Appalachia: telling the whole story

While I was growing up my family and I often watched the television sitcom, The Beverly Hillbillies. Yes it was funny in parts, I must admit. But as has too often been the case, we locals were portrayed as being a good heap of all of the following characteristics: Ignorant. Illiterate. Irrational. Unlawful. Hot-blooded. Dim-witted.

As funny as it was, in the eyes of the rest of the world that sitcom possibly set us back about 100 years.

Now that’s the thing I’ve come to notice about virtually any “outsider” who purports to film, write about, or report on our neck of the woods. They rarely tell the “rest of the story” about us. They only seem to convey part of it - the part that beckons outsiders to feel sorry for us and look down on us.

I can downright personally vouch that “my” people are many, many things - mostly very good things. In reality, we can neither be pigeon-holed nor stereotyped into “one” caricature.

Yet the world still tries.

And if you want to watch a tremendously negative and highly exaggerated fictional characterization of us Southern mountain folk, then view the movie ‘Deliverance’ sometime. That one likely set us back 200 years.

How about the book, ‘A Hillbilly Elegy’? (Yes, I’ve read it. Have you?) That one fast forwarded us to our grave. Last I checked we ain’t dead yet.

Somebody now sittin’ in some ivory tower is always wantin’ to reform us in some big way. But we have a lot to give. Right now. Exactly as we are.

Now how about us locals? (Please note, when I type “locals” I’m specifically referring to those who have been born, bred, and stayed here all their lives.) How do we view and report about our own culture? Are we at once both honest and open-minded when describing ourselves to outsiders? And do we tell the whole story?

Well let’s find out. Let’s let a local (yours truly here) give it a try:

My son and I once went hiking just outside the city limits of Bristol, when we wandered off into a particular mountain hollow (or as more properly pronounced, “holler”). The scene that next met our eyes could well have been the very set in which the movie ‘Deliverance’ was made. Even some of the characters whom we were soon to meet along our way could have reasonably passed (at first glance) for those in the movie.

Ah, but as we have all oft been told since we were wee tots, looks can be deceiving.

When my son and I entered this here holler, we were first met by “No Trespassing” signs galore. They probably held about the same amount of print as had been read in books during the previous month by the entirety of the local resident population. (See there, we mountain folk will even poke some fun at our own people - and we reserve you the right to do so, too … long as you are a local.)

And here’s a remarkable thing; I dare say every single one of them there signs was hung by someone who had more “mechanical, fix-it-yourself” type intelligence than most any outsider who has read a hundred big city novels. If something in these here parts breaks down, we locals can often fix it ourselves: Cars. Plumbing. Carpentry. Electrical. The list goes on and on. Contrary to commonly held outsider belief, our people are actually quite highly intelligent - if we are measured on the “right” type of IQ scale (and not one of them fancy, high-falootin’ Harvard ones). Proud folk. Resilient. Adaptable. (By the way, a good number of us do have 145 Harvard-scale IQs - and we also happen to have read ‘War and Peace’ from cover to cover.)

As we walked on (yes, it was a public road) we soon came upon a sign nailed onto a telephone pole that read “Beware of Dog.” It was nailed right alongside about half a dozen other “No Trespassing” signs. And they were all nailed facing us, in the direction we were headed. Public road or not, we had a decision to make.

We faced three choices.