For some reason, this loneliness made me think of Granny. I have always wondered if she was lonely. In her early life, she was surrounded by children and work. There were chores, and crops, and cooking, and cleaning, and countless other activities on each day’s to-do list. She never sat still.
But I don’t mistake activity for company. For most of her life she lived at least a mile from other houses, and she didn’t have a vehicle to make a visit more manageable. She couldn’t leave the children alone. All of her peers were as busy and overwhelmed as she was.
Who did she talk to in her moments of stress? Who did she confide her fears and anxieties in? She was still just a child herself, only seventeen when her first child was born. I wonder who taught her how to grow up so quickly.
The answer, I suppose, is no one. Like the generations of hill women before her, she was aware that life came with challenges. And she knew that ultimately she would tackle these challenges by herself.
Reflecting on Granny’s life always made me feel a little whiny. I had family nearby who loved me. I was forming connections with my clients every day. I was even beginning to find friends. I didn’t need a relationship to find meaning in my life. Like the women before me, I was independent. I had the fire and the strength of the mountains in my bones.
I decided, then and there, on my thirtieth birthday, that if I didn’t find a husband, I would be just fine.
Three days later, I met Bryan.
I liked that Bryan was a lawyer, like me. I liked that he didn’t feel the need to compete with or diminish my accomplishments—he was confident in his own. I liked that he wore jackets with patches on the elbows and opened the car door for me whenever we went out.
Bryan is a Louisvillian to his core. He was born here and has spent most of his life here. On some of our first dates he would pick me up at my apartment and drive me to a restaurant he liked, pointing to different buildings along the way: “That used to be an Italian restaurant several years ago…that was a doctor’s office.” He knows the city, both as it is and as it used to be. As someone who had moved around a lot over the past several years, I admired his deep roots.
Bryan and I grew up a few hours away from each other, but our childhoods were vastly different. His father was a doctor, an obstetrician/gynecologist in private practice, who attended a lot of the births in town. Even today, people will come up to Bryan when we’re out at a restaurant and say, “Your father delivered me years ago.” Bryan’s mother stayed at home when he was a child.
Bryan’s father would come home from nights at the hospital with his car filled with new toys for his children and new presents for his wife. His family belonged to a country club, and they spent summers at its pool. The children went on international vacations and to private school. Bryan’s parents were able to give him all the advantages I had come to recognize.
Bryan’s extended family was in politics. His uncle had been the attorney general of Kentucky and the mayor of Louisville. He was respected in town, and everyone knew him. When I told people I was dating a man named Bryan Armstrong, it wasn’t uncommon for someone to ask, “Wait, is he related to the old mayor?”
Dating Bryan introduced me to a different side of Louisville. We went to trendy restaurants, the theater, the opera. We attended charity events and galas. The contrast in my life was sometimes stark. By day, I would help a woman figure out how to get government assistance so that she could afford food for her child. By night, I would split a fancy appetizer with Bryan at a new restaurant in town.
I still feel uncomfortable about this contrast. I know what poverty looks like, what it means to live in poverty. I remember it from my childhood, and I see it in my work as a lawyer with low-income women. Part of me feels guilty for not being poor; I have a hard time justifying having or doing nice things. “It’s okay to go out to dinner,” my best friend tells me on a regular basis. “It’s okay to take care of yourself.” Part of me feels like I did something wrong by ignoring my roots—in poverty and in the mountains—for so long. Sometimes I believe I should reject any and all privilege to make amends.
A few summers before I met Bryan, I interned at a private law firm. Each summer associate got a stipend for meals. The firm wanted us to bond with the full-time lawyers, so they encouraged us to eat together. The dinner allowance was high—high enough that we could order almost anything we wanted.
At the end of one meal, the table was covered with barely touched plates bearing several hundred dollars’ worth of food. I had spent the day fundraising for the Bureau. I knew that the amount of money on that table, in the form of untouched food, could provide legal representation to several survivors of domestic violence. It seemed like such a waste.
