Small Town Lessons

It’s withered and covered in a perpetual coating of coal dust. It is nestled deep in the bosom of the Appalachian Mountains; isolated and not particularly sophisticated. But, if you’re lucky enough to ever see the fog cascade down East River Mountain like rolling white waves you will know that you have witnessed nature’s truest majesty firsthand.

Like much of small town America, Bluefield, WV is a shell of its once booming self. The powerful trains that once chugged and whistled as they carried coal to light America get plenty of rest nowadays. The opioid epidemic has hit this little pocket of the world particularly hard and sometimes a local politician makes national news for saying derogatory, inflammatory and utterly ridiculous statements about the LGBQT community.

For years, I avoided and demonized my hometown. My secrets and shame lived there, burrowed into the dusty hollers and unable to escape over the looming mountains. The smallness made it seem like a white hot spotlight followed me around illuminating the dysfunction, addiction and criminality that surrounded my family.

I found fiery fault with Bluefield until I slowly began to realize that the the place where I grew up wasn’t to blame, it was simply the setting. My mom and dad would have been the same wild, felonious, fighting, screaming drug-addicted people in Los Angeles or Chicago or Manhattan. Had I been born and raised in the farm lands of the midwest or the rocky shores of the northeast or the bayou of the gulf, I would have still chugged Natural Lights and made out with boys until I felt awful about myself in an ill-fated attempt to fit in.

What may not have been the same had the geography lottery that kids are entered into pinned me somewhere else in the world is how I ended up.

West Virginians are a prideful people. We have been knocked-down and slapped around since our courageous birth in 1863. It has caused us to band together and if you come for one of us, you come for all 1.8 million residents as well as all of the ex-pats. I promise you that we’ve heard all the toothless, barefoot and incestuous jokes, but what we find really funny is that the people calling us ignorant hillbillies are the same ones who don’t seem to know that there are fifty states (Virginia was the 10th state and West Virginia, once it seceded from Virginia, became the 35th state).

The children of our Mountain Mama want all of our brothers and sisters to succeed. We relish an opportunity to tell others about Jerry West and Chuck Yeager and Mary Lou Retton and even Joyce DeWitt. And, although I may not have been the person to first break the speed of sound or the first American woman to win the all-around gold medal in the Olympics, I do lead a happy, successful life.

Now, I know that not only was Bluefield not a blood thirsty monster out to gobble me up, but rather the place that is affectionally called “Nature’s Air Conditioned City” is responsible for much of my success. More specifically, I am forever indebted to the public school teachers of Bluefield. These tireless, dedicated intelligent educators gave this sorrowful, free-lunch kid knowledge, but more than that they gave me hope. Hope that I didn’t have to listen to the statistics that told me that I too would be a drug-addicted, high school drop out as my parents before me.

My teachers, Mrs. Steorts and Mr. Bourne, cultivated my love of writing. They introduced me to Dickens and Salinger and Morrison. They pushed me, they believed in me when I dared them to do anything but…and, somewhere along the way I started believing in myself a little.
And, without my guidance counselor, Mrs. Dodson, who secretly nominated me for a scholarship to West Virginia University, I would still be paying off student loans – if I would have even made it to college.

Last week, the teachers in all 55 counties of West Virginia went on strike over a new bill that would create a path for charter schools and private school vouchers. Although the bill would have raised pay for teachers and provide increased educational funding, the teacher’s union rejected it.

Teachers in one of the poorest states in the country were so worried about the detrimental effect this bill would have on students that they rejected a pay raise. They did it for the students and along the way taught us all about integrity and standing up for what and who you believe in.

Bluefield may be a small, it may have it struggles, but ask any Bluefieldian and they will tell you that the best hot dogs in the known world are found at the Dairy Queen on Cumberland Road. And, if you find yourself emerging from the East River Tunnel on a late August Friday night, when the air is just beginning to cool, roll down your window and listen closely to the sounds of the Beaver/Graham game, an event that is not simply a football game but a combination of cultural phenomenon and religious experience.

I am proud to come from a place where people still bring casseroles when your mama dies and celebrates when the summer sun raises the mountain temperatures above 90 by giving out free lemonade. My hometown, where the fields are blue, taught me that sometimes grit and grind will get you further than class and privilege.

And, that sometimes you just gotta go give ‘em hell.

Photo Credit: Mel Grubb

Soshally Awkward

Sosha Lewis is a writer whose work has been featured in The Washington Post, Huffington Post, MUTHA Magazine and The Charlotte Observer. She writes about her sometimes wild, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking past filled with free-lunches, a grimy sports bar, a six foot tall Albino woman who tried to save her teenage soul, felonious, drug addicted parents, an imaginary friend named Blueberry and growing up nestled in the coal-dusted mountains of West Virginia.