Ohio Bluegrass

We attended the 18th Annual Brown County Bluegrass Festival in historic Georgetown, Ohio this weekend where I was delighted to receive an autographed photo of J.D. Crowe and the New South. We had a great time out there and I heard some great bands that I had never heard of before. I really like the Daniel Patrick family out of Bethel, who played a great version of "If you don't love your neighbor then you don't love God." We sat out on the grass in the center of the horse-race track at the Brown County Fairgrounds and listened opulently to the delicious music pouring over us for hours. We all agreed that next year we should come and camp out for the whole festival. Most of the people there had RV's and were set up for what appeared at least a few days. This prompted another discussion of my longstanding plan to build an RV out of a converted used school bus. (I have also considered this as a housing option for when I move away to grad school in 2010.) We did see a used International diesel full-size school bus for sale on the side of State Route 32 on the way out there. It had a bad paint job and FOR SALE $!1000 painted on the windows. I was smitten immediately of course...

Most of the people at the Festival were older country people. Nathan and I discussed the many very very interesting hairdos, many of which I had not seen in years and reminded me of my childhood. I had almost forgotten how old farmers dress up to go out: printed long-sleeve shirts tucked into denim slacks with black cowboy boots or some kind of similar footwear. Pomade, cowboy hats, and dip can rings in back pockets. We people-watched for hours. Sabra and Nathan ate funnel cake and pork roast from the vendors. Since becoming increasingly aware of the social boundaries and construction of race and class in America I have gotten into the habit of counting minorities and noting the demographic makeup of inner-city bus rides, concerts, college classes and other group activities and events. On Saturday out at the fairgrounds we all noticed a Black man, his white wife, and their really cute - and biracial - children. The dude seemed really into the music, Nathan noticed he was singing along. The family also defied stereotypes that rural white people hold about inter-racial couples: they seemed (relatively for the context) middle-class and were middle-aged. I thought about this image of the biracial family in the most traditional countrified setting I have been in in years. While I know for a fact several of my Black friends from the city would feel uncomfortable as hell at a downhome bluegrass festival, obviously that family felt okay. The world is definitely changing; I can recall very few such images from my childhood a decade or two ago.

All of this has also left me wondering what constitutes Appalachian-ness. Am I an Appalachian? My maternal grandfather came from Eastern Kentuckians and spent portions of his childhood in Pulaski County watching his relatives scrape a living out of of rocky fields, coal mines, and railroad jobs. My mother remembers the fun she had with her aunts from the hills of Kentucky as a child. But most of the family has been in Cincinnati since the Depression, and is generally fairly assimilated into the lower middle-class/working class suburbs. That makes me second-generation Urban Appalachian, by which point all traces of the inner hillbilly sometimes disappear into generalized blue-collar class identity of Cincinnati. On the other hand I grew up on the Clermont-Brown County line and both counties are considered part of Appalachia by the US Department of Agriculture. But if all of Clermont County is part of Appalachia then that area by definition includes the strip malls and subdivisions of Milford, as well as all of the Godforsaken mall-ified conurbation that is Eastgate. My venerated Urban History professor claimed very broadly in class that all of Clermont County is exurban - meaning the sprawl that happens beyond suburbia, but is not really rural. This shocked me, as a product of both Ohio 4-H and a rural America. His vision of Clermont County obviously did not include places and people I knew and treasured, like my illiterate bachelor farmer neighbor Earl or the former home of a childhood friend that lacked plumbing. The real identity of Clermont County lies somewhere between these two opposing generalizations. At least in my head. Cultural Geographer and urban theorist Joel Garreau argued in 'The Nine Nations of North America' that some parts of the Ohio River valley that were within the state of Ohio really belonged culturally to Kentucky. He mentions Brown County and Adams County - two of Ohio' poorest - specifically. I agree with that assessment having spent a fair amount of time in both places, and my good friend Nathan (from Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains) who accompanied me on my trek to Georgetown agreed, exclaiming, "Damn, this looks like Kentucky!" as we headed south on State Route 68 between Mt. Orab and Georgetown. I have always identified with Kentucky at least as much as Ohio, although I have lived in the latter all my life. Most of Ohio is flat - which terrifies me - and populated by people equally culturally flat that enunciate a lot - which scares me more.

But seriously building a schoolbus RV would be badass...