I’d just come from my hiring interview with
the county. Deciding to get my bearings,
I strolled Linden’s mostly deserted, windswept main street. After a few minutes I felt that uneasy frisson one gets when someone is looking
intently at him. A couple of
rough-looking characters in worn boots and weathered Stetsons were standing
just outside the doorway of the Linden Inn, the town’s sole restaurant, bar, and
motel. I quickly realized I stood out: I
was a stranger.
Of course, I knew folks in Stultus Valley
were rough spun. I actually looked
forward to working with them precisely because of this quality. I recalled a book I read in a college
anthropology class, Yesterday’s People
by Jack Weller. Weller had been a social
worker in Appalachia during the War on Poverty in the early 1960s. A cultural trait he noticed among the people
he worked with was that they tended to live in the moment, were family- rather
than community-oriented, and deeply distrusted outsiders. Like Weller, I harbored the notion that I
could break down any resistance with hard work and personal concern for
people’s troubles. Looking back, I
suspect I idealized my neighbors in a rather condescending way. That is my sole regret from my time in the
Valley.
Once I’d settled in, I began to learn the
quirks, peculiarities, and idiosyncrasies of the Valley’s denizens. One of the first things I noticed is that
many of their names ended in vowels. It
was soon explained to me that Stultus Valley had been settled by Italian
immigrants who herded cattle. Italian
cowboys, if you will. Italian…cowboys.
I’ll admit I had a difficult time wrapping my
mind around the whole idea of an Italian cowboy. Still do, in fact. “Italian” and “cowboy” were simply two words
I never expected to share the same phrase unless the name Sergio Leone appeared
elsewhere in the sentence.
Now, lest you think me narrow minded, please
know that I attended public school during the heyday of historical
revisionism. I knew Western settlers
came from all kinds of backgrounds. I
learned, for instance, that many cowboys after the Civil War were
African-American freedmen. Hailing from
territory which once belonged to Spain and Mexico, I was aware from an early
age that the vaqueros were the
original cowboys. But this detail of the
Stultus Valley backstory was a bit novel for me.
Having given the idea some thought, however,
I quickly realized its potential as a mashup of stale pop culture
stereotypes. Just consider the
possibilities: Cowboy Tony. Cowboy
Vinnie. Cowboy…Don Corleone! (“Ah made him
an offer he couldn’a refuse, pardner.”)
There are so many questions about how these
hardy pioneers lived. Did they live at
home with their mothers? Did gold chains
and crucifixes accessorize well with Western wear? Was it possible to get an authentic New York
slice from the back of a chuck wagon?
What was the equine equivalent of the Chevy Camaro? Did they whack their rivals with six-shooters? Could they dance like John Travolta and his
buddies in Saturday Night Fever? Did the women in their lives all have names
like Donna, Angie, and Gina?
Oh, I could go on, but you get the idea. Truth was, they weren’t much different from
the garden variety rednecks I grew up around in my own small town: Weathered,
resentful, beaten down by life, the descendants of Europe’s social refuse
routinely bashed by comedians and eulogized by the likes of Jim Goad and the
late Joe Bageant. Nevertheless, folks in
Stultus Valley took this heritage thing seriously. It wasn’t as if there were many people to dispute
them. So, in the interest of maintaining
harmony with my new neighbors I kept my smartass observations to myself.
Besides, their self-image proved rather
fragile in the face of strangers. I got
the impression that they saw themselves as like the denizens of TV’s Mayberry,
simple but honest folk possessing a homespun wisdom superior to that of the
city slicker who would ride into town looking to rook the local rubes but who instead
meets his comeuppance at the hands of good Sheriff Andy and friends.
They clearly needed this illusion to sustain
their tenuous sense of self-worth. For many of
its natives, the Valley was their whole universe. The outside world was a scary place hardly
acknowledged. One got the impression
they believed if they took one of the two state highways leading out of the
Valley that once over the mountains they would fall off the edge of the world
and be eaten by dragons. Consequently,
they suffered from a xenophobia which made them quite myopic when beholding
outsiders.
An important fact I had to consider was that,
unlike the rest of contemporary society, where economic and cultural capital
are the yardsticks of position, family relationships dictated Stultus Valley’s
social hierarchy. A question I heard
frequently after my arrival was, “Who are you related to?” Family, whether through blood or marriage,
defined you and your place, as well as how other people treated you. If your stepdaddy’s first cousin once removed
had a dispute with the member of another clan, you and everyone else in your
family were expected to shun or otherwise show hostility to anyone you met from
the rival house.
Like the Hatfields and McCoys, these feuds, often
over petty, insignificant matters, could last for years or, occasionally,
across generations. Given the absence of
any meaningful extracurricular pursuits, however, these protracted disputes
served as a sort of drearily malign pastime for an isolated population with way
too much time on its hands. Navigating
the thorny terrain of familial relationships in Stultus Valley would prove a
formidable challenge for an outsider like me, as I was soon to learn.
Next
installment: Family Style
© 2013 The Unassuming Scholar
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