Before you go thinking I am the silliest person you ever met (regarding my previous HAIR post!), please enjoy this story, published originally in The Big Blue.

Mountain Road Trip

Quiet Reflections of a Smyth County Journey
By Mitone L. Cooke

It was like Thelma and Louise…without all that robbing, shooting and driving a car into the Grand Canyon stuff…. But it was still one of those times in real life where you know you’ve met someone who will mean something to you for the rest of your life…when you’re working on a project so important, that it will be part of your portfolio for the rest of your career. That was Smyth County for me.
    It started (well, truthfully ended too) innocently enough…Barbara DeBord and I were two tourism-minded women out on the open mountain road, looking to sell some ad space for a Smyth County Tourism Brochure. She was the county’s Tourism Director. I was the Graphics Designer she had hired to design a county brochure….and sell ad space to county businesses to support the printing costs. (Cue “doomed” theme music here…duh duh duh…)
    Neither of us considered ourselves salespeople. In fact, I had always felt pretty crippled when asking someone if they wanted to give me some money in exchange for an ad spot. I don’t think Barbara confessed to being any stronger in this field. That was the first thing that Smyth County altered in my state of being…selling ad space there enlightened me that it was something I could do, and I could do it well, and I need not fear asking someone if they want to put their name in a piece of marketing material that will benefit them greatly. I could be proud to sell.
    I’ll skip over the boring preliminary details…how we held an introductory meeting, how we made a list of all the potential advertisers…you don’t want to hear all that. You want to hear the good stuff…how Smyth County changed my life…how meeting its people and sampling its businesses helped develop a new me. How Smyth County gave me a new friend.
    Ah…that’s the stuff that will get you calling the Tourism Center at the HL Bonham House asking for brochures and hotel or Bed and Breakfast information….and if it is, then I did more than my job for Smyth County. I created a desire in you too, to experience the life-altering, mind-blowing, friend-producing Smyth County. (At least it was those things for me….for you, maybe it’s a fun vacation in a pretty mountain area of Southwest Virginia, or an idyllic place to transfer and live!)
    My story starts in the 5th grade…where I grew up in Carroll County…a place infamous for the Big Sidna Allen Courthouse Shootout…or the Big Labor Day Flea Market in Hillsville. Fast forward twenty years, and now I am back in the area, working in the City of Galax., a little pearl held between the two beautiful shells of Grayson and Carroll Counties. While I was growing up in Hillsville in Carroll  County, Grayson County was always that mysterious quiet other county…a place where wild horses hang out in a state park…and mountains roam free, and high school football teams were arch rivals.
    I never even knew about Smyth County when I was growing up. It was all the way over on the other side of Grayson! I didn’t follow football, so I wouldn’t know a friend from foe there. Had I only known! In learning about Smyth County, I realize we spend money trying to get folks from out of state to come and visit our communities here in these hills and hollers….but I am almost guessing now, after spending a couple days a week for a couple of months on the road with the Tourism Director of Smyth County, that we almost need to introduce ourselves to each other!
    Hello, Smyth County, my name is Mitoné and I live next door in the City of Galax.  I can show you the Rex Theater, the Old Fiddler’s Convention and some really cool downtown shops. Can you show me your Lincoln Theater, Salt Beds, and Woolly Mammoths?
    That’s right, I said it. Woolly Mammoths. Smyth County had them in prehistoric times. And they have digs every summer unearthing Ice Age coolness. (At any time, you can stop reading this article and go online at www.VisitVirginiaMountains.com to get the real scoop on Smyth County…I certainly don’t know everything!) While the Woolly Mammoths might be some of the oldest stuff in Smyth County, there is actually a bank there that has never been bought out, sold or traded…if only there was money in prehistoric times, the Bank of Marion might have been in existence even longer than 134 years!
Formed in 1874, The Bank of Marion was one of mine and Barb’s first stops on our search for brochure advertisers.
    Barb and I met with Rob Donnelly and Tammy Schuler at the Bank of Marion during one of our first meetings. We met in an old bank building downtown Marion. It was like stepping back in time…the architectural detail had been pristinely maintained.
    Smyth County’s oldest bank is also its largest, with more customers and more deposits than any other bank in the county. The Bank of Marion was established in 1874, just nine years after the end of the Civil War!
