PINNICK KINNICK HILL: AN AMERICAN STORY

Prologue

PINNICK KINNICK HILL 2 Prologue A significant or unusual event must happen to a person in the first years of his life to enable him to recall when he first became aware of his existence. My first awareness came when I was four years old. That first day of realization was almost the last day of my life. My father, Juan Villanueva, was the local beer distributor. On May 27, 1913, almost all of the Spanish residents of the village of Coe’s Run, West Virginia, were celebrating at the Romeria de San Juan, an annual outing in honor of St. John. This was also my father’s birthday, and he donated all the beer and soda pop for the occasion by inviting everyone, especially those named Juan, to participate in the festivities. Each family brought food. There was a 16-gallon barrel of beer on tap for those who liked draught beer. Bottles of beer were kept iced in large wash tubs for those who preferred their lager cold. There was also plenty of pop and ice cream for the women and children. As the day wore on, people sang and danced to the music of bagpipes or an accordion. When one instrument stopped, the other would take over. The men snapped their fingers and the ladies clickity-clacked the castanets as they danced “La Jota Aragonesa” with reckless abandon. When the accordion music was played, one of the men held two jawbones of an ass in each hand and with dexterity brought out of them a rhythmic melody. The site for this annual event was near the summit of Pinnick Kinnick Hill. “El Pico Piquenique,” as the Spanish people called it, is in the northeast part of the village. It is really a mountain, one of the highest peaks in the county of Hillsboro. Standing on the top of Pinnick Kinnick Hill, one can see the whole village stretched out along the Clarkston and Belleport Pikes. Almost all of the men worked in the smelting furnaces of the Crossetti Chemical Company. When darkness approached, they gathered their families and started home. They were all tired from the day’s drinking and dancing. Alarm clocks would ring at three o’clock in the morning, and by four the men would be ready to shovel the heavy zinc ore into the retorts. Marilena, as my father affectionately called Mother (her real name was Maria Elena), was holding my hand as we started down the hill to go home. In her other arm, she carried one-year-old Jose. My two older brothers, Andres and Ernesto, stayed behind to help Father. Pinnick Kinnick Hill PINNICK KINNICK HILL 3 As we were going down the crooked path, Mother slipped and let go of me. Like any lively four-year old would do, I started to run down the hill by myself. By now it was getting dark. I tripped on a rock and sprawled headfirst down the steep slope. When I got up, momentarily stunned, there was a warm trickle of fluid running down my left leg. As my hand reached below my knee, my fingers seemed to go along bare bone. Flesh had been separated from bone from my knee almost to my ankle. I couldn’t walk. My uncle Diego, who was just behind Mother, caught me up in his arms and carried me into the house. His shirt was stained with my blood. I must have fainted, for the only thing I remember was the stickiness of the warm fluid running down my leg and nothing else. I was told San Juan was with me on this fateful day. If Doctor Applewhyte had not been home when Andres ran as fast as he could to his house, I would have bled to death. The next day, everyone in the village of Crossetti, as the townspeople were unofficially beginning to call the place, knew that El Doctor Manzanas (so nicknamed because of the first part of his surname, ‘apple’) had saved my life. It took several months for my leg to heal. My injury had been caused by the jagged glass of a broken beer bottle sticking out of the ground. Doctor Applewhyte had given me a sedative, cleansed the wound and then stitched my leg from the ankle to just below the left knee. To this day, the one-inch wide and seven-inch long scar, pink and hairless, remains. Chapter One M y paternal grandparents, Justo and Josefa...