You are listening to the All Ready Gone Podcast, sharing stories of the missing, the murder,

the mysterious, and the lost.

While I was born and raised in the Detroit area, my father is a transplant.

He was born in Beckley West, Virginia, and called the mountain-state his home until he

finished college, when a job offer from General Motors lured him to Michigan.

His parents remained in West Virginia, and as a child, one of our regular family trips,

usually over a long weekend, was to make the 400-and-some-mile drive south to Beckley.

Beckley is a small town, perched in the mountains, and it's located about 40 miles south of Charleston,

the capital of West Virginia.

It's in this small mining town that my father was born and raised.

He was the son of a business owner.

My grandfather operated a small working-man's-bar downtown, a convenient place to grab a beer at the

end of your shift, and you could have your beer three ways, on tap, in the can, or from

the bottle.

Now if you wanted something harder, you had to visit a state ABC store.

This place wasn't just a bar, though.

Each day, Grandpa headed to work at 5 a.m. to prepare the kitchen.

Because starting at 6 o'clock, hungry locals were arriving for hot breakfast.

Eggs, toast, hotcakes, fresh coffee.

It was a busy place.

Sadly, the recession of the 1970s paired with my paternal grandfather's advancing age led

to his retirement.

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