    The guiding principal at The Bank of Marion has always been customer service. As banks have come and gone and as smaller banks have been gobbled up by larger banks headquartered in distant cities, Bank of Marion’s dedication to customer service and their flexibility to tailor services to local needs has made them the bank of choice for residents of Smyth County.
    Because their hometown style of banking has such wide appeal, they have expanded their branch banking system throughout Southwestern Virginia and into Upper East Tennessee. At this writing, they have five convenient locations throughout Smyth County and a total of 15 branches throughout their system. With all these convenient locations and their MoneyPassTM ATM network, they’re the ideal bank for local residents and businesses and for visitors to this beautiful region as well!
    If you are a visitor to Smyth County, the Bank of Marion hopes you enjoy your stay and invites you back soon. While you are there, they can help you with any of your banking needs. Rob and Tammy were just great. The Bank of Marion was a big reason that the Smyth County Tourism Brochure got created. I wish Bank of Marion had branches in Galax. It is that kind of service and concern that is refreshing to see in a bank. (See more of Bank of Marion at www.bankofmarionva.com.)
    One sponsor for the brochure under our belts, Barb and I did not have time to dilly dally. We had a long ways to go if we were going to get this brochure printed.
    In 2007, I spent at least two days a month, every month from March through October, camping out at various state parks in Virginia and North Carolina. Hungry Mother State Park was always on my list, but for some reason I never got out there. Like I said, my mentality growing up was that Smyth County was a world away. It seemed so far…and there were parks I went to that seemed more familiar. So I was excited when I learned that Hungry Mother was on our list of places to visit. Keep in mind, we had already emailed info about the brochure, and someone from the park had come to our initial meeting.
But as soon as Barb and I walked into the office, the park’s administrator, Amy Atwood, gave us a resounding yes and agreed to sponsor the brochure! Wow!! For two gals who hate to sell, this was going great. So what is up with that name? It sounded to me a little like a cool café. But Hungry Mother State Park is named after a legend…it has been said that when the Native Americans destroyed several settlements on the New River south of the park, Molly Marley and her small child were among the survivors taken to the raiders’ base north of the park. They eventually escaped, wandering through the wilderness eating berries. Molly finally collapsed, and her child wandered down a creek until the child found help. The only words the child could utter were “Hungry Mother.” The search party arrived at the foot of the mountain where Molly collapsed to find the child’s mother dead. Today that mountain is Molly’s Knob, and the stream is Hungry Mother Creek.
The place is an outdoors lover’s paradise…with camping, hiking, fishing, boating, cabins, lodges, a conference center, and all sorts of other goodies. You can check it out at the state park website: www.dcr.virginia.gov/state_parks/hun.shtml.
On a high from our sale to Hungry Mother, we visited with Ken Heath, Executive Director of Marion’s Downtown. Ken was another one who totally believed in the value of the Smyth County brochure, and decided in an instant for the Town of Marion to become a sponsor. Learn more about downtown Marion at www.MarionVA.org.
Downtown Marion reminds me so much of Downtown Galax, a small town with beautiful old buildings, pretty landscaping and lots of cool shops. I was very lucky to be able to enjoy these boutiques, restaurants and galleries while I was working with Barb to promote Smyth County.
In between our visits with sponsors, Barb and I got to enjoy all the wonderful things Smyth County has to offer. We visited Saltville’s Museum of the Middle Appalachias, where they have that Woolly Mammoth I can’t stop talking about. We ate lunch at a new and hip little café in Saltville, Manaytique. They were even so gracious as to make me a special smoothie when I was in there one time. (I’ve been going vegetarian, and they made me a smoothie with just soy, bananas and frozen fruit. Perfect!!) If you’re not a soy lover like me, they make smoothies without that stuff and all kinds of fantastic sandwiches!
My time with Barb was not all business though. I am happy to report that we became fast friends as we rode around in Barb’s little car. I had not made many girlfriends when I was growing up in Hillsville…so I was super-glad to make a friend in Barb.
On one of Barb’s days off from her work, we were actually working together on sales, but we took the afternoon to get our hair done. Okay, I know that sounds silly, but that afternoon changed my life. How so? Hmmm…until that day…I had not really taken great care of my appearance. As long as I was clean and dressed, I was happy enough. I was not a makeup kind of girl, or a do-my-hair kind of girl. And the saddest part of my hair story flashes back to last November when I had my cerebral aneurism. For you regular readers, I will try and tell this story fast…you see, I had brain surgery and part of my hair was shaved off…yes I felt hideous.
