On a sunny day, I decided to take a quick drive through town. The most anxious woman in the world becomes freewheeling and relaxed behind the wheel of her car. (That’s how it works for me, I should say.)
I usually take the highway that encircles the town, rather than heading straight through the city’s center. Traffic isn’t bad in town, not really, but we don’t even have traffic lights anymore. Not since December of 2021. Because, on an unseasonably warm winter night, our town disappeared.
A massive tornado hit our town — a massive wedge tornado, a wall of debris, a tsunami wave of other peoples’ homes. The tornado carved a mile-wide scar through the area. I think a lot about the homes, the old buildings, the churches, the businesses — but I mostly think about the people. The people who died, the people who lost their relatives, their homes, their town. Our town.
The town hasn’t truly recovered since then. Hundreds of buildings — homes, businesses, churches — were ripped to pieces, splintered into shards, transformed into piles of debris. The debris has since been swept up. The lots have been cleared off. But no new buildings have replaced the old ones.
Now that I say that, I know about a couple of big buildings are currently under construction — a year and a half after the storm. A new subdivision also sprang up on the outskirts of the town. No one’s moved in yet, so far as I know.
But other than those construction projects, there’s little visible progress. The process of rebuilding is painfully slow. I heard — from a fairly reliable source — that the town’s recovery funds were almost entirely used up during the debris-clearing process. This means that there’s hardly any money left for rebuilding. This is why so many lots sit empty.
On my drive through town, I noticed some new LED signs and new branding in front of businesses, which makes it feel like we’re moving forward — even if it’s minor progress.
I kept driving, looking at everything I could take in. So many familiar sights, which made me feel like — for better or worse — I’ve made this place my home.
Sometimes I think about moving to the nearby college town — because it has more resources. But that town is (naturally) more expensive to live in. And that town has lots of traffic. And I’m just not used to living in that kind of environment.
The people who live over there wear Premier League football jerseys. The people who live here wear NFL football jerseys for teams that don’t even exist anymore. (The team from St. Louis, in particular.) The people over there wear helmets when they ride their bikes! The people here don’t even wear helmets when they ride their motorcycles. And I’m not endorsing or defending our end of things — but it’s just what I’m used to.
I also find myself getting mad whenever I visit certain places — stores and restaurants — over in the college town. I’ve decided that I’m either one of the ugliest people who’s ever lived, or one of the most attractive people to ever do it, based solely on the way I get stared at whenever I’m over there.
At a drive-thru, a relatively lovely-looking young woman kept glancing over at me, and I think she either thought I was gorgeous or hideous. I’m shy, and I generally avoid eye contact, but I couldn’t help but notice that I was being watched. Something similar happened to me in one of that town’s sit-down diners. A middle-aged couple — well, that’s being generous! An older couple kept gazing at me while I ate my breakfast. They did a full-on, turn-around-in-your-seat stare-down.
I had a hard time finishing my food. I think I got a to-go box.
A BRIEF ASIDE: I also got stared down by another older couple at a local Cracker Barrel. This is embarrassing to own up to. I don’t like the food or the ambiance of the ol’ CB — with no D 😔 — so I have no recollection of why I went there. Probably to eat a sweet potato. I love a good sweet potato.
But, for whatever reason, I stand out. And most people in that town are still kind to me — but a small number of people have given me pause. They’ve made me very aware of my status as an outsider.
(If I could marry into a family from that town, then I could probably fit in a little bit better. As it stands, I’m related to about half the people in my home county, so I need to cast a wider net anyway!)
AN ASIDE/TANGENT ABOUT THE PHRASE “HOME COUNTY”: When I was in college, I had a professor who absolutely hated the way we Kentuckians mention our home counties instead of our home towns. I can understand how it can be confusing, but that’s how many of us identify with each other. I feel a certain kinship with people from my home county — even if we grew up in two different towns, if we’ve lived in the same county, we’ve had similar experiences.
Anyway, this professor wasn’t fond of this practice. It “made more sense” to just say what “city” we were from, and then to just clarify what part of the state that “city” was in. Uh … okay.
I was willing to hear him out, until I remembered that the John Prine wrote a great song that went a little something like this: “And daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County /
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay.”
I’m sorry, but if folks who are one or two generations removed from Kentucky can say things like “my folks are from McCracken County” — and if Grammy Award winners can sing songs about life in Muhlenberg County — then county-based identification should be accepted as a bona fide practice.
Leaping back off of that li’l soap box, I’d like to go back and revisit that earlier thought: the idea of marrying someone from another county. I’m afraid if I married another Kentuckian, the gravitational pull of Mayville would drag us back down here. If I could marry someone from another state or country, then I think we’d spend less time over here.
But I know I would want to come back every so often, just to check on things. Just to know what I might (or might not) be missing.
Hmmmm. Would I have anything nice to say about this place if I weren’t from here? Probably not. But I imagine that’s true of any place. It took me until my adult years to realize that just about everyone has a complicated relationship with their hometown.
Jamais Mayville 