Days of A Mountaintop Honky-Tonk (Houghton Mifflin, July 2018.) The southern town is Winchester, Virginia \u2013 although Lingan sees Berkeley &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=3574\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3574"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3581,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3574\/revisions\/3581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}