My parents still live there, in the same house where my sister and I made the trek to Miami View Elementary, then on to Southeastern High.
We ate ice cream from the Polar Bar. We bought groceries at Shoemakers, where they’re “Big enough to serve you and small enough to know you.”
Church bells and a fire siren tell residents when it’s 6 p.m., and the ginormous grain elevators visible from my parents’ driveway bear a shining star at Christmas time.
South Charleston may be just a dot on the map, but it’s a place near and dear to my heart.
When I go home, I take Route 42 through Xenia, Cedarville and Selma (which is less than a map dot and more like a map blip).
Selma also is home to a young man who may be the next big country star. Wyatt McCubbin (www.wyattmccubbin.com) is a 15-year-old sophomore at Southeastern High School. He can’t drive yet, but he sure can sing. If Randy Travis and Joe Nichols and Hank Williams Sr. had a baby, it would sound like Wyatt McCubbin.
His honest to goodness daddy Frank was a year younger than me at Southeastern, and his mama Jerri Kay is from down Route 68 in Wilmington. Little sis Emily is in seventh grade.
The young singer/songwriter began his journey into country music on a fluke. He broke his arm playing football in the seventh grade and was told, “You’re not just gonna lay around!” He took up rock and roll guitar. He made the switch to country not long after.
In June, Wyatt’s career took off. In a nutshell, two trips to Nashville, blessings from Bucky Covington and Sawyer Brown’s Mark Miller, and now he’s on the verge of stardom.
“It’s funny how things happen; it’s really just all luck,” he said. That, and an eerie channeling of Hank Williams Sr.
“It’s exciting but scary,” his mom says. “I stay on him to keep his grades and attendance up so he can get into a good college.”
She explains every time they’ve been to Nashville, they’ve been told to “go home and live a normal life” because it will all change.
At this point, she and husband Frank think, “Yeah, right.”
But I’m thinking that “change is gonna come!”
Wyatt is the opening act for national recording artists Joey + Rory at the Clark State Performing arts center next Saturday.
The next week, he heads to Indianapolis to play at the FFA Convention with the likes of Lady Antebellum and Easton Corbin. He’s also on an upcoming Waylon Jennings tribute album featuring Trace Adkins, Vince Gill and Hank Williams Jr.
Wyatt might be tender in age, but there’s an old soul in there, and he knows exactly what he wants.
“I plan on having a long career,” he said. “I want to do this for the rest of my life.”
Something else to be proud of.
Contact Nancy Wilson, a morning-radio personality at WHKO-FM (K99.1) and Clark County native, by e-mail through the website at k99online.com.
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