Whirligig Stories: Tales of the Sixties in a West Virginia Town

Author. Journalist. Humorist. Throughout the 1960s, Betty Hornbeck wrote a front-page feature column that steadily became the most familiar item in her local small town newspaper. Occasionally, she filled the space with business and community insights, sometimes with the pragmatic musings of an omnipresent stage narrator, but mostly she wrote the personal anecdotes that reflected the period’s attitudes toward family life and the political changes that were rumbling underneath it all. As a humorist, she could bring out more chuckles than Erma Bombeck. As a patriot, she could generate more waves in the flag than Paul Harvey. The stories paint a picture of a time when things were different. Can you feel it? The winds of change are blowing. Everything’s a spinnin’ and a flutterin’ like a West Virginia Whirligig.