if i do what, i'll go where?

one day in art class as a seventh or eighth grader, i was busy not being good a painting a landscape when a girl of the southern baptist persuasion stopped by the table i was sharing with my friend of the hindu persuasion to share the good news with us. really she just wanted to share the good news with him - she knew i was probably okay, despite my presbyterian upbringing, since our parents were friends.

calmly and coolly, she shared that if he refused to accept jesus christ as his personal lord and savior, he would go straight to hell. without another word, she left to grab some more paint or another brush. she was, in her mind, a true messenger of the truth of christianity.

she was, in my mind, an idiot.

that day i started wondering why she, and others like her, were so sure about what happens after we die. it doesn't take long to figure it out. all you have to do is drive by rural churches like the one she attended and read their marquees. the "jokes" they put up there, tell a good portion of the story and explain why things seem so black and white in rural american religion even though life in rural america is an ever changing shade of gray.

i had the recent joy of driving through the appalachian mountains in southwestern virginia and northwestern north carolina on a trip to visit my parents and my grandfather. the town where my parents live is about 90 minutes in any direction from an interstate, so much of the drive was on two-lane highways that followed the curves of the mountains and spilled into the small towns that dot the region. a rough guess on my part is that there are as many churches in these towns as there are families who inhabit them, and thus a lot of drive time reading material.

(as a volunteer firefighter, i disagree stoney fork.)

"forbidden fruit makes lots of jams," said the first sign i saw. just down the road another church gave these instructions/warnings: "pray, believe, receive. pray, doubt, do without." not to be outdone, sometime later i drove past another wondering "is your prayer life well done or rare?"

seeing these reminded me of three others i had seen before moving from north carolina. the church my high school girlfriend attended at one point asked passers the question over on the left.

damn. tell me how you really feel next time. that shed a lot of light on the time she called me on a sunday and asked me what i was up to, and when i told her i'd just finished mowing the yard, she got silent in disbelief that i had worked on a sunday.

the next one, kindled hatred towards wizardry, saying "there's only one potter and his name isn't harry." i guess they're right, but harry seems like a decent name for god. i can trust a guy named harry, and with a name like that, he's probably good with his hands.

(this must be the remix no one ever heard.)

the all time best, however, came when i drove down to see my college roommate one break. just off the exit to his house, there was a church whose sign read, and i kid you not, "turn or burn." can't knock 'em for b.s. that's just straight to the point.

and that's when it hit me. these signs are an attempt to boil down the completely unexplainable questions of life into something we can use. for so long, i'd thought they were legitimate attempts to welcome people or encourage others to come visit. maybe they did that, too, but there is no part of me that is willing to believe that is the main purpose. rural churches aren't generally looking to expand. they're looking to survive.

like i said, life is a shade of gray in rural america. for those that farm, there's the constant worry about how good the harvest will be. for those in more touristy places, there's always the dependence upon visitors and enough snow for the skiiers, enough sun for the tanners, and enough color for the leaf lookers. so much is out of the hands of those who live in rural america, especially those whose livelihood depends upon the land.

and when you're livelihood is up in the air, the last thing you want is for your soul to join it. so while i may never agree that it's turn or burn or that doubt leads to loss, i can at least understand the roots of these pithy little statements and just laugh to myself. i'll even enjoy the humor in some of them because i know my dad would double over in genuine laughter at some of them, though they're no funnier than michael scott's email forwards.

but i'll never get why a trip to the paint shelf seemed like a great opportunity for a sermon.

rural grammar, part ii: pronunciation

i think everyone has an embarassing story about mispronouncing a word in front of a bunch of know-it-alls at one point or another in their life. in my family there are tales about fat-i-gue and ep-i-tome.

in eighth grade i was given the the word diphthong in a late round of the annual spelling bee. being the confident speller i was and having heard mrs. avant (pronounced as southern as possible with emphasis clearly on the first syllable) clearly say dip thong, i thought to myself, "nailed it," even before the office was a glint in ricky gervais's eye. "dipthong. d-i-p-t-h-o-n-g. dipthong," i said confidently. no need for it to be used in a sentence or to wonder about its language of origin.

