Appalachian Journal: The Man Who Moved A Mountain

This is Bob Childress, the man who moved a mountain.

He was raised in southwest Virginia, and left an indelible mark on the community of mountain folk who have lived largely alone in America since colonial times. The roads that existed into this rocky terrain were unpaved, eroded, and impassable during many parts of the year. It wasn't until Bob Childress saw a reason to start a road improvement project that the rest of the world discovered Buffalo Mountain, in present day Floyd County, Virginia.

I say "discovered", but let's admit: the rest of the world has made potshots and ridiculed the Appalachian people for many, many, years. It wasn't so much that the world discovered us, as it was that we discovered the world outside our mountains. When I was growing up in Pilot, Virginia, only a few miles from Buffalo Mountain, I went to school in Riner, where it was common to see other kids who had never left the state of Virginia.

Such was life for the families of southwest Virginia, many of whom had roots dating back over 200 years in these Appalachian hovels.

I have grown up hearing the American conscience tell me in one breath, "Don't make fun of black people. Or Jews. Or Italians. Or Mexicans." But in the next breath, I was forced to watch Hollywood's portrayal of us (Beverly Hillbillies, The Andy Griffith Show, etc), which never once blinked when telling the world that it was ok to dress us up in rags, put stupid words in our mouths, and mock our sense of right and wrong in this world.

It still goes on today, of course. Cultural relativism is a concept that university professors preach to American youths while ignoring its meaning when it comes to the only racial group left to ridicule: southern whites.

Some would say that this is a sure sign that we have won. Why, we're so advanced that we can even mock and stereotype the very people who won America it's beginning. What else could be a sign of an elevated culture? While we are uber careful to edit our words when speaking of the black child who behaves like a savage in the streets of any major city in America, we forget all of that sensitivity when ridiculing the hillbillies of the Appalachian Mountains.

This sentiment is lost on the overeducated, however. The average academic is far too sophisticated to appreciate a people who grew up in the mountains. It doesn't matter that without the Virginia Blues, whom Colonel Washington proclaimed to be more able and brave than the professional British soldiers he'd been accustomed to, the soft whites from Europe who came along after all of the fighting was over wouldn't have a comfy perch from which to cast their stereotypes of us.

We understand the irony, though. That's why we say "forget them". We are more than happy to listen to our banjo music, drink our natural spring water, and race our moonshine speedsters around a dirt track for fun.

We've made roads to the outside world, but we've discovered that it won't lead us to salavation. Or even wisdom.

If you've never read "The Man Who Moved A Mountain", you ought to. It is a brief glimpse into my people from the past 100 years, told through the lens of a Pittsburgh reporter in the 1950's.