Been thinking about... A good watermelon run

Ozark summers can be a different kind of heat and by the time I turned off Highway 65 and headed east, the haze was so heavy and blue that the mountains looked like they were being obscured by rain. Black top shimmered. The world moved more slowly. In time, I found myself waiting for a load of Missouri Boot Heel watermelon, and wandering into the nearby Phillips 66 station because I was hungry. Middle-of-mostly-nowhere gas stations are some the best places in the world, and not just because the chicken tenders are usually better there than anywhere else.

Moments of happenstance conversations linger — 

“Been runnin’ since I got here.”

‘You’re always running here, it’s so busy.”

“Most of the time. You all need anything else?”

I pour myself a Styrofoam cup of “Extreme Caffeine” coffee and ask for a box of chicken tenders and wait in line behind somebody buying scratch-off tickets. Outside in the heat, a truckload of watermelon waits. “I’m a writer,” I sometimes think to myself, “and what the heck am I doing here?”

The Ozarks are many things to many people but the Ozarks can also too easily become “a thing,” a regional, cultural “something” with a self-aware lie all its own. Ever since the first tourists arrived by train to find real hillbillies (after having read “Shepherd of the Hills” by Harold Bell Wright) people here have had to grapple with what and who they really were. Comparative fame of a region does that, killing some things even as it saves others. That outside self-awareness means that many old ways remain, perhaps reconstituted or rekindled because the old ways could be sold to tourists looking for “real hillbillies” and “real hillbilly” crafts. When real people fake their real ways in order to make a decent living, even the fake thing can become real. And for generations during the 20th century, hillbillies did what, quite honestly, we hillbillies do best: adapt to survive.

But self-awareness can be a strange mistress and bedfellow. Comparative fame in a region does weird things to perception. Despite my reasonable hillbilly lineage, I arrived here some 20 years ago looking a little too fresh and a little too professional. There were plenty of recommendations offered, people other people told me I should interview.

Sometimes I did. But too often the recommendations were by people strangely yet observing “hillbillies,” and their recommendation of people to interview? Too often people playing hillbilly, or worse, people who had indeed grown up here but had become so intellectually self-aware they acted as though they had somehow transcended, and were observing Ozarks culture — perhaps lovingly, perhaps patronizingly — but observing nonetheless.

Culture is the thing that happens when we’re not looking. Dialect is the thing we don’t hear in ourselves. Separate ourselves too much, look too hard, and we are no longer part of a culture but instead are on the outside, looking in, as though taking notes on mice in the maze, lying to ourselves, refusing to see we’re just mice in another maze and the truth is, we’re all in this strange thing called life together, whether we like it or not. Old cultural anthropology said objectivity must be maintained, the people group must be observed without the observer “going native.”

“To hell with that,” Vance Randolph said (or something roughly equivalent but perhaps less appropriate to print), and proceeded to “go native,” moving to Pineville and becoming someone others trusted enough that they shared their stories and jokes and beliefs with him. Randolph’s work today is recognized, but he endured decades of being slighted by academia because he chose to respect the Ozarks people and become one of them, not observe them as though they were interesting animals in a cage. In quiet ways, some things don’t change.

Still, everything is theoretical, everything may seem like a good idea, and we can congratulate ourselves on how terribly smart we are, until it’s time to unload a truckload of 40-pound watermelons on a summer afternoon. Truth is, the Ozarks are a people set apart, even now, simmering beneath the summer mountain sun. But knowing what to do with that fact? There’s honesty in not overthinking it but letting it be, and letting the hard work make honest men out of us.

Anachronism is one thing but the principles of the past are something else, often something timeless and powerful but we can make the mistake of overlooking the guiding principles of the past — things like honesty, dignity, respect and a refusal to ever quit — for good but shallow tropes, be they wearing overalls or playing fiddle or talking a certain way, or simply showing hospitality to strangers.

Culture is what happens most when you’re not looking and that’s something I can appreciate as I get up on another Saturday morning at five o’clock and watch a strange red sun rise over the eastern hills, already driving out to set up early for a farmers market that continues to grow, and work hours in the sun, and sweat through my shirt over and again. It’s honest work and the sweat and the hard work does something to burn away the pretension. There’s something about generous survival that keeps us honest, and with no lies left to tell ourselves, let alone to tell the strangers.