* * *
—
A few months after we began dating, Bryan arranged for us to go on a trip to a resort in the mountains of West Virginia. I had never been to a resort. I was used to traveling, but on a shoestring budget. The summer before I moved to Louisville, my best friend and I had gone backpacking through Southeast Asia. I insisted that we try to spend no more than twelve dollars per day on lodging, and I ate street food to keep down costs. My friend rolled his eyes at me in exasperation. “Cassie, I think we can afford to stay somewhere that has air-conditioning tonight,” he told me after I proposed staying at a run-down youth hostel of questionable cleanliness. He gave me an “I told you so” look when I came down with food poisoning in rural Cambodia.
Bryan and I talked the entire four-hour drive to the resort. We covered everything from our childhoods, to our political views, to our favorite podcasts. He was easy to talk to, easy to be with. I kept finding myself staring at him a bit too long or laughing at his jokes a bit too much. I was decidedly smitten.
The resort was fancier than I’d expected. When we arrived, the concierge handed us a list of the activities at the resort that weekend. I looked at it and had to stifle a giggle. Really, I thought to myself, people still do falconry? I liked the romance of it all, but a small part of me felt bad about leaving my work to spend time in such an elaborate environment. When my colleagues asked me about the trip, I was purposefully vague: “We spent time in West Virginia,” I said. “It was nice.”
The last night of the trip, Bryan and I were walking through the grounds after dinner. We joked about how clean everything was. “Do you think someone sweeps the sidewalks each night?” I asked. I chuckled to myself, remembering that Granny did, indeed, used to sweep the dust off of the dirt paths in her front yard. Bryan laughed and we kept walking through the crisp autumn air.
A few steps later Bryan stopped me. “I know that I’m going to marry you,” he said. “You don’t know it yet, and that’s okay. Take as long as you need to be sure.”
I knew quickly that I loved Bryan. He kept his condo stocked with jumbo bags of peanut M&M’s for me. My dog would roll onto her back as soon as he walked in the door, knowing that he would lie down on the floor and scratch her belly. He did some of his legal cases for free because he believed in helping people. I didn’t need to choose which version of myself to be around him—the Ivy League graduate or the kid from Appalachia or the dedicated poverty lawyer. I could just be.
We balanced each other out. He reminded me that it was okay to do nice things for myself—that having a celebratory meal at a new restaurant or going on a vacation didn’t make me a bad person. In turn, I told him about the mountains, the struggling families I worked with, and what we could do to help. It was a part of Kentucky he had never seen as clearly as I had. Bryan and I had taken very different paths to get to the place where we found ourselves. But, somehow, we had arrived at the same place, and we wanted to stay there together. Our backgrounds meant we often had varying perspectives on things, but our differences were thoughtful and thought-provoking.
I knew that Bryan loved who I currently was, but I was less sure if he could love the place I came f
rom, the family that had formed me. I still remembered how hurt I had been when Diego judged my Owsley County family, and then judged me once he had met them. An irrational part of me was afraid that Bryan would do the same. But I was also afraid that they would judge him—that they would somehow see his privileged background and decide that he did not belong in the mountains. I didn’t take Bryan to meet them right away.
Less than six months after our first trip, Bryan and I went back to the same resort in West Virginia. We had been looking at engagement rings, but he had made it clear that he wasn’t going to propose yet. I thought maybe he hadn’t had time to get a ring, or he needed time to gather his thoughts. I tried not to seem disappointed.
On our second day at the resort we went off-road jeeping. I loved the feeling of driving a powerful vehicle up hills and over the mountainside. It reminded me of four-wheeling or mudding in Owsley County. Somehow, in the middle of this resort, Bryan had found an activity that connected with my mountain roots. He is good at that.
