July 29, 2021
When I stopped in Tehachapi, CA to do my first post for this trip I became one step closer to the dubious milestone of having been to every town in the song Willin’ by Little Feat. I still lack Tonapah. Now with my journey almost done, the question is, Am I still willin’?
I’ve used a number of metaphors for my writing process on this journey and now I’ll add another: rabbit hole—as in—I went down one. I’ve been caught up trail blazing, shed improving, tent readying on that land in Blaine and my writing has taken a backseat. Case in point—my first post in almost a week.
Jillian sent me a song yesterday which references the place from which I keypunch these words: Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show. Have I said I cry a lot during this trip? Okay, so I’m going to embrace it just like I did with quiche in the eighties — bucking the trend that real men don’t eat it (or make it).
Anthony needed to cancel our plans to get together. I couldn’t get a refund on this motel room where we were going to stay one night—so I’m using it as a retreat from the retreat.
Johnson City is about two hours northeast from Corryton. It’s also the last town my dad had a full-time teaching gig in before retiring from East Tennessee State University. I never lived here but visited a number of times over the years, first when my parents were still together and lived in Jonesborough and then later when dad and Sharon were married and lived in Johnson City proper. (FYI, Jonesborough is the oldest town in Tennessee and where the National Storytelling Festival is held each year.)
The first place dad taught was Sewanee. You might remember that my family’s train was hitched to pop and his teaching jobs though I can’t say whose train we were hitched to within each town. (Moving six times in Denton still baffles me.)
I was born during rehearsal of dad’s first production—Desire Under the Elms, by Eugene O’Neill. We hadn’t moved the 21 miles from Winchester to Sewanee yet. Dad said I was often on stage in a bassinet during rehearsal—I suppose a place holder for the baby that is killed by his mother in O’Neill’s modern tragedy. (I’m not going to take it personal.)
Sewanee—The University of the South is a place of great privilege. I’ve often thought that living most of my initial three years there gave me the mistaken impression that I was part of a royal family living in a magic kingdom. Indeed some of our close family friends at the time were named the Royals. We lived on the campus of this wealthy, private, endowed institution with it’s beautiful, castle-like stone structures and impeccable lawns. Of the nine plays my dad directed at Sewanee six are period pieces and three depicted the inner workings of English royal court — King Lear by William Shakespeare, Henry IV by Pirandello and A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt. I was actually seeing people dressed up as royalty. Is it any wonder that (according to my mother) I acted like a little king and demanded things be brought to me and threw down my fork when I wasn’t happy with the fare?
Why do I bring this up now? Because along with race, this thing—privilege/entitlement—has been one of the biggest challenges in my life.
Anne Tyler, in her book, A Spool of Blue Thread, narrates the thoughts of the Whitshank family and relates how they believed they were different and more special than other families. The author suspects a lot of families have this somewhat deluded notion. I’m sure I did. I was steeped in entitlement. It may be the thing family’s do to mask all their failings, but for me it meant never feeling that I belonged. It meant always feeling like an outsider.
I think my father suffered from this as well and fought for much of his life to lose himself of those constraints. Perhaps this phenomenon is common for the children of University professors. You know, professors are supposed to be smart; they are supposed to be the ones who know. It can be a painful process reckoning with all the things you don’t.
I imagine dad bucked against the feeling of privilege and entitlement when he canceled his wedding planned with the daughter of another UT faculty in Knoxville four years before I was born. You have to like yourself to be with someone like yourself.
When he ran to his friend, my mother, I wonder if he was attracted to someone from a family less possessed of themselves—less attached to position and stature? This is not to say there was anything simple about my mom. She was, in a way, a creature that was self-invented. (When she was a teen my grandmother insisted she be part of some sort of debutant ball. I have newspaper clipping which shows all the girls but one in white dresses—my mom wearing black.)
But mom came from a small town, Winchester, compared to his Knoxville. She viewed life from the ground, not those gilded towers of higher education. Her mom was a second grade teacher. Her dad was a printer.
As I’ve said, dad often joked that he came from a long line of cold, distant and aloof people. They had lofty ideas about who they were in the world. I’d forgotten that the Robertson’s called their country retreat Halcyon Hills.
(I pulled this mailbox from the shed.)
On one of their vacations out to the land, when dad was still a boy, he walked into a country store somewhere nearby and had the notion to mock the locals.
“I’d like an RC Cola and mooooon pie,” he said to the attendant in his best country accent.
Somehow one of his older brothers—he had a full brother and two half-brothers and a half-sister—found out about this and reprimanded him severely.
Dad always told this story for the humorous effect but his face would contort into a sheepish grin with the painful memory of trying to find his place in the world.
It’s a long process. I guess I’m still working on it.
Spotty West Goes East 