Walking Winchester in the relentless rain of a soggy spring could not dampen my enthusiasm to see the home of a country music legend.
And it made me flashback to another assignment for Blue Ridge Country when I ventured up the Country Music Highway of U.S. 23 to find the legendary “Butcher Holler” home of Loretta Lynn.
Finding “Butcher Holler” a few years back was a special treat. Not only did I see the cabin where Lynn grew up, I also met one of her brothers and one of her nieces.
It was like a homecoming.
Later, in Winchester, I could not stop flashing to scenes of Lynn’s autobiographical movie “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and remembering how close she was to Patsy Cline.
But, I discovered, while these ladies may have claimed neighboring mountain states as their homes, they really came from vastly different worlds.
Born Virginia Patterson Hensley on Sept. 8, 1932, Cline was known to her family as Ginny. “Patsy” was a stage name; “Cline” was the surname of her first husband.
As a teenager, Cline lived on Winchester’s South Kent Street, in a working-class neighborhood, starting in 1948, in what was originally a log cabin, built prior to the Civil War.
Here, she enrolled in high school but did not attend, says tour guide Margie Wunder. “She went to work. She worked at a bus station and, very briefly, at a chicken processing plant.”
Still, she wanted to sing.
And, thankfully, she pursued her passion.
That’s most evident when the tour of the Patsy Cline home includes a recording of Cline crooning on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts in 1957. Hearing that is part of the comprehensive and well-worth-the-time-and-money tour of the Patsy Cline home in Winchester.
“Can you imagine the excitement in this house that night?” Wunder asks our group.
But, back home, this should have been even more exciting: Cline won prize money on the show, and she used that dough to put a down-payment on this home, Wunder says.
In launching her career, the singer had wanted to wear cowgirl outfits when she got to New York, Wunder says, but the show’s producer took her out shopping on Broadway and bought her a cocktail dress. “So that was the start of a whole new, elegant, more glamorous look for her.”
Even so, the trademark cowgirl outfits remain in the Patsy Cline home of Winchester.
And so does an old iron that had been used to make sure these outskirts could be worn wrinkle-free.
Wunder’s tour shows off replicas of those outfits, the iron and some sketches that had been used by Patsy– “with very detailed and meticulous hand-written notes,” Wunder says. “As you can see here, she was a very talented artist and fashion designer, too.”
Patsy’s mother, by the way, took in seamstress work. “She also sewed all of Patsy’s costumes,” Wunder says, “and sewed these to look like one-piece dresses. But, they’re really not. They’re really two-piece. That way, the waist could be adjusted as needed.”
As for the iron and an ironing board, Wunder says, “These are original to the house. And, no, we do not know if the iron works or not because we’re afraid that if we plug it in, we’ll burn the house down!”
In all, Cline recorded more than 100 songs – including “Crazy,” “Walkin’ After Midnight” and “I Fall to Pieces.” Unfortunately, the ever-youthful singer died in a plane crash on March 5, 1963, near Camden, Tennessee. And her remains were buried at Winchester’s Shenandoah Memorial Park.
Still in the rain, umbrella in hand, I found the singer’s grave – thanks to the help of a stranger. A moment later, after speaking some solemn words to her spirit, I follow the tradition of those who came before me: I left a coin at her headstone for good luck.
