Mountain Heritage

I was born to fight for rural folks with progressive politics

This is a picture of my grandma, Mary Sue, her parents, and siblings. She was from Harlan, Kentucky and one of 12 kids. She told me a lot of stories growing up, and I can say this since all of my grandparents are gone, she was my favorite. She was the safest and sturdiest person I knew and I’d like to tell y’all about her.

Grandma and grandpa (he was from Cumberland Gap, VA) traveled the Hillbilly Highway to Kansas City where they would settle for a time and have their first child, my dad. They would later move to Independence, MO and live out their days in a subdivision, far from the Appalachian mountains and hollers my grandmother always seemed to miss. But, they made the move to do better for themselves. To make progress.

Grandma grew tomatoes up her chain link fence and tied them up with old pantyhose to the chagrin of her neighbors. She made potato soup for me every time I visited because she knew it was my favorite. When I was lucky enough to spend the night, she’d wake up early and fix the grandkids fried bologna gravy on toasted white bread, and I swear just writing that line made my mouth water.

When she had us fed, she’d go out and drink her coffee in a lawn chair in the garage staring across the street at her neighbor’s house—listless yet restless. I think she hated town, but that’s where she landed after leaving home and she didn’t complain out loud. It was the only economic choice she could make, but I think she was unhappy on pavement and living on a flat piece of grass surrounded by neighbors.

My grandma bore four kids, with one dying in his teens of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

My grandpa was very religious—a Southern Baptist. A stern one at that.

My grandma was a Pentecostal at one time in her life, and even had an uncle who preached at a church where he handled snakes and paid for it after he was bitten by a rattlesnake. I can’t remember if he died, but I know she said they didn’t take him to a doctor, but prayed over him. By the time I knew her, after her son died, she had given up on organized religion.

Grandpa did not take that approach. He took my uncle to religious conmen who promised a miracle for Muscular Dystrophy. Snake oil salesmen who told him they’d heal his son if he just believed enough, prayed enough, and made sure he was tithing his part. I think the loss made my grandpa even more rigid and stern…and more, well, tortured.

But, before I was born, which was right when they lost their son, there was a time of happiness. There was stability. There was a stay-at-home mom and a truck driving dad, and a suburban house, and a car, and vacations, and even private school tuition for the youngest. They were out of their element geographically, but financially better than ever. This is the reason they left the mountains…for something better.

But how could a one-income family, folks who had only graduated high school, have so much on a truck driver’s salary? Unions. Public schools. Paved roads. Access to healthcare. But, how do you get all of these things? Progressive politics. Which at the time, was not at all in opposition to their faith or their rural upbringing…we can’t say that much anymore.

The truth is, Republicanism has become as important as religion to some folks in rural parts of the country. Hell, it is religion to some. But, here’s the thing…it doesn’t have to be like that. We know that progressive politics are especially helpful to rural, disadvantaged, and poor folks…we just have to remind them.

It’s not a stretch at all to say that my grandparents, Appalachian grandparents, believed that progress was good and that forward movement was better than going backward—even if you had to move to town to get it. Rural folks were progressive and I know that from my personal history.

I am rural, born and bred. I am progressive. I am a product of my mountain heritage—my grandparents—not in spite of it. Rural progressives exist and always have.

I think Mary Sue would approve.

~Jess