Characters

January 26, 2021

I grew up in a town chock full of characters, folks all twisted a hair or so off the pattern. My parents were among these characters, of course.

No one who ever met my mother for five seconds would argue that she wasn’t a character. She was some kind of fierce wild orchid that just kept blooming despite inclement weather. Daddy may have stepped outside our house and fired his shotgun in the air from time to time just to remind folks we were armed, but he could also regale company with stories of Hannibal crossing the Alps and acted as our guide and historical narrator on our epic tour of Europe.

Grace Lee Irby ran a little salon in town where kids danced, sang, played the piano, painted, and read poetry aloud, all at once. Jean Jones, who was shaped a like a pear and had the smallest feet imaginable, had a dance studio in an upstairs loft on Main Street. Richard Booker would wait every day on his front porch until Bunny Nelson walked by and yell, “Hey, Bunny!’ and she’d yell back, “Hay is for horses!” Gertie, also upstairs on Main Street, did ladies’ hair while chain-smoking cigarettes. Eddie delivered prescriptions around town on his bike and hollered at everyone he passed by. Elmer Whysong, who lived way out in the country in a rundown house with his brother, somehow made it every Sunday to church to sing tenor in Mama’s choir (we called him Elmer Why Sing?) There was another tenor across the street at the Methodist Church, who sure seemed like a raging queen, but was married and served in the Virginia National Guard. He did end up opening a florist, so think what you will. Katherine Murdoch was seen, at an advanced age, jogging on the country road by her house, long before jogging was popular. Richmond Seay was a friend and devotee of Edgar Cayce and played an ear-splitting violin. He was also blind. For some reason, people felt obliged to include him on local musical programs. For a few years, we had a dynamic young church musician who wowed the young folks and directed the first Messiah, but turned out to be a bit of a kleptomaniac. He left town in a car the church had lent him, and never returned.

These people weren’t just characters; they had character. Local flavor. There was even a Blackstone accent, distinct to our town alone, distinguishable from the way people talked one county over. Small towns used to be known for their characters. That’s one thing that made growing up in a small town so very rich.

But that doesn’t seem the case in small towns anymore. There are many reasons for that. That rich local infrastructure of family businesses and farms, small colleges, active citizen groups and churches, has been ravaged. What’s left, mostly, is boarded up Main Streets, jobs shipped offshore, closed schools, brain drain, rampant meth addiction, deaths of despair.

A different kind of small town person has grown out of this environment, not as quirky and loveable, but more often, angry, aggrieved, paranoid, and even dangerous. Not with a worldview unique to their own local hometown experience, but one they’ve been fed by corporate media. Not all rural and small town people fall into this category, of course, but they tend to be the loudest and most visible.

A bunch of these lost souls showed up at the Capitol on January 6 to permanently install Lost Soul Number One, and what an ugly sight that was.

I’m happy that I remember an America not full of angry, hollow men revved up on lies. I don’t know how we get out of this place. How we get them re-enlisted in the Great American Experiment. I only know we must.

Jen Psaki