Sunday Edition | Issue #9 | March 29, 2026

The Wayne Train is a free weekly newsletter about Appalachian culture, history, food, and storytelling. If someone forwarded this to you, sign up here to receive The Wayne Train every Sunday morning in your inbox. It only takes a minute to hit the subscribe button and register. If you already subscribed, heaven holds a special place for your immortal soul. www.thewaynetrain.com

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🚂 WELCOME ABOARD
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

This week on The Wayne Train:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🗞 FEATURED STORY
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

I put Granny’s Spring Tonic to the taste test by making it from dandelion greens in my yard. You can see the results in this video.

Remember the running gag on The Beverly Hillbillies — Granny hunched over her cast iron pot, stirring up some bubbling brown mystery she called Spring Tonic, threatening to dose anyone who stood still long enough?

Turns out the writers weren't making that up.

They were just making it funny.

Real Appalachian spring tonic was a thing. A serious thing. A thing your great-grandmother didn't negotiate about. You drank it, you made a face, and you were grateful. Or you drank it, you made a face, and you weren't grateful — but you drank it anyway, because she was already holding the spoon.

The science behind it, stripped of all the folk wisdom and mountain mysticism, is actually pretty sound.

READ THE FULL STORY

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📜 ARTIST SPOTLIGHT
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Carol Heilman didn't set out to be a writer.

She set out to survive a boring afternoon near Asheville while her husband sat through another medical conference. Wandered into a bookstore. Picked up something about free writing. Went back to the hotel room and tried it.

Something cracked open that day that never quite closed.

That was her 50s. She's got five books behind her now.

But if you want to know where the writing actually comes from, you have to go back further. A lot further.

Bell County, Kentucky. Late 40s, early 50s. Coal camps tucked up in the hollows where the signal couldn't find you and the mountains kept everything close and quiet. Her daddy went underground every day. Her mother ran the company store with the kind of authority that didn't require a title. Carol and her sister had the apple orchard, the creek, and the whole side of a mountain to grow up on.

No supervision. No schedules. Just be home by supper.

READ THE FULL STORY

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🗞 APPALACHIA IN THE NEWS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Somewhere in Hancock County, Tennessee, a woman picks up a knife — or a chainsaw — and turns a hunk of wood into something that stops you cold.

Renee Stewart has been doing exactly that for more than fifty years, carrying forward a tradition handed down from her grandfather, her father, and a Cherokee carver named Freeman Owl, and now she's making sure it doesn't die with her generation — one apprentice, one careful cut at a time. THE ROGERSVILLE REVIEW

For America’s 250th anniversary, the Museum of Appalachia created a new experience showing how Tennesseans have helped shape the nation.

For the TN 250 Trail, guests will pick up a guide at the visitor’s center, which will lead them through numbered stops on the museum’s grounds and in exhibit buildings, where they will learn about figures such as Sgt. Alvin C. York, Cordell Hull, Bessie Harvey, and others. WATE/KNOXVILLE

They live in the same mountains you're hiking through, they come out after you've gone to bed, and most people never know they exist.

The flying squirrel — both the common southern variety and the rare, endangered Carolina northern — calls Great Smoky Mountains National Park home, gliding silently between trees on a built-in skin membrane that works like a tiny parachute, packing twenty roommates into a single tree cavity on cold nights, and eating everything from nuts and fungi to bird eggs.

You'll probably never see one. But they're out there. SMOKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📡 DISPATCHES FROM THE DIGITAL HOLLER
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

I knew a kindly old centenarian once who died after witnessing the most remarkable period of technological advance in the history of civilization.

"She saw it all, from the horse and buggy days to man walking on the moon," I heard someone marvel at her funeral.

That’s one swell accomplishment.

Wonder why she herself never mentioned it?

In the time I knew her, she mostly talked about her health, occasionally about her dog, and every now and then she'd open up about her soap operas.

Specifically, The Young and the Restless.

Forty-some years of human achievement compressed into one sentence at a funeral, and the woman herself spent her good breath on Victor Newman's latest divorce.

I think about that a lot.

Because here I sit, a man who has watched the internet go from a dial-up screech that cleared a room to something that lives in my shirt pocket and knows where I am at all times.

