Blue Ridge Country writers serve up our annual collection of mountain oddities...

by Jeanne Mozier

It could be a brain-stumping trivia question: What product linked with West Virginia coal mines turns white when heated?

The answer is not burning coal. It is arctic char.

And the obvious follow-up question: What is arctic char? Here’s a hint: It is served at the world-famous Greenbrier Resort smoked on a bed of mizuma and tat soi greens with baby beets and orange dressed with ginger-beet vinaigrette.

Char is raised in freshwater tanks filled with 50-degree spring water.

An exotic resident of sub-polar waters, prized by Inuit people, arctic char has found a productive home in southern West Virginia raised on the only fish farm of its type east of the Mississippi. The owners of Isis Arctic Char owned substantial acreage of formerly mined land in Mingo County and wanted positive reuse. They discovered that the 50-degree spring water from more than two miles deep into their mountain lands (and so pure it needs no pre-treatment) was the perfect environment for char hatcheries.

Once finger length, the hardy fish is transferred to grow-out tanks and processing areas in nearby Logan County. Nurtured organically for nearly two years, more than 6,500 pounds of the meaty yet light-tasting fish are shipped each week to fine restaurants, organic food stores and now Kroger food markets.

“If they don’t have char at your local Kroger’s, ask for it,” says Jim LeFew, Arctic Char’s manager. Best of all in this age of personal service, they deliver. Order from the website (isisarcticchar.com) and the fish will be at your door in 24 hours, fresh and ready to cook.

Fine dining restaurants have West Virginia arctic char on their menu not only because it is a tasty conversation piece but also for its high food value and All-American pedigree. Isis guarantees no hormones, no chemicals and no antibiotics as well as none of the toxins and mercury that plague wild fish.

For those with concerns about its connection with coal mines, have no fear. The cold spring water is piped unexposed to the outside with never a stray piece of coal dust along the way.

It’s A Bird, It’s A Plane… Not Really

By Joe Tennis

Artist Charles Williams created this T-shirt design toward restoring the landmark.

For decades, people believed an airplane dropped from the sky at Powell, Tenn., just outside the Knoxville city limits.

“That’s one of the biggest stories going – that it crashed here – and they made a service station out of it,” says retired antiques dealer Tom Milligan. “I’ve heard that around town all my life.”

Well, it certainly seems to look that way. A small, airplane-shaped structure sits just a few yards from the traffic flow on U.S. 25W, just above a steep-sided hill.

But it was never a plane. It’s simply a roadside oddity leftover from the early 1930s. Brothers Elmer and Henry Nickle built this 58-foot-long bird – the “Airplane Filling Station” – as a way to get motorists to stop along U.S. 25, once commonly called the Dixie Highway, says Joe Inman, another retiree.

Rock Bernard, a Knoxville barber, says, “That was an era when people were pretty much fascinated by aviation.”

Bernard, Inman and Milligan are members of the Airplane Filling Station Preservation Association, Inc., a non-profit group trying to restore Powell’s pretend plane to its original appearance.

Joe Inman (left) and Tom Milligan are members of the Airplane Filling Station Preservation Association, Inc.

In 2003, Milligan founded the preservation association after buying the plane for $20,000. Since then, the group has secured a grant from Knox County to help pay for the building. Members are now selling T-shirts, looking for grants and accepting donations, all hoping to make the plane’s planned restoration a soaring success.

“It’s getting back to what it was originally,” says Milligan, 66. “It’s getting it back to its heyday.”

Originally, motorists would drive under one side of the 42-foot wingspan and refill their gas tanks. Under the opposite wing, mechanics could fix a flat or change a car’s oil.

“This was a working station,” says Milligan.

Over the years, the structure became a bait and tackle shop, a produce stand, part of a car lot and a mobile home business.

In more recent times, the plane has been listed on the national historic landmark register, but the deteriorated building has resembled a crashed plane in more ways than one – the bird was once so covered by kudzu, Milligan says, you could hardly see it.

Yet everybody still seemed to know it, often using “the airplane” as a landmark to give directions, says Inman. “It’s a super reference point.”

It’s going to cost as much as $150,000 to restore the plane, Inman figures.

Then, association members hope to rent the building’s 600-square-foot interior as an office.

“The good thing about an office space,” Inman says, “is it would bring in revenue so we could continue to maintain it.”

Airplane Filling Station Preservation Association, Inc., Heiskell, Tenn. 865-933-7158, powellairplane.org.

The Rapture at Jack's Garage

By Su Clauson-Wicker

Jack Peterson has been fixing cars in Christiansburg, Va., for 30-some years. The sign painted on his Main Street garage says he does welding, repairs tires, changes hoses and does other routine repairs. But that’s not the sign you notice first.

It’s The Rapture.

In a splashy mural atop Jack’s Garage, cars crash or lie abandoned across the highway. A city of skyscrapers appears idle, de-peopled except for a jet hurtling into the side of a tower. All Christians have been instantly transported to meet the Lord. In Peterson’s version, no one is left behind.

Peterson bartered with artist Lacy Breeding to paint the main mural around 1989, in exchange for some auto work. Peterson added several Bible verses and his own words, “There is still time. Repent and trust in Christ with all your heart and be saved,” and “God said it. That settles it.” He still adds whatever else falls upon his heart at any given time. Often it spills over onto a freestanding sign by the street.

“I don’t advertise for myself,” Peterson says. “I do it for others – the lost people, the unsaved, and for the Lord.” Peterson says his message is that people must accept Christ by faith alone. A lover of nature, he allowed the painter to decorate the lower walls of his garage with owls, birds and other woodland creatures.

Jack’s Garage is located at 1205 West Main St., Christiansburg, a block off Interstate 81’s Exit 114

A Tidal Spring With No Ocean in Sight

By Su Clauson-Wicker

No one knows for sure why this Tennessee spring follows a tidal schedule.

Ebbing and Flowing Spring is more than 300 miles from any ocean, but for reasons of its own this Hawkins County, Tenn. spring operates on a tidal schedule. Within a cycle of two hours and 47 minutes, the spring’s flow ranges from a barely perceptible trickle to 500 gallons per minute.

The spring is one of only two springs in the world known to exhibit tidal behavior with a predictable regularity over centuries. No matter what the flow, the spring remains a constant temperature of 34 degrees Fahrenheit.

Although there are many theories involving limestone sinkholes and trapped water, no one knows for sure why the spring has maintained its constant schedule through drought and wet spells.

Legend maintains that any couple drinking from the spring at peak flow will marry within the year. Locals in Rogersville, Tenn., suggest the spring’s power was first discovered by Rogersville founder Joseph Rogers, said to have drunk from the spring with his beloved, Mary Amis. She soon after became Mary Rogers, despite the initial disapproval of her wealthy father, Colonel Thomas Amis.

The spring is privately owned by descendants of the Amis family, but it is open to the public. The spring lies about three and a half miles southeast of Rogersville town square. From Rogersville go east one mile to Burem Road, bearing right at the Amis House historical marker. Turn left on Ebb and Flow Spring Road and go about half a mile to the spring, which is behind a little dairy house on the left. The gravel lane opposite the spring leads to the historic Ebbing and Flowing Spring Church and School. The National Historic Register Amis House, circa 1781, is a short distance away.