You
Can’t Get There From Here- With The Appalachia Hills And Hollows In Mind
By
Zack James
“Damn,
those shacks we just passed by looked like they could have come out of some
John Steinbeck or Erskine Caldwell novel from the dustbowl, tobacco road 1930s
or something, ” Bradley Fox, shaking his head, mentioned to his companion,
Sarah Simon, as they travelled down Highway 7 toward Prestonsburg, and “home.”
That “home” rightly in quotation marks since Bradley Fox for whom this journey
had been planned had never to his conscious knowledge been to that town in his
life. Had for many years never even though to go there until his brother,
Jamison, told him a story about how when he, Jamison, was young, about a year
old, back in 1946 or so, their parents, Bolton and Delores Fox, had taken a
trip from Riverdale in Massachusetts where Delores had grown up and which had
been their residence after they got married when Bolton was discharged from the
Marines, and gone down to Prestonsburg where Bolton had grown up to see if
prospects there for work and living were any better than in post-World War II
Riverdale. The textile mills which had sustained that town’s economy for most
of the previous century were heading out, were heading south and would
eventually leave for foreign shores as the century progressed and so staying
pat looked like a wasted option.
The
intriguing part was that Delores had been pregnant with Bradley when this
attempted move took place and so although he was only in the womb he had been
“home” to the Appalachian hills and hollows before he breathed his first air
breathe. What made the story all the more dramatic was that Yankee born and
bred Bradley, or he liked to present himself to the world that way, always was
ashamed, or if not ashamed then always hiding that element of his roots, from
where his father came from. Like his father had had any say where he had come
from. This distain would come out on anything from Bolton’s slightly southern
drawl which would made Bradley’s friend laugh whenever they heard that (calling
Bolton damn “reb” and other silly stuff until Bradley no longer brought friends
around until high school when Bolton’s accent was seen as “cool” if not by
Bradley then by his friends who thought-since Bolton was not their father-that
Bolton was cool in the language of the time.
His
feelings of shame came out as well when Bradley was old enough to recognize
that his father, when he was able to find work, got the short end of the stick,
got into that last hired, first fired (or rather laid-off, pink-slipped which
meant the same thing) syndrome which meant that there was never enough of
life’s goods around in good times or bad. Bradley resented that, resented that
because of those shortage his family abode looked like, especially in
over-grown summer, those Dorethea Lange photographs he had seen in a magazine
of some places down south, down in Appalachia, down not too far from where he
and Sarah were heading on State Highway 7.
Yeah
times had been tough for Bradley, when he got “caught,” got caught out when
Jack Kennedy whom he idolized for being everything his family was not decided
to do something not only about improving the lives of black people down south,
which he was okay with, but with the poor benighted “white trash” as well. The
whole thing from what he gathered later had been started when guy named Michael
Harrington wrote a book, The Other
America, about poverty in white bread Appalachia and mentioned
Prestonsburg, Christ, Prestonsburg of all places and him with a birth
certificate which showed his father’s place of birth that very same place. That
was not the worst of it though because nobody really needed to know, or
probably gave a “rat’s ass” an expression that he and his boys used excessively
then about where his father was born and raised and what his condition of life
had been if some damned school do-gooders didn’t decide that the citizens,
students anyway, should put together a clothing drive for the poor misbegotten
residents of Prestonsburg and have that campaign announced day after day for
several weeks over the P. A system at school making him feel like crawling
under the seat in homeroom when that announcement for goods came over the
loudspeaker.
So
Bradley Fox had a serious history of denial about one half of his roots (the
Delores half was pure Riverdale Irish and thus he could “pass” and
unfortunately his father Bolton P. Fox went to an early grave being reconciled
with his son over that silly stuff). It took a long time, too long, and too
much estrangement, too many missed chances to right wrongs before he realized
that simple truth that his father could not help where he had been born anymore
that Bradley could be. By the time he realized that, realized that his father
was good and honest man who never got break number one in his life it was too
late. But that sense that he had committed a grave injustice to the man never
stopped haunting him. And hence the trip south “home”
Maybe
it was that father guilt, maybe it was Sarah continuously telling him over the
previous decade that he needed to physically confront his fears and maybe it
was that mountain music that lately he had been drawn too. The music of the
Saturday night barn dance down in the hills and hollows with the mist coming
down over the mountains to blanket the night, music to take the sting out of
Willie’s White Thunder and to let those young lovers do their courting ritual
in peace. Whatever combination prevailed one day a few months after Bradley had
given up the day to day operation of his roofing company to his younger son he
cell-phoned Sarah and asked her if she would be willing to go south with him.
She made him laugh when she said that was her in the front of his house with
the car motor running so get moving. And so they did. That didn’t stop Bradley
as they headed south of the Mason-Dixon Line from feeling queasy, very queasy
as they approached the Ohio River and entered into coal country with its
beauty, starkness, and decay all mixed up. Then he saw those tar-paper shacks
with their open air window and old papas sitting on the bent porch, kids and
animals running every which way and he thought back to those photographs from
his youth and started to get those old-time feelings of disgust. No this would
not be an easy trip “home,” not easy at all.
