My Appalachia

by Sidney Saylor Farr

  I had joined Union Church shortly after Bruce was born in 1962. In addition to counseling me, the minister, Don Johnson, also did group counseling in which Grant (whom I did not then know) participated. As time passed, many in the congregation at Union Church were not satisfied with DJ’s ministry. They thought he was far too liberal in his preaching and conduct, and in 1968 they asked him to leave. DJ was assigned to a Methodist church in Jenson Beach, Florida, and his family moved from Berea. We lost not only a pastor, but a friend and counselor as well.

  When I joined Union Church, I began singing in the church choir. We had performed Handel’s Messiah early each December for five years. That was an enriching and educational experience for me. I knew little about classical music and had never sung it.

  Meeting Grant was also enriching. I saw him every week at the dance classes. I found out he had been born and reared in Black Mountain, North Carolina. At the time we met, Grant was a junior at Berea College. He told me he was twenty-three, a bit older than most of the other students. “Just a kid,” I thought. I lived two blocks away from campus. I invited Grant to my house for a home-cooked meal (which was a rare treat to students who had to live on Food Service meals). After that, he came for dinner several times through that September and October.

  I worked for the Council of the Southern Mountains. The Council had been formed in the early twentieth century to give various mission workers in Appalachia an annual gathering place. Eventually it was felt that a yearly conference was not enough, and a quarterly magazine was begun in 1925. I loved my job as associate editor of Mountain Life & Work. I often had the chance to attend workshops and conferences, and I made new friends. Feeling accepted and needed by those who knew all about me and liked me anyway, I was well off indeed!

  Grant seemed so much older than he said he was, and I felt younger than I was. Early that December Grant told me that he loved me. And he kissed me. I was deeply moved. It felt like the first time I’d ever been really kissed. The depth of my feelings surprised me. He told me that he was bisexual. He said that for years he’d had relations only with men, but that after being in therapy for awhile he had learned to be intimate with women. I was so fascinated with him that I did not feel any concern about his history. The present was enough for me.

  Grant went home to Black Mountain, North Carolina, for Christmas. On December 21, a Saturday, I brought Bruce with me while I had my hair done. While we were in the beauty shop, Santa Claus paid a surprise visit and gave us all a piece of candy. Bruce was delighted!

  The next day, Sunday morning, I awoke with a sore throat and felt too ill to go to church. (I had a weakness in my bronchial area and often had bronchitis.) I lay on the couch and watched TV with Bruce. All day long the wind banged at the windows, snatched at half-opened doors, and fretted at the roof. I hate it when the wind blows like that. Intervals of dark rain were interspersed with the wind.

  I wrote a special Christmas letter to Grant.

  Words can be unpredictable. They can be weak and lazy, they can sing like naked willows in the wind, they can heal a wounded spirit. . .

  I felt restless on Christmas Day. I sought tranquility by remembering the beauty of the silver wind, the spring violets, and the April greenery spread out in the hills. I remembered the warm black earth, sad with all its knowing sighs, which covers its face with dry and tender leaves.

  I’m learning about love, I thought. Love, like words, is also unpredictable. Love is also a little plant that will grow, even if it has to push its way up through a cement walk, even if it has to live in a thimbleful of dirt in a rock crevice.

  Grant called me on Christmas Eve and told me how much he loved my Christmas letter. He said he shared it with his mother, and she also liked it.

  I wished Grant and I could be together when the New Year came in. We arranged to talk on New Year’s Eve. He would not be back on campus until January 6.

  Time passed slowly; I missed him so much. It frightened me to realize the depth of my feeling. What is it that makes a man and a woman turn to each other and feel instinctively, “This one I want to know better”? I felt that way about Grant from the beginning.

  When Grant came back after Christmas vacation we saw each other often, always at my house. Our relationship became intimate and more and more intense. From early December to the middle of February we spent much time together. He’d come down for dinner on Friday and on Saturday and sometimes for an early supper on Sunday before chapel. We talked about how he was not doing enough studying.

  One day in February I went to Richmond to look into the possibility of my attending Eastern Kentucky University. Grant offered to come to my house at five and cook dinner with Bruce. I got home at five-thirty; we had a wonderful time with Bruce before putting him to bed. That night Grant and I spent several hours together. For me, it was the apex of our relationship. Grant gave every indication that he felt the same way. It was Valentine’s Day, and along with a beautiful card he gave me the book Are You Running with Me, Jesus? by Malcolm Boyd. I still have that book, and when I see it on my bookshelf a rush of memories floods in, bringing me the emotions of that evening once again.

  Just one week later Grant told me he thought we were spending too much time together and that perhaps we should not see each other anymore. Sadness and a feeling of betrayal swept over me. I wanted to hold on tight to this person who had helped me feel like a teenager again!

  That Saturday he seemed depressed. He said he couldn’t come down to see me that night. I was very concerned about our relationship. Later he called and asked me to meet him at a local pizza place. Wayne happened to be home and agreed to babysit Bruce. Grant tried hard to be good company, but near the end of our meal he stood up, announced that he had to go, and left the restaurant.