When we reached the top of a hill, the instructor told Bryan and me to switch places so that Bryan could drive. Bryan got out of the jeep first. He walked toward the overlook and asked me to come and look at some honeysuckle nearby. I love honeysuckle, particularly how it smells after it’s been raining. I buried my face in it. When I turned around, Bryan was down on one knee. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I do know I said yes.
I took Bryan to meet my Owsley County family shortly after that. I tried to mentally prepare him for what was to come. “They won’t really shoot you,” I told him, “but they might act like they will. The important thing is to show no fear. They can smell fear.” I was antsy the whole drive down.
I told Bryan the story of my father going with my mother to Owsley County for the first time. Wilma got mischievous on that trip, telling Orlando, “Now, if my daddy goes to get his gun, you just head for the hills and don’t come down until it gets dark out.” At first, Orlando was skeptical.
“Mmm-hmm. Sure thing,” he answered.
As they got closer to the county border, Wilma upped the ante. “I don’t think he’ll try to kill you, but he might shoot at your knees,” she said with a straight face.
“Okay, Wilma,” he answered with a half smile, “whatever you say.” His voice sounded confident, but secretly he was beginning to worry. The counties they were passing through were increasingly rural. The signs of extreme poverty were increasingly visible. A pack of angry dogs had chased his car a few miles back.
A little over an hour after their journey began, they reached the Cow Creek turnoff. As Orlando carefully navigated over the holler’s edge, Wilma saw her father pass in a neighbor’s car. “Oh, hey!” she shouted, pointing at the retreating vehicle. “There’s Daddy, right there in that car. I wonder where he’s off to.”
A few minutes later, they parked at the old farmhouse. Granny cautiously scurried down the hill from the house to the road. “Why, welcome, welcome!” she called, beaming. She patted Orlando on the shoulder.
After Granny had made an appropriate fuss over Orlando, Wilma asked, “Where was Daddy headed to in that car we passed?”
Granny, not knowing of the couple’s earlier conversation, answered, “Oh, he was going to town to buy shotgun shells.” Orlando paled and swayed a bit on his feet. Even though he later discovered that Papaw was buying shotgun shells to shoot at crows, Orlando would never be in the same room as Papaw and a shotgun without being nervous.
Despite my fears, Bryan did great with my Owsley County family. He went along with Uncle Dale’s jokes about hanging him from the telephone wires. He laughed when they called him a “city slicker.” He spent time getting to know each member of my family. He and Uncle Sonny giggled in a corner, and when I asked them what they were doing Sonny shot me a look. “Woman, can’t you see we are schemin’ over here!” Bryan shrugged.
Uncle Dale kept telling him he couldn’t be a part of the family until he “looked through the knothole of Mamaw’s peg leg.” Bryan looked confused and a little pale until he realized there was no Mamaw and there was no peg leg. Bryan didn’t understand everything my family said in their thick mountain accents, but he rolled along with the spirit of the fun. “I don’t know what you were so worried about,” Bryan said. “They’re nice people. And people are just people.” As we were leaving, Mabel promised that next time she would make him a whole hickory nut pie to take home—she had noticed when he sneaked back to the kitchen for a second slice. Aunt Ruth hugged me and whispered, “I reckon he’s a keeper.” For a while, in that room, my past and present were together and getting along just fine.
* * *
—
It was five o’clock on a Monday morning and Aunt Ruth was awake. I had spent the night on her sofa, as I sometimes do when I’m in the area for work. She always feeds me dinner; often she makes my favorite banana pudding for dessert. The second year of my fellowship I worked for the Kentucky Equal Justice Center, an organization that advocated for clients all over Kentucky. I made it a point to spend time in the mountains whenever I could.
Aunt Ruth came down the hallway that morning making noise. I sighed and tried to pull the blankets over my head. I knew what was coming. She entered the kitchen and slammed the drawers just a bit too loudly as she started the coffee. She was, in her Aunt Ruth way, telling me that it was time to get up. After lying there for a few more minutes, wondering if there was any way to steal a little more sleep, I sat up.
