Tuesday, July 13, 2021, Winchester, TN
Disturbing findings threaten to burst my bubble of strongly felt sentimental feelings for my birthplace. I’m tough though right? I can handle it.
In 2002, I moved from San Francisco’s downtown Tenderloin to the tony Rockridge district of Oakland. I was immediately in culture shock. I don’t think it was the racial difference that put me in shock though Rockridge lacked the more equal parts Southeast Asian, African American, East/West European American, Mexican/Central American, Middle Eastern American—okay, just about every corner of the world American you can think of.
Rockridge did seem very white to me, but that wasn’t what shocked me. It’s the fact that no one was spitting out expletives or having a morning tourette’s attack. No one was asking me what choo need? or lookin? There was no chance a high-as-fuck prostitute would follow me into my building, get on the elevator with me and hound me to my front door insisting that I wanted a date. I wasn’t going to see a seven-year-old Vietnamese child skip down the sidewalk and hop over a passed out drunk like he was just a pile of backpacks on the playground. No longer an iron building gate slamming behind me, when I gently closed the front door on my new shared apartment I didn’t need to push the superhero button that shot up an invisible suit of armor to protect me from countless assaults to my humanity.
At the same time I didn’t have to worry too much about some saintly homeless person opening their face to me with a smile that lowered the superhero armor in reverse order, folded it, put it in a piece of ancient luggage stamped with every country of the world and tossed it airwise into a portal that made it disappear with a Hollywood sound effect of ploop. There was a magic in the Tenderloin that, when it appeared, came with a force equal to or greater than all the builtup hardship.
If nothing else, I could always look up at the flocks of pigeons that flew in circles against a pure blue sky that cleaned all excrement from the soul. Those were my buddha beads. For a Catholic it might have been my equivalent of counting the rosary.
Rockridge was affluent, educated, hip, tasty and tasteful. I didn’t wonder where all the crazy people were, I just wondered why they all kept it inside—too much like me. I wasn’t evolved enough to be happy around people like myself.
But more than the obvious differences of neighborhood I felt a greater loss at no longer being able to call myself a San Franciscan. For a brief period I sang in a short-lived St. Anthony’s Foundation choir made up of a rag tag crew of ministers and workers. St. Anthony’s along with Glide Memorial Church were the two largest non-governmental social service providers in the city. Our little 7 or 8 person choir performed at a few senior centers, homeless shelters and at Foundation Events. On our song list was San Francisco
Open your Golden Gates
You let nobody wait outside your door.
Performing that to a group of mostly non-plussed, bedraggled and tired homeless men sitting in metal, fold-out chairs seemed to be the peak of irony. Yet the truth of San Francisco was, as a city, it would take in anyone—queer, drug-addicted, angry, outrageous, forlorn, desperate—even insanely happy. Yes, you might have to sleep on the street because a room is $500/night and a studio apartment is $3000/month, but nonetheless WELCOME!
That I was no longer living in that city—that I couldn’t say I live in San Francisco—-felt like a huge loss.
But, you know, I can still blow that bubble. I can still watch the oil cascades gather like a swirling galaxy moving across that sphere. I can dream myself there long enough to remember the beauty before the accumulated weight of that galaxy sinks to the south side of that bubble and pulls it apart into a thousand droplets that sink at my feet.
I’ll be able to do the same with Winchester—the place where living beyond the womb first happened—the place where I lived out an actual Norman Rockwell trope, crying during my first haircut inside a barbershop with a twirling red, white and blue pole outside the front door. I’ll be able to survive. I don’t know if Winchester will.
I left Corryton yesterday thinking I’d pick up my mother’s memorial from my Uncle’s barn in Jasper on the way. It just didn’t work out. I had hoped to see some cousins for a quick visit, but the timing was wrong and honestly, I’ve worried about getting caught up in too much socializing and loosing the thread of this whole project which simply put is about writing about the places and photographing the actual abodes where I lived. So when they weren’t available I was actually kind of glad because I need to make this business-first. I can visit with them on the way back to Corryton and pick up the stone then. After all, I’ve already decided I’m not planting it next to my grandparents grave in Winchester.
As perhaps a consolation I decided to take the last exit to Jasper and eat lunch at the Cracker Barrel there. Sure, there are better places for three and a meat, but Cracker Barrel actually does a pretty good job imitating southern, downhome cooking and they have enough veggie sides where I can skip the meat altogether and feel quite satisfied. Oh, and I was happy to see at least two separate people of color—one eating alone and another as part of a larger group. Seems like Cracker Barrel isn’t as cracker as it used to be!
More than halfway through my meal I looked up and saw a familiar figure turned with his back to me.