Happy to be alive, but hideous. Not that my partially shaved head mattered too much, the last time I ever took curling iron to my hair was in the 8th grade when I used it to spike my short locks like Billy Idol. As a grown woman though, I always wanted long and flowing supermodel hair. Like I said, though, as a single mom to a three year old, I never really tried to fix my hair. Who had time for that! So I let it grow and hang straight.
But there in the seat at one of downtown Marion’s cool little spas, Barb had some highlights put in her hair. I had some put in mine…and the stylist working on me turned my little row of short hair (where it had grown back in some from the surgery) and the rest of my long hair into a flowing mane of supermodel hair. Did she have a magic wand? I don’t know. But a magical feeling passed through me that day. She taught me how to curl my hair so I could repeat the look. I can honestly say, there have only been maybe one or two days since that day that I have not taken a few extra minutes to curl my hair and give myself that supermodel feeling. And I have not missed one day without putting on some makeup. Okay maybe I am not supermodel thin. (Although my hair actually makes me feel happy enough that I now walk one to two miles a day!) But I feel glamorous when I take time to make my tresses impressive. Did downtown Marion do this for me, or was it just something I was finally able to do for myself? I like to think downtown Marion helped mold who I am now. A happy woman with supermodel hair, walking every day trying to get back a healthy life.
But bear with me a while longer for this is not where my story ends. Barb and I sold ads together at least one or two days a week for a couple of months. I learned that she, too, had been away from her mountain home…had even lived in California awhile. This we had in common as I had lived away from my mountain home in Garden City, Kansas for awhile. We had both moved back to our childhood homes, both ended up helping promote tourism and the economic growth of our childhood communities in our own ways. It is fitting then, that one of the last sponsors Barb found for the brochure was a group called ReturntoRoots.org and SWVAonline.org, both part of Virginia Economic Bridge, Inc.
On the ReturntoRoots.org website they let you know, “It’s time to come home for good. Return to your roots where job opportunities are exploding and the quality of life is even better than you remember. If you grew up here, you know about the pace of life, sense of family and community and the beauty of Virginia’s Great Southwest. Those things are still the same. Even better now that a new career option may be waiting on you to come?and claim it.”
When I left Southwest Virginia in the ninth grade, I never thought I would return. I did attend Radford University (but I always considered Radford part of the New River Valley rather than Southwest Virginia) and I stayed away from home until my second divorce put me back in my childhood home, living with my mom in that same house and bedroom I had in the 5th grade. I am glad I came home again. I love Southwest Virginia. I love seeing all the people moving in who fall in love with it so easily. They buy downtown properties and make businesses new again. They buy homes overlooking the valleys and they adore this place as much as I do. I know there are some people who love this place with all their hearts without ever leaving and coming back. (Just see Stevie Barr at Barr’s Fiddle Shop in Galax, VA, who plugs Galax on his own cell phone all the time!)
 But there are many who grew up right here who don’t yet realize how wonderful it is to be part of Southwest Virginia. I think that is a big reason we create this magazine. We exist to give those who live here, who are from here, a sense of pride in their home, and to those who want to find a home here, we educate them about “Virginia’s great Southwest” as ReturntoRoots.org calls it.
Whether it’s Marion, Saltville, Chilhowie or some other Smyth County community…or Floyd in Floyd County, or Hillsville or Galax, or Stuart, or any other small town in between, these are fantastic communities with lovely people…my mom might interject here and call me “Kumbaya Girl”  (that’s what the fellas at The Galax Smokehouse call me when they tease me about being a hippie in the wrong time period), but I do feel a big sense of peace, love and happiness in being home and learning that my community has such wonderful places to see and visit…just over the next ridge. So yes, I am enlightened now. I am a hippie kind of girl in a small mountain community in Southwest Virginia, inviting you to come out and enlighten yourself. Maybe you will find a new friend in Smyth County. Or get a hairdo that will change your outlook on life. Or conquer a fear that opens up new pathways for you.

NOTE: Photo contributions originally appeared with article in The Big Blue are photographs by former tourism director for Smyth County, Barbara DeBord.