i started to give myself a pat on the back and make my way to the final group when i heard mrs. a-vant apologetically tell me that i was wrong and would continue my streak of never winning anything academically, athletically, or socially. well, i told myself the last part. she just told me to have a seat.

if she'd wanted me to spell diph-thong, why didn't she just say so? i spelled what she said, and since when is the h in ph silent? we don't talk on the pone or get lit listening to pish! oh that's right, it's not silent, mrs. ay-vant, eighth grade english teacher. and yes, i will take the title you stole from me even if vince young won't take the heisman he got jobbed out of.

thank you gary larson for summing up my pain.

here's the thing. i'm not sure she knew what a diphthong was, and i sure didn't. (i thought it was the kind of garment will ferrell thought that olive garden waitress was wearing in old school.) but if i had corrected her and said, "actually mrs. av-aunt, you pronounce both h's in the word," two things would have happened. first she would have told me what a pretentious little brat i was and then she would have given me some lecture about how it actually is dip-thong and who was i to question her on pronunciation. she would have been right on both accounts.

when it comes to pronunciation, beauty and everything else is in the eye of the beholder, especially in rural america. towns and counties across this fine country of ours are pronounced in ways foreign even to the foreigners for whom they are named.





that's ball-i-ver county to you, my friend. no
offense simon, but your revolutionary success in south america won't get you very far here.








i think pronunciation is part local accent and part our quest to incorporate all languages into english. for example:

el dor-ay-do, kansas...
think if they'd just translated it. welcome to the golden one, kansas. who wouldn't want to
go there?

buena (byoo-na) vista, virginia...
lovely view, incomprehensible pronunciation.

kosciusko (ka-zee-es-ko), mississippi...
sorry george washington's polish engineer friend, thaddeus ko-shoos-ko, but can you blame
us? the colonies weren't exactly teeming with poles back then.

we rural americans even tinker with the pronunciation of english words. i mean, why wouldn't we? there's a small town in north carolina where the thing to do on a friday night is cruise through downtown. when you look at the town's name on paper, there are four distinct syllables. when you pronounce like everyone who lives there does, there are two: rutherfordton becomes ruv-ton. don't ask me how. it just does. you can ask any sixteen year old you see on main street on a friday night provided he or she is willing to interrupt the cruise.

then there are places like belzoni, mississippi. named for italian explorer giovanni belzoni. unlike other places, locals and anyone seeking to elude ridicule says bel-zo-na. this makes no sense. english is my first language and i took 12 credits of italian in college and in neither language does an i make an uh sound.

there are also places like, oh, the state of arkansas. arkansas is a french pronunciation of a native american word that we americans decided sounded alright with us, so we kept it.

none of these, however, top what some small folks are willing to do to ensure that you spell their town's name correctly. i give you exhibit a: lurand, missisippi. exhibit b, guin, alabama, to follow after my next trip through the yellowhammer state.















there's another town i recently drove through called durant, and while there's no sign to tell me how to pronounce it, i now know it doesn't sound anything like the way nba stud kevin durant pronounces his name. i applaud these towns for their willingness to help folks like me, the son of a speech pathologist, to avoid making the embarassing mistake of mispronouncing their town's name and bringing shame upon myself and my family.

before you hop on the train and start railing on these places and these people for the "incorrectness" of their pronunciation, think about those news reporters that friend you have who just decided after spanish class one day to start trilling all his r's or that friend who took french and subsequently thought jimmy buffett was a boob for mispronouncing and misspelling his own name and that formula one needed to choose between grand priks and grahn pree and quit splitting the difference.

once you remember how annoying they were, you'll realize shakespeare was right when he talked about the rose. the v in "bolivar" might not sound like a b here, but the honoring of ol' simon is still there, so who really cares? sure things might be accented differently and syllables might be muddled together, but it gives a little character to the places we call home and is a welcome reprieve from the other places that continue to look like you could be anywhere. chances are ruvton, durant, and buena vista have something you can't find in a target, a starbucks, or a pep boys.