  The next afternoon he called and said he couldn’t see me because he had to study. His voice was strained. I didn’t see him until the following Friday night. Bruce was spending the night with his dad, and Wayne was out. Grant and I had the house to ourselves. We talked for a while, and we were intimate, but almost immediately afterward he left, saying he had a lot of studying to do. He added, “I won’t be down this coming Friday because a friend of mine in the Air Force is coming to see me.”

  “Will he spend the weekend?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  The Friday after that he called to say he couldn’t come down that night. “I caught a terrible cold.”

  “What are you doing for it?”

  “I went to College Health Service this morning,” he replied in a tired voice. “I also talked with the school counselor a long time this afternoon.”

  The next day, Saturday, he came to see me, and we talked.

  “Sidney, I don’t know how I feel about us anymore.”

  “I love you, Grant.”

  “I still care for you, Sidney. You have gotten as close to me as anyone ever has. I cannot allow to you to be that close. I believed I was ready for an intimate relationship with a woman, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “But we have been so good for each other,” I objected. “Can’t we just slow down a little?”

  “To go any further with you is not fair; you would only be hurt. Throughout our relationship I’ve not liked the fact that I have to come down to your house all the time. I hate it that I don’t have enough money or time to take you out. It’s not natural for us to spend so much time here.”

  “I have loved every moment we have spent here,” I replied. “I know you’re a student and don’t have money to take me out to dinner in cities like Lexington. I understand all of that, and I don’t care.”

  “Sidney, sex with you came to mean more than our relationship. I just can’t ever let sex be that important to me in any relationship.”

  “I don’t understand. Great sex is so important in a good relationship.”

  “But sex on a one-night-a-week basis is not good for either of us. I’d want to see you more often, and I’d be tempted to take time a
way from my studies and work. If I did that, I’d end up resenting you and hating myself.”

  “I will help you be aware of time and place. I promise to send you back to your dorm in time to study.”

  “But by taking up so much of your time, I feel I’m not being fair to you and the other men you might have a chance to meet. I want you to have the freedom to have other sexual partners, and I want the same freedom for myself. But the intense way we feel about each other would prevent us from exercising that freedom. I hope we can be friends and date casually, but the intimacy as it’s been cannot continue. I’m not ready for that kind of relationship with anyone.”

  Grant and I talked a long time. When we said good-bye, we both cried. I stood on the sunporch and watched him walk up Center Street toward his dormitory. I stood there for a long time, hoping I’d see him come back. I couldn’t believe he was gone for good. It started to rain. How appropriate, I thought. I felt desolate.

  The next weekend the friend from the Air Force came again to see Grant and spent Saturday night with him. I couldn’t help feeling that Tony was part of the reason for Grant’s break with me. I told myself I must not feel angry or hurt toward Grant. I had accepted him and learned to love him as he was. Life would go on for us both.

  Around that time I found that I would be eligible for about $1,800 a year in grants and loans if I became a full-time student at Eastern Kentucky University. I’d have to sell my house and buy a car to commute to Richmond. If I sold the house, bought a car, and became a full-time student, I would be eligible to live in Berea’s government-subsidized apartment housing in Dixie Park. The rent would be based on my income.

  Selling the house would break my last tie with Leon. I was never happy in that house.

  After pondering the difficulties of commuting to EKU, I realized it would be more sensible to try for Berea College, even though I would not be eligible for the grants and loans I would receive at EKU. Loyal Jones, my boss at the Council of the Southern Mountains, offered to help if I got in a financial bind. My friend Pam said I was a fool to think of EKU, but not because it was too far away. She said that if I was taking this step, why not let it be a long one, clear out of the state.

  I went to talk with Alan Morriam, the admissions counselor at Berea College. He told me what I needed to do to enroll. First I had to take a two-day series of entrance exams. I took them and passed. I was rated in the 99th percentile for English/verbal skills and concepts—but only in the 35th percentile in math. I had to get a tutor that summer, they said, then be tested again before school started in September.

  Meanwhile, I fought to hold back the hurt of losing Grant. I rationalized and analyzed until I was bone-weary. I reread all the letters he wrote me at Christmas, read the inscription in the books he gave me... and cried. I loved Grant, just as I had loved Edd Taylor. Was I to lose Grant, too?

  Agnes Hart, a friend of mine, called and invited Grant and me to a party one Saturday night around this time. When I told her that Grant and I were no longer dating, she hinted that her guests were only couples, but said it would be all right if I came alone.

  I did go to Agnes’s party—with a friend from church named Martin. It was good for my morale. I wore a green sheath that made me look slim and brought out the highlights in my honey-blond hair. Martin introduced me to a man who looked at me and said to Martin, “I envy you, Martin. You have a lovely date.”

  During the next few weeks, Grant came to my house, sometimes for a meal, other times just to talk, but we no longer had an intimate relationship. One afternoon while he was visiting, he concocted a rum drink that we both loved: four jiggers of light rum, four jiggers of grenadine, and one small 7-Up. We named our new drink Red Devil. It inspired a poem I wrote and sent Grant that summer while he was home in Black Mountain.