“Chuck!” I called out.
Yep! Another cousin! (Not related to the murderous Chuck I spoke of earlier). Well if this isn’t the kind of homecoming I’ve always dreamed of, I don’t know what is—having enough cousins that I actually ran into one without trying!!! And I was going to call Chuck too.
Chuck had just had lunch with an 87 year old former Church minister of his who was just back from a four-year-long mission in another state which, I won’t name but, apparently, needs ministering more than Tennessee. Chuck, who is an accomplished photographer, couldn’t join me at that moment but needed to finish up his conversation with the preacher who is interested in photography and wanted to know about Chuck’s camera. I finished my meal and was waiting in line to pay at the register when he came back.
“Let’s meet out on the front porch,” I said to Chuck, a little shocked that I had just called the concrete slab of a publicly stock-traded, billion-dollar company a front porch. But it does have a long line of rocking chairs, and sitting down in one—next to Chuck who had chosen a bench—it was easy enough to ignore the cable that runs through all the rockers to keep them from being stolen.
“That guy is the greatest guy,” Chuck started out enthusiastically endorsing his close-to-ninety year old friend.
Chuck almost always has a sunny disposition and will look for the best in people—not that he had to look for it in the preacher who did sound like an amazing individual full of energy.
For a while now—I’d say for the last ten years or so I’ve been nurturing a secret writerly association with Chuck. Though I’ve really not read any of his professional work, Chuck was a sports reporter for the newspaper of a nearby town for many years. He also, despite being born in Jasper and living in the area for most of his 54 years is particularly worldly. He knows about writers and artists and likes talking about them. And he knows tons of history—like the fact that Tennessee was a split state in the Civil War and that the dividing line was pretty much right around where we sat—at least, nearby Chattanooga. I think of him as a southern intellectual—like Bill Moyers—a person who defies the stereotype that places anyone with a southern accent in the category of ignorant.
Did you know that the first newspaper dedicated solely to the abolition of slavery was published in Jonesborough, TN? Eastern Tennessee had a heavy contingent of Union soldiers. In fact, I have a number of relatives on this side of the family who died fighting for the union. On my father’s side, which was rooted in Albemarle county Virginia, there were relatives that died fighting for the confederates.
Anyway, you will see why I bring this up soon, if today’s write doesn’t trail off into oblivion.
In the course of my conversation with Chuck we rambled through a number of topics from the loss of affordable housing to the depression era WPA on to Chuck’s absolute amazement that an effective Covid vaccine was brought to market in less than a year.
Chuck and I are pretty much on the same page about everything and so, as can be expected, our conversations are filled with the easy pleasure that comes with speaking with the like-minded.
We moved it to the parking lot for me to show him my rig and explain some of the trials and tribulations of getting the camper shell ready for this trip. Coincidentally, out of all the places in the parking lot he could have parked he had parked his 2003 red Tacoma pickup next to my blue 2006 Ranger. I hung my arm in the back of his truck as we talked. We were just two guys next to their trucks in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel in Jasper, TN. Who would have thought we were talking about Diego Rivera murals and the 1930s labor movement?
“You know I wasn’t going to send you my email writings about this trip,” I said. “I wasn’t going to include any family. I didn’t want to complicate things and I wanted the freedom to say things that people might not like, but then somehow Aunt Linda found out I was writing about the trip and asked to get the emails and Uncle John and others wanted them too and well, I figured, I don’t want to write anything that is going to offend anyone anyway and if I thought it might then I need to figure out a way to make the writing better.”
Chuck listened and then explained that he doesn’t take offense to things he may disagree with if they have been presented thoughtfully. Basically he confirmed what I had already anguished over and concluded but it felt good to hear him say it. It’s not really like I’m pushing the envelope here anyway—or haven’t yet. The relatives that have made it onto my email list are all Obama Democrats, as far as I know. If I was going to challenge anyone’s way of thinking I’d have to get some of my Republican relatives to read this. Most of them wouldn’t’ though. Can Republicans even read? Okay, cheap shot there.
Anyway, it looks like I’m not going to get to what has upset me so much about my hometown Winchester. It will have to wait for tomorrow. I guess everything I’ve written so far is some sort of attempt to give you context for what I’ll show you tomorrow—the thing that makes it harder for me to make the little bubble world of Winchester that I cherish so much.
Let me just settle with a few pictures here that came at a small cost. Below is the one place that I’ve ever been tempted to call home. It became clear to me many years ago that home truly is where the heart is. Home is a memory. It is a feeling that you can never loose and that no one can ever take from you. Home is not a place.
Spotty West Goes East 