“Good morning, Cassie. You awake?” she asked, as though that hadn’t been her goal all along. Her loud voice cut sharply through my fog of sleepiness.
“Yup, I’m awake,” I replied as I stumbled to the overly strong coffee in the kitchen. Normally, I like my coffee weak and full of sugar. But when I stay at Aunt Ruth’s I appreciate the extra caffeine in each cup.
There was no particular reason for Aunt Ruth to be up that early. Until a couple of years before, she’d worked as a cook in the high school kitchen in town, lifting huge vats of food and operating heavy-duty equipment. She liked that job; she got to interact with the children and sneak some of the hungry-looking ones extra food. She would make sure they didn’t get in trouble with the cashiers by covering up the extra helpings of protein with bread.
But she couldn’t keep doing that job. After decades of farmwork and two bouts with cancer, her body was broken in numerous ways. She kept working for several years just for the health insurance—she desperately needed coverage because of her medical history. After the Affordable Care Act was implemented in 2014, though, she was finally able to get affordable healthcare. She retired.
But, even now, Aunt Ruth still wakes up before the sun rises, looking for a task for the day. Sometimes, she mows her lawn with a push mower. When she’s done with her own yard, she’ll move on to her neighbors’. Other days she works in her garden. She has a list of older community members she checks on every day. The important thing to Ruth is that she works. I wish she would sit still a bit more. Or at least sleep in an extra hour.
People tell me that my aunt Ruth is a hard worker. When she’s around for those conversations, she beams. Calling someone a hard worker is one of the biggest compliments you can pay in Owsley County. There is pride and dignity in work. For Ruth, work was also the way she could excel, be good at something. There weren’t a lot of paths available to her, so she chose to be the best at what was: work.
In Owsley County, hard work is physical labor that breaks down your body: in a tobacco field, a coal mine, a lumber yard. These are the types of jobs that people know, the types of jobs that families made a good living doing. It isn’t “hard work” unless it is physically challenging, backbreaking. Your body is your labor.
I understand this, the importance of the physicality of labor. I remember the days of working in the tobacco fields when I was young. All these years later I still feel pride when I talk abou
t those experiences. I was able to do it, this challenging work. I was a part of a family that undertook this labor.
But now these jobs have largely disappeared.
Some people don’t understand the emotional toll of losing these industries. My friends from outside of Appalachia tell me, “Thank goodness coal and tobacco collapsed. All they did was hurt people anyway.” They often follow with a comment about how tobacco damages people’s health and coal is bad for the environment.
And they’re not incorrect. The tobacco industry lied to consumers for years. It is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans. I count my own grandmother among its victims. Coal mining also has a problematic history. The industry stopped workers from unionizing, intentionally stoked racial tensions, and treated employees poorly for decades. Many of its practices hurt the environment, destroying the natural beauty of the mountains.
What is missing from these statements, though, is an understanding of the meaning these industries brought to mountain communities. Of course these communities wanted—still want—safer jobs. Jobs that didn’t damage the beauty of their surroundings, that didn’t put their families’ lives at risk. But those jobs weren’t available to them, so they took the ones that were. They were hard jobs, and the people did them with dignity and pride. A monument to coal miners in Harlan, Kentucky, honors those who “sacrificed their lives while supporting a family and the nation.”
It’s not clear what comes next for the mountains. The terrain makes it hard to move things—products, people—in and out. I was reminded of this on a recent trip to Harlan. Between navigating the tight curves and getting stuck behind several slow-moving coal trucks, it took me almost three hours to travel eighty-seven miles. I was running low on gas, and I didn’t have cellphone service to check where the next station was. I drove twenty miles without seeing a single store or restaurant. This seclusion makes it hard for some parts of Appalachia to compete with other, easier-to-navigate places for industries like large-scale manufacturing.
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