The Past 13 Days: Part 2 and 3 - Letcher County and Black Mountain

I'm on a roll with posts - I might as well catch up before I get on the road again tomorrow. To recap: This past week has been "Set-up week", where staffers have left the Porch and gone to their respective counties. Set-up week can be a strange transition, going from 112 really loud friends to 4 or 5 strangers that you will live with for the rest of the summer...

If I were a normal staffer, then Set-Up week would look something like this:

• Sort and review all the applications for home repair; visit homes.
  
  When I was a CD in Claiborne, I had about 200 applications, chose 100 of them as viable possibilities, visited about 60 of them (in 5 days), and ultimately chose 15 of them to work on. You spend a lot of time getting to know the county, getting lost on the county roads, and meeting lots of interesting personalities. It can be overwhelming to see the need in a given county, and even more overwhelming when you realize that most if it you can't do anything about. Saying "no" to a family is rough - most of them are gracious, but some of them resent you, some of them yell at you over the phone, or some of them will even call you two to three times daily for the first few weeks demanding to know why you won't work for them. BUT. Hope exists once you can make it past set-up week, because then you can focus on what you CAN do, instead of the many things that you're incapable of doing.
  
  
• Get your center ready.
  
  I've had a variety of centers, from the luxurious to the pitiable (in ASP terms, mind you). Some people spend most of set-up week scrubbing their center, cleaning it of the mold, dust, and guano that may have accumulated since the building was last used. Other staffers have gorgeous centers that merely need lots of signs to show the volunteers where to go. Some staffers have to build showers (Letcher '07), others have to extend them to make them "adult size" (Buchanan '06), while others merely have to empty them of all the storage because the showers have never been used before (Claiborne '08).
  
  Some staffs have the benefit of living in their center all week as they prepare for the volunteers. Other staffs aren't able to move into their center until Saturday (24 hours before the volunteers come!!!!) because school is still in session.
  
  
• Get to know the staff.
  
  Set-up week can be like the "honeymoon" phase of the summer - it's just you, your staff... no projects (except hypothetically), no volunteers. In my past summers, my staffs and I have cooked family dinners for each other, or gone out to dinner with other staffs. When we first arrived in Buchanan County, all we did was play "Guess Who" for about four hours. We were a little more mischievous in later summers, playing pranks on each other with giant clowns that we found in storage at our center.
  
  
• Deal with crazy stuff.
  
  Scenarios include: No phone or internet service during that initial week because the phone carrier got confused. The accelerator cable on your van gets stuck, and you and your first year find yourselves stranded on the side of the road, only to be rescued by a cute bald mountain man whose English is only barely intelligible. Deal with some resident who keeps calling you claiming that she's "#4" on some list that ASP has so you have to work on her house this summer or she's going to call the Mayor on you...? While crawling under a house during an initial home visit, you hear the homeowner's son say, "Shoot, I ain't that brave, with all those copperheads down there!!" Come home to your temporary residence to find a six-year-old standing in your living room claiming, "I got hit by a car!!" (The real story - we were staying at this kid's grandmother's house, and he unlocked our quarters because he wanted to watch TV. He was hit by a car, several months prior to us being there.)
  
  I have lived all those things.

BUT. I'm a support staffer this summer, which means that my Set-Up week has looked more like a vacation than anything else. I went to Letcher County, KY, to see my friend William who has an internship with Appalshop this summer, and to also see some of the families that I worked for two years ago. William is a fellow Carolina graduate, and was also on staff with me in '06 and '08.

I had a blast with William in Whitesburg; we went hiking with his fellow interns to Bad Branch Falls. I also got to be a guest DJ on WMMT's World Beat radio show, on Monday nights from 10 pm to 1 am.

William ponders rocksBad Branch Falls

Admiring the view from Pine Mountain

Guest DJ at WMMT!

When we were in Letcher, you couldn't drink the water at our center because our building didn't have any kind of filter system. The particulate iron and sulfate turned our clothes red and smelled bad, and couldn't be used for cooking and probably shouldn't have been used for bathing. Many of our families couldn't drink the water near their homes because the blasts from the mining had upset the bedrock and the water tables, so that the water was now filled with silt and other pollutants. Well, now you can't drink the water in Whitesburg either, because Don Childers of Childers' Oil buried mostly-empty fuel tanks near the river bed and they rusted through, contaminating the water. The contamination made its way all the way to the southern part of the county, into the Blackey Reservoir System. Schools were closed for a week because of the danger to public health.

Way to be, Don Childers... hope that oil money helps you sleep well at night.

But on a happier note...

I also got to drive by our old center at Campbell's Branch and visit with a handful of the families we worked for, as well as some of our community contacts and our hardware store. I'm happy to report that everybody I visited is doing well, though many of them have had brushes with death in the past two years. The southern part of Letcher County seems to be doing well economically (relatively), and escaped the brunt of the flooding and icestorms that plagued counties further west.

For those of you familiar with the county:

• Campbell's Branch is now offering GED classes, dance classes, and is getting a grant to have an information center (ie, computers). They're starting a volunteer fire department in Hallie, and the gym is going to be turned into the Fire Station.
  
  
• Rowena and a friend opened a diner/mini-mart/dairy bar just down the road from the center; Joyce cooks there now. The food's good!!
  
  
• Danny Boggs and family bought the market right below the hardware store and have expanded some. They miss us (and our business), and are hopeful that we'll be back sometime in the future.
  
  
• A friend of ours who works in the mines injured his neck in the mine not too long ago. I'm going back to see that particular family later in July.
  
  
• Nannie had cataract surgery and doesn't need glasses anymore; her kids are doing well. Her son in particular really cleaned up and now lives in Louisville.
  
  
• Our local author had heart failure last April, but it just so happened that his heart failed while he was standing up. He fell on his back on an incline, and in his words, "The Lord just gave me some CPR. That fall knocked my heart back into beating!" His grandkids are still as adorable as ever - it's amazing how much a difference 2 years can make!!

It was great to be back in Letcher County and see everybody. At the end of my summer there, I remember writing home saying that if I could find a job that would sustain me, I would seriously consider moving to Blackey, Hallie, or Whitesburg. Letcher County is probably one of the most beautiful places I have served, and as fond as I am of my memories there, I don't know if I would ever cease to be an outsider.

Black Mountain

After several days in Whitesburg, and with the open road before me, I decided to swing by NC and stay with my beloved aunt and uncle for a few days in Black Mountain. It's been great to be here and see them. I haven't really done much but rest and walk around. I've visited both music stores in town and spent about an hour at the Song of the Wood, figuring out how to play the Appalachian Dulcimer (check that one off the list). I got to hang out with Lisa briefly, practice my autoharp skills, prepare some devotions for my upcoming week, and even fix a toilet!

I'll leave tomorrow and head over to Lotts Creek, my home base, and then head on to my first county for the summer: Wolfe County KY!!