I have seen a computer beat a chess grandmaster. I watched a Tesla parallel park itself while the driver ate a sandwich.

And what do I talk about?

My knee.

Mostly my knee.

Sometimes the other knee.

Occasionally the weather, which is really just a polite way of talking about my knee in metaphor.

The truth is, we don't live inside history. We live inside Tuesday.

We live inside the specific aggravation of the coffee maker making that noise again, and the neighbor's dog, and whether the pharmacy got the refill right this time.

The great sweeping arc of civilization hums along in the background like a refrigerator. You stop hearing it.

My grandmother watched color television arrive like a miracle from God and spent the rest of her life complaining the picture was too bright.

My father watched men land on the moon. Saw it live.

I asked him once what that felt like.

He said the announcer talked too much.

There's something almost holy about that, if you squint at it right.

The philosophers and the eulogists want to wrap a life in the big moments — the inventions, the wars, the moonshots.

But the person who actually lived that life was mostly just trying to get comfortable.

Trying to find a good tomato in February.

Trying to remember if they took their pill.

Wondering if the dog needed to go out.

Maybe that's not a failure of imagination.

Maybe that's the whole point. The horse-and-buggy to the moon shot happened around her, the way a river goes around a rock.

She was the rock. Solid. Specific. Planted in her particular patch of earth, talking about what actually mattered to her.

Victor Newman's divorce mattered to her.

Who am I to argue with a centenarian?

I just hope when my time comes, somebody at the back of the room has the good sense to mention the knee.

Wayne Knuckles is a 40-plus year veteran of the newspaper industry and publisher of The Wayne Train. He began his career as a sports writer for his hometown weekly newspaper, The Pineville Sun.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🗞 KAY’S CORNER
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Mamaw wasn’t a very big lady, not reaching 5 foot tall, but, oh the love that little lady had for her family and her home.

When I walked into mamaw’s house I felt like the whole world was at peace.

I remember the old deep well on the back porch, where mamaw and my aunt drew water with a bucket.

“Now when you let the bucket down into the well, listen for the bubbling sound to know the bucket was filled with water,” they told me.

I’d listen carefully for that bubbling sound. Then I would hurriedly pull the rope to get the bucket of water.

I thought it was joy.

Others thought it was work.

I suppose it’s all in how you perceive the moment at hand.

My mamaw loved her flowers.

The back porch rarely had a bare spot on it during the spring to fall seasons.

She would plant a flower in any container she could find: Lard cans, peanut butter cans, (that’s something from long ago), old milk buckets, old wash pans (that’s another bygone piece of the household).

The container didn’t matter as long as it would hold a plant.

I remember one summer my aunt took me to pick blackberries with her on a hill not far from the log house.

She gave me a small metal pail and she took a big water bucket to put the blackberries in.

We picked berries for what seemed a long while. She got her water bucket full and I had my pail almost full.

I was so proud of my pickings. I could imagine the blackberry jam made from the berries I had picked.

We started back down the hill when all of a sudden I fell and all my berries poured out on the ground!

Now my heart was crushed to see that the fruits of my hard work were no longer in the little pail.

I cried as if there would never be another blackberry.

My aunt could see how upset I was. She assured me we could pick up the blackberries and still use them.

What a relief that was!

Oh, the memories of mamaw’s house. I could go on and on. To be continued …

2 Timothy 1:7

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of sound mind.

Gospel singer Kay Himes Knuckles has been sharing her music ministry in Eastern and Central Kentucky for more than 40 years.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📜 KNOW YOUR NEIGHBORS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Visit all 423 Appalachian counties, one week at a time

Head far enough north and east, and Appalachia starts to change on you.

The mountains soften. The ridges stretch out. The accents shift just a touch. But the bones are still there.

Chenango County sits in that northern edge of Appalachia, where New York doesn’t feel much like New York at all. This is farm country mixed with hills, small towns stitched together by two-lane roads, and a pace of life that hasn’t sped up just because the rest of the world has.

The county seat is Norwich, a place that still feels like it was built to be walked. Brick buildings. A courthouse square. The kind of downtown where people still know which car belongs to who.

The Chenango River winds through it all, and like most Appalachian places, water helped shape everything. Farms, mills, towns. It all followed the river.

