Andrew's world West Virginia history

    Pepperoni rolls are a west Virginia staple, I've never met anybody who doesn't love them! Well, not any west Virginians anyway. You see them everywhere here in WV, in stores, restaurants, I even remember them being served at school for lunch. Pepperoni rolls originated in Fairmont, wv. I think that much is fairly common knowledge but it wasn't until this past August (2022) that  I was able to pinpoint exactly where. It's a place called country club bakery.  I was in Fairmont on a little outing with my mom and dad, when my dad, whose from the Fairmont area, happened to mention it and I was like "I gotta see it!".      It didn't take much research to figure out this place was the real deal. The first pepperoni roll was sold here in 1927 by a guy named Giuseppe "Joseph" Argiro. The pepperoni rolls were intended to be a quick lunch for coal miners. The Italian-american treat caught on and now the things are ubiquitous arou...

  Photo sourced from Roadsideamerica.com  The Golden Delicious apple can trace its origins to a family farm in Clay county in 1905, the Mullins farm to be exact. Despite the way it has been marketed, it is not closely related to the Red Delicious apple. It is a cultivar, which means it was grown by human manipulation, and is one of fifteen of the most popular apple cultivars in the united states.      The Golden Delicious came from a chance seedling (unintentional breeding). Possibly between the Grimes Golden and the Golden Reinette. At first the Golden Delicious was locally known as Mullins Yellow Seedling.      Anderson Mullins sold the tree and propagation rights to stark brothers nurseries for $5,000.      The Golden Delicious was designated the state fruit in 1995. Clay county has hosted a festival in the apples honor every year since 1972.

The best ghost stories  consist of just a little bit of fact, in my opinion. West Virginia is full of those but perhaps the most well known is the story of the Greenbrier ghost.      The story concerns the murder of Zona Heaster Shue in 1897. Her husband, Edward Shue, was accused. Initially, her death was judged as death by natural causes but then Zona's mother started having visions of her daughter speaking to her, she swore that these weren't dreams but visions she had while awake. Zona's mother was several miles away on the night her daughter died. Now some might argue that this was probably just a case of a mother-in-law getting even with her son-in-law, which would make sense because Zona's mother, Mary Jane Robinson Heaster, was said to not like Mr. Shue and opposed the marriage but you need to read on to form your own opinion.      Zona visited her mother four nights, and described her murder in detail to her mother. She said that her husband ha...