photos by boone, cartoon by gary larson found here

longer, broader, and a hell of a lot more relaxed

perhaps the greatest difference between rural and urban life is the notion of time and space. hours are still hours and miles are still miles, but their use and perception are decidedly different. at least that's what i've come to notice living in out here in god knows where, america.

i remember first noticing this in college. i grew up in what you could call a rural part of america. ok, well it wasn't that rural, but rural america was closer to me then than i am to a grocery store now, so go with me. i never noticed how different the pace of life could be in two places only 90 miles apart.

in winston-salem, meals were things eaten between meetings and classes. they generally lasted only twenty minuted because there was always something to get back to: a paper, a meeting, an important episode of joe millionaire or the real world/road rules challenge. (i hear your judging laughter. just remember who thought the hills was riveting television. not me.)

when i would go home for a weekend, time seemed to stand still. the nights were longer. the days were filled with conversations that meandered from topic to topic with few, if any, discernible shifts. meals were events. this was, in part, due to the fact that most of them involved witnessing and/or participating in the cooking and cleaning as opposed to grabbing a sandwich and fries, gulping them down, and sending the tray down a conveyor belt.

when we did eat out, it was leisurely and filled with conversation. friday nights out for hamburgers and sunday lunches at a local sub shop were never less than an hour, and nothing seemed wrong or wasteful about that use of time.

i'm thankful to know the same is true with my in-laws. i'll hazard a guess and say 40% of our time in their home is spent in the kitchen, 40% is spent on the sun porch talking, and 20% is spent doing whatever else there is to do. it's fantastic. i don't know exactly what it is about small town and rural life, but the sense of time runs counter to the time our urban friends feel.

time doesn't just slow down at meal time. you'd think rural americans were all buddhists with the way they live in the moment, and by living in the moment i mean having a conversation at the post office counter or on the sidewalk in the middle of an afternoon walk. i spent three hours with a woman talking about quilting and her family this morning. i can tell i'm adjusting back to life in rural america because i loved every minute of it.

but it's not just time. space is different as well. when you live in rural america, there's generally a lot of space between you and whatever it is you are headed towards or whatever it is you need. this is especially evident when driving. the roads are straight and the horizon is flat.

in atlanta, or any city for that matter, your sight distance in a car is often impeded by buildings, billboards, or buicks. you can generally only see as far as the next apartment complex or shopping area. the same idea applies in appalachia only its not buildings that block your view, but rather mountains, so while you might not be able to see very far, the only thing coming into your view is nature, not neon lights.

here where we are, you can see literally as far as is humanly possible. if a human eye can discern a shape or a color in the distance, that shape or color can be be seen.

this depth to the view has the ability to play tricks on you when you drive. a stop sign in the distance may appear to be a couple hundred yards away when in reality its a mile away. i can't tell you how many times i've started to slow down for a stop sign only to end up creeping in first gear for a couple of blocks.

even more than the illusion of distance, there is literally more space to be seen. there are more stars to be seen here than i've ever seen before. the other night, our neighbors built a little fire in the yard and we sat out there drinking, getting to know one another, and enjoying a cool evening that i hope means fall is near. late in the evening, robert, our next door neighbor, and i walked down toward the bayou and looked up to see what we could see. i was speechless.

there had been very few occasions in the last three years when i was graced with a night sky like this one. no clouds. no rain. no street lights dimming the view. no buildings or advertisements blocking the great unknown. we could see the milky way. i don't think i remembered until then that you can see the milky way.

it's a similar feeling to standing at the ocean and thinking about swimming to england or mexico or whatever landmass is closest to you beyond the horizon. you simultaneously realize how small you are in relation you are to everything outside you and how amazing it is that you even have the chance of comprehending all there is out there.

rural life offers a different way of thinking about and seeing time and space than urban life - longer, broader, and a hell of lot more relaxed. sure, there's a lot to be said about the productivity that a faster pace of life breeds, (i'm just as waspy and driven by the protestant work ethic as anybody) but there's also something to be said for being able to see as far as the eye can see and for being able to enjoy a meal and the company around you. i'll take that any day.

path photo by boone, town photo from here