What stands out here is the quiet. Not empty. Not forgotten. Just steady. You won’t find big tourist crowds or postcard traffic jams. What you will find are working farms, local diners, and people who’ve been on the same land long enough to know every inch of it.

Chenango County doesn’t shout.

It just keeps going.

Chenango County proves Appalachia doesn’t stop at state lines. It just gets quieter.

Next stop: Back down south. A county where the mountains rise a little steeper and the stories come a little louder.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📜 APPALACHIAN ALMANAC
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Expect the "capricious" nature of a mountain March. While the week starts with a warming trend following the Spring Equinox, the "scattered showers" typical of late March will likely roll through the hollers. Highs will climb toward 61°F, but keep your coat handy; the "tail of winter" often lingers in the shade of the ridges.

Nature is busy "springcasting" this week. Watch for these markers:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📜 THE BACK PAGE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

By Betty Parham

If you had to spend some time on a desert island and could choose just one plant to sustain you, which would you choose? Spinach, cabbage, turnips, beans and corn probably come to mind. But would you think of dandelions? Probably not. In most Americans’ minds, dandelions are pesky, unsightly, lawn-destroying weeds that we pull or poison at every opportunity. You should know, however, that nutritionally, the humble dandelion is nothing short of amazing. Scientific studies in Europe and the United States, including one from the University of California, suggest that dandelions are one of the most, if not the most, nutritionally potent plants nature has to offer.

Take beta carotene, the substance the body converts into vitamin A and that’s generally thought to lower the risk of cancer and heart disease. Carrots are considered to be loaded with beta carotene, with 6.1 milligrams per 10 grams. Dandelions contain 8.4 milligrams for the same amount, according to USDA figures.

Not only do dandelions contain more beta carotene than carrots, but they have more potassium than bananas, more lecithin than soybeans and more iron than spinach. In addition, they are particularly rich in fiber, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, the B vitamins thiamin and riboflavin and a veritable alphabet of other vitamins and minerals. They also are rich in rare micronutrients such as copper, cobalt, zinc and boron.

So why do Americans, who are seemingly so diet- and health-conscious, do all they can to eradicate dandelions every chance they get?

Peter Gail, a botanist and author who has spent the past 37 years studying how various cultures use weeds as food and medicine and a major figure in the dandelion underground, says it’s a generational thing.

“Dandelions were a staple up to and throughout the Depression and World War II. They were not only used for food but for medicine and in some cases kept people alive. Then came the GI Bill, suburbs, lawns, pesticides and supermarkets that stocked iceberg lettuce and it was goodbye dandelions,” he said.

Not surprisingly, Europeans are a lot more appreciative of dandelions, regarding them highly on their tables and in their medicine cabinets. For centuries dandelions have been used as a restorative for the entire system, especially for the blood, liver, stomach, spleen and pancreas.

If you are craving a true spring tonic and a time-honored way to capture a surge of spring energy, you need only go as far as the nearest dandelion patch. To reacquaint yourself with the remarkable dandelion, here are some tips about gathering them, some informative Web sites and recipes.

Gather dandelion leaves when they are young, before flowers appear. After they finish flowering, cut them back to the top of the roots and continue to harvest the young greens as they keep coming back until November.

Pick plants growing in the shade. They will be bigger and less bitter than those growing in full sun. If you want to add dandelions to your garden, plant them under pole beans, tomatoes or other tall crops.

Dandelion roots are efficient but nondiscriminating miners of all the minerals in soil. They will take up lead, mercury and pesticides along with the good stuff. As far as auto pollutants, studies have shown that it is safe to collect dandelions 75 feet or more from the roadside. Also look for those growing behind a structure, like a house or barn, that protects them from airborne pollution. And certainly avoid picking any that are on chemically treated lawns, parks or fields.

You may have sampled dandelions way back when, recoiled at the bitter taste and never tried them again. Yes, mature dandelion greens eaten straight up can be bitter, but not any more so than some other greens eaten that way. There are growing and harvesting techniques and imaginative recipes that will reduce the bitterness.

Don't forget, you can enhance the nutritional value of soups, stews, salads and just about any dish by adding a few dandelion greens. Dressing them with a simple raspberry vinaigrette works nicely, too.