Having grown up in Louisiana, I moved to the Blue Ridge mountains while in my mid-20’s.
Ever since that time—the late 1970’s—I have lived, married, parented and grown steadily older in an Appalachian culture.
Truthfully though, the two cities I have lived in reflect a post-Appalachian culture.
Ole long-bearded Zeb with overalls—you don’t notice him so much anymore; he’s probably running a landscape business to service the manicured lawns of well-heeled snowbirds. And barefoot Ellymae in threadbare calico on the front porch—she’s more likely now to be monitoring the gas-pumps from behind a convenience store checkout.
To some extent, mountain culture has become homogenized with the dominant American obsession with superficial style and commercialism.
But not totally.
One thing that is nevertheless still quite different from living down the mountain is the temperature. We typically see a 7-12 degree lower thermo up here.
We actually have four seasons here!
In the Deep South . . . not so much.
When this southern boy first arrived in the high country, I cultivated some romantic notions about the cold weather. I suppose this is because—in spite of the painful nipping in fingers and toes —it was such a refreshing experience after growing up in twenty-four blistering deep south summers.
The immanent—and in some ways, dreaded— arrival of our 2019-20 winter comes as no surprise.
This morning I woke up remembering an old song that I had written and recorded, many years ago, shortly after becoming a mountain man myself. The song is, on one level, about the coming of winter.
On another level, it is about a very noticeable shift in our American culture that has happened in my 68-year lifetime—single parenthood.
I am not one of them. But being a man married, thankfully, for forty years, and a grandfather. . . now provokes rumination about the many challenges young parents must face in this age of temporary partnerships.
We have many more single parents in 2019 than we did back in the 1950’s-60’s when I was growing up. My old song that crept into my imagination this morning presents a romanticized image of a single mother as she contemplates past and future. In her foreground is the upcoming winter outside her window on a cold, crisp early-winter day.
Since memory of the song seems to have popped out of nowhere this morning in my awakening dream-state, I thought sharing it with you might be something to do.
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