FROM THE EDITOR FROM THE EDITOR Finding Appalachia A boy from "the north" can get a welcoming jolt of the bounties of the Southern Mountains, and it can stay with him for a lifetime. by Kurt Rheinheimer Maybe the thing that made me most sure I was in a different land was that the infield was red. Not sort of red, and not painted red and not metaphorically red. Just red-dirt red. This was in Radford, Virginia in the mid- to late-1950s when my maternal grandfather made sure I got to play baseball while I was transplanted southward for the summer. The infield, on a diamond just up the hill from the New River, was red clay. By not too long into the game, the ball was reddish too. I think color has something to do with defining Appalachia as I came to know it. As in the richer, deeper green you saw when you came down from Baltimore to southwestern Virginia. Or the bright red of "Dr Pepper" and "10 2 4" on the green bottles that sat in the corner of my grandmothMore 8 BlueRidgeCountry.comhttp://www.BlueRidgeCountry.com