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Patsy Cline died 44 years ago. She only lived for 30 years, and her career as a singer lasted just five and a half. But she ended up like Elvis: dying young made her an icon. Now she is getting ready for another comeback, thanks to a dedicated group from her hometown of Winchester, VA.

Cline was really Virginia Patterson Hensley, the eldest daughter of a single mother. A childhood throat infection gave her the rich, booming voice that made her a star, and she was determined to make the most of her gift. She sang in church and at nearby talent shows and nightclubs. Her mother sewed her cowgirl stage outfits and drove her to gigs. She was also a soda jerk at Gaunt’s Drug Store while in high school in the late 1940s. Today you can go to Gaunt’s and see a booth Patsy used to wait on. Ask and they might give you a photo of her waving from the back of a big ol’ convertible when she was queen of the Apple Blossom Festival in 1954. The photo captures a moment when her career was just starting to pop.

Cline moved to Nashville in 1958, after she recorded her first hit, and she did not get back to Winchester much before she died in a plane crash in 1963. Her husband continues to manage her career; her mother inherited her stage outfits, jewelry, and other possessions (including a large collection of salt and pepper shakers). When her mother died in 1998, the material was split between her brother and sister, who did not get along. They had a court battle nasty enough that in 2003, her elaborate stage costumes had to be auctioned off to pay the legal bills. One of the costumes ended up at the Smithsonian Institute. But all is not lost: “most of the auctioned items are in good hands,” says Judy Sue Huyett-Kempf, President of Celebrating Patsy Cline, Inc.

Winchester never forgot Patsy. Fans gather there for annual observances, and a bell tower erected in her memory plays hymns daily at 6:00 p.m., the hour of her death. Celebrating Patsy is trying to open a museum, and they are making progress. They purchased the items from her brother’s estate when he died shortly after the court battle ended. They own her childhood home, a late 18th-century cottage they intend to restore to the way it looked when Patsy lived there in the 1940s. They have secured a building site and an architect, and they’re getting ready to launch a fund-raising campaign. The biggest loose end is the stuff owned by Patsy’s sister, Sylvia. Judy says they keep in touch.

Patsy’s grave is just outside of town. It isn’t much – just a bronze marker for her on the left and a placeholder for her husband on the right. Her bereaved mother had the marker inscribed, “Death Cannot Kill What Never Dies: Love.” A museum is what the mother wanted, says Huyett-Kempf, so that is what she’s going to get.

It is almost time to give the Institute for Northern Studies a rest, but I have one more report to add before I move on to other topics. The Institute’s first project was a survey of the Mason-Dixon line by founder Linton Weeks, published in the February 14 Washington Post. Linton spent the weekend driving around between Emmitsburg, MD and Gettysburg, PA, crossing the Mason-Dixon Line and looking for the spot where the South becomes the North. His conclusion was that on the border, North and South are all mixed up. I found further evidence of this on a recent trip through State Line, PA, a tiny hamlet just north of Hagerstown, MD in Franklin County. I drove a few miles on Mason-Dixon Road, a two-lane blacktop which is the actual Mason-Dixon Line — the state line of Pennsylvania and Maryland. Here is what I observed.

1. On the Maryland side, a large processing facility for Citicorp, the quintessential New York bank. Very corporate, very Northern.

2. Across the street, in a large parking lot for an automobile warehouse, a young man spinning donuts in a customized Plymouth Duster painted primer gray, with an oversized air scoop on the hood, dual exhaust, and “Pappy’s Pride” stenciled on the side in an extravagant, flowing script. As Southern as it gets.

3. At the east end of Mason-Dixon Road, in the hamlet of State Line, I visited Earl’s Market. I highly recommend that you do, too. Earl’s has a great meat counter featuring pints of fresh Chesapeake oysters, homemade sausage, and delectable sugar-cured country ham from a small smokehouse in Virginia. Score one for the south.

4. Earl’s also had a big display of Philadelphia’s own Tastykakes at the end of the aisle near the cash register. So I give up. The apple crumb kake was delicious, though.