  Red Devil

  I go to my room and try to sleep

  but I can’t sleep

  With the red devil singing in my blood.

  It’s gone to my head and I’m wild.

  I hear music with every cell in my body

  And feel the red devil with every nerve.

  My room explodes in color

  and I run wild in the wind.

  I run naked in the wild wind

  And feel music in my feet.

  I want to dance.

  I want to dance with my lover

  But he’s not here.

  I try to sleep but I cannot sleep

  With this red devil in my blood.

  Grant got a summer job working as a dance therapist at Duke University’s psychiatric hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, that summer. I enrolled in Berea College as a degree candidate. I left my job as associate editor of Mountain Life & Work at the Council of the Southern Mountains, and was employed as a dormitory director at Fairchild Hall. I was paid $225 a month and lived in a dorm apartment. It was a big change for Bruce and me to move into an apartment on campus. I decided to rent my house for the time being; the rental income supplemented my salary as dorm director.

  That summer I bought a 1963 Ford Fairlane, black with a red interior. Several of the male students, as well as my friends, gave me driving lessons.

  On July 18, I watched the astronauts walk on the moon. What a thrill to see history being made by those first footsteps on the moon. Some of my people in the mountains didn’t believe it was real. “If God wanted people on the moon” they said, “he would have created them there.”

  Bruce and I moved into Fairchild Hall near the end of August. There was a bedroom, a kitchen, and a bath in a suite on the second floor. The college gave me another adjoining room for Bruce. Bruce couldn’t imagine living in a dorm with 103 girls. Neither could I. The girls moved in by Labor Day. When Bruce wanted to take a shower in the girls’ shower area he had to call out “Man on the floor!” Also, when he’d come in from school and started up the stairs, he had to call out the same thing.

  Grant came back to school in September.

  “I missed you, Sidney,” he said. “It’s so good to see you again.” We had supper together, and it was so easy to be with him.

  “It is so good to see you and Bruce again,” he repeated at the end of the meal.

  After a few days of seeing each other, it seemed as though all the issues from the winter before had been settled in Grant’s mind, but apparently he had decided not to talk about them. I avoided asking him because I was afraid of what I might hear.

  The fact that I had so much going on in my life—adjusting to new living quarters, getting to know my girls in the dorm, attending classes—was another reason I didn’t have the courage to bring up serious topics with Grant. I found myself doing what I had done in my life with Leon, retreating to somewhere inside and dreaming of life the way I wanted it to be. After a few weeks Grant and I became intimate again. Now, however, it was harder to find private time than it had been before.

  I was enrolled in three classes: Psychology, General Science for non-science majors, and an advanced English course. They chose the ten students with the highest scores in English and put us in this special class. By the end of the semester my grades were a C in General Science and Psychology, and an A+ in English. Grant decided to change his major again, this time from Civics to Philosophy and Religion.

  The second or third day of my General Science class the professor started writing mathematical equations on the blackboard, and I was lost. The next day before class I talked with the teacher. I knew him well; we both sang in the choir at Union Church. He had read some short stories of mine when they were published. He said, “I understand, Sidney. If somebody assigned me to write a short story I would be lost, too.” He arranged for a young woman in the class to tutor me. This worked out well enough for me to pass with a C. The professor made me feel better by the way he responded to my problem.

  Bruce’s seventh birthday was October 13. The girls in the dorm threw him a surprise birthday party. There was a mound of presents as big as a washtub in the middle of the
parlor floor. He whispered to me, “I can’t believe this, Mom.”

  When Halloween was near, the girls started planning an Open House. Bruce figured largely in their planning. Three or four of the girls had taken him under their wing. He spent a large amount of time in their rooms (I found out later that they had gleefully taught him how to play poker).

  Almost everything that semester was an adventure for Bruce.

  That fall, Wayne got a furlough from the Navy and spent several days with us. The Dean of Women at first refused permission for him to visit us at the dorm, but the girls all signed a petition demanding that Wayne be allowed to visit and presented it to her. She relented, but would not allow him to spend the night. Once he was there, it seemed all the girls developed crushes on him, handsome as he was in his blue-and-white uniform, before he flew back to Puerto Rico.

  In November, Grant asked me to marry him. He was twenty-four; I was thirty-six. I knew I wanted to be with him for the rest of my life. I said yes, and we began making plans. We would finish the semester, sell my house, get married on January 24, and move to Asheville, North Carolina, where Grant would again work at Highland Hospital as a dance therapist.

  We both wrote to DJ in Florida to tell him our plans. He wrote back, saying that he hoped he could come to our wedding, but it was not to be; church and family activities prevented his coming. Before Christmas, at Grant’s urging, I traded in my Ford for a newer car, a Chrysler.

  During Christmas vacation, Bruce and I closed the dorm and with Grant we set out, in my Chrysler, for Black Mountain, North Carolina. Grant’s mother had invited us to come with Grant to visit that Christmas when he told her we were going to get married. I was worried about what his parents would think about this older woman and their son.