Jet on Old Scoreboard

Blacksville, West Virginia

Freddie Carl "Carley" McCoy had a long, white hillbilly beard and liked to collect old stuff. One of his favorite acquisitions was a Korean War-era F-84F Thunderstreak jet, which he bought for $50 in 1963. He liked it so much that he parked it in his front yard next to the Mason-Dixon Highway.

McCoy died in 2018, and locals decided to take the Covid-19 shutdown of 2020 and build the "Real McCoy Plane Project." They took another of his treasures, an old scoreboard from the local high school football field, slung it under the jet, and wired it so its lightbulbs displayed the score 20-20.

Both the jet and the scoreboard were given fresh coats of paint. A history of the jet was added, as was a poem by Carley's niece on a rock. It concluded, "A friend to all, Carley was a gentle soul, one who truly lived his life as a 'Real McCoy,'" but by 2021 most of it had worn away.