You Can’t Get There From Here- With The Appalachia Hills And Hollows In Mind

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.