War Light & Power: Memoir of a Ghost Town

When it flourished in the 1940s and 50s, the town of War, West Virginia was definitely not "Our Town" or "Main Street." An Appalachian melting pot supported by the coal mines that surrounded it, War drew immigrants from all over Europe-Brits, Italians, Poles, you name it--who came to the coalfields to seek their fortune. Though many became miners, some of them launched furniture stores, saloons, radio shops, and hardware stores to serve the surrounding coal camps. There were also shack dwellers, a junk dealer who had long ago escaped from a chain gang and never paid any taxes, a few descendants of the feuding Hatfields and McCoys, a minister with shocking table manners, a bossy banker, and a few more who had played their part in lynchings. The town was run by a Business Men's Club (including several ministers and school administrators), one black-lung infected policeman and a shadowy mayor who together managed its affairs and solved the town's problems with more or less success while they also ran their businesses. These men-always men--were the maybe most entertaining of all.

The citizens of War were a colorful lot, and I have learned to appreciate their stories for good and bad, funny, ironic, and sad. For me they exemplified the human condition.

--Nancy Coffey Heffernan

Nancy Coffey Heffernan is co-author of New Hampshire: Cross-Currents in its Development and Sisters of Fortune, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1993. She is also sole author of Blood Sisters, a self-published novel about Colonial New England. She grew up in War, West Virginia.