I was born in West Virginia and spent my first 18 years living in its capital, Charleston. In 1966 I left the state to go to college and didn’t return for more than a few months at a time until, at age 41, I brought my family back to West Virginia so that I could attend medical school. It was then that I began to understand what growing up in Appalachia meant and how my experience differed from a great many Appalachians. In fact, I don’t believe that I really understood the concept of Appalachia as anything other than a geographic area until I was able to view it from the perspective of more than 20 years of living in various parts of the United States and in three different countries.
Charleston in the 1950s and 60s was a prosperous place and I had a comfortable middle class home life. I had a vague awareness that there was poverty in the state, but it didn’t intrude on my life and I didn’t go looking for it. It wasn’t just me, most of my friends shared this willful ignorance as we went on blissfully with lives untouched by depravation or despair. In those years, the social activism that would arise among young people in the late 1960s was not yet born. We were, as The Saturday Evening Post described, living in an oasis of luxury surrounded by poverty. Though none of us would have described our lives as luxurious, I have come to realize that everything is relative.
It’s not as though we stayed in Charleston. We spent a lot of time camping, hunting and fishing. We drove all over the state but somehow never managed to really see it. At most we may have thought “What in the world do the people who live here do for fun?” For most of us, West Virginia was a place to leave just as soon as we could and never look back.
My first year in college was at the University of Kentucky so I was still in the Appalachian environment. It wasn’t until 1967 when I enlisted in the Navy then I spent much time out of Appalachia and got to know people from all over the country. But I couldn’t help feeling vaguely defensive about being from West Virginia. I always felt that I was being thought of as the big dumb hillbilly. Nobody was seeing me; they were only seeing a stereotype. I’m sure that I was far more sensitive to this then any actual occurrence. I also know that there are many people who have suffered a whole lot more discrimination than what I imagined for myself. No matter how misguided or self-centered my concerns were, I was left with the feeling of being not quite good enough or not quite being at the same level as other people. It wasn’t a feeling of intellectual or physical inferiority, it was more of a feeling of social inadequacy.
My late teens and early 20s were a time of mixed emotions. I had periods where I felt there was no point in bothering to try because I just wasn’t good enough mixed with periods where I intended to show those SOBs that I was better than they were. It wasn’t until I met my wife of now almost 50 years that I realized that if she loved me I must be a worthwhile person and I really didn’t require any other validation.
This is enough brooding remembrances for one setting. I’ll be back in the future more the reflections on growing up in Appalachia. But the next post is going to be more grumpy opinions.
Remembering the Service Station
By John Turley
On April 16, 2021
In Commentary
One sure sign of getting old is the frequent use of “When I was a kid”. This is part of that golden mist of age that makes everything from your youth seem better, and the longer ago it was, the better it was. While things may be much better in my memory than they actually were, I’m not so far gone as to think that my memories are a true reflection of the past. Let’s start with the thing that men love above all others, cars.
Even the most nostalgically oriented of us must recognize cars have never been better than they are today. The engineering is fantastic. Cars handle better, are safer, more comfortable and are more efficient than they ever have been. I only have to look back at my first car to feel an affection for the past. It was a 1957 Ford Fairlane with a 6-cylinder engine, a 1 barrel carburetor and a two speed automatic transmission. (if you even know what a carburetor is, then you’re in the nostalgia zone.)
I loved that car, but it was certainly mechanically challenged. It had power nothing, and that included the motor. It had a zero to 60 speed that was best timed in minutes not seconds. If I stepped on the gas pedal the windshield wipers would stop. If the brakes got wet I was lucky if the car would stop. It had hand rolled windows, no air conditioning, and no radio. A sound system, you must be kidding.
The first thing I did when I got that car was take off the hubcaps and paint the wheels metallic silver and the lug nuts black. Then I drilled a couple of holes in the muffler and advanced the timing just a little bit to make it rumble like a race car (at least in my imagination). But even I’m not so naïve as to believe that it comes close to anything like the vehicles we have now.
As much of a mechanical marvel as today’s cars are, they are in large part boring. Particularly with the rise of the SUV’s, they are not much more stylish than a box on wheels. The 1950s and 60s were the heyday of car design. What car made today has the style and the elegance of a Cadillac El Dorado convertible or has the stunning beauty of the Jaguar XKE? OK, so maybe we do have to overlook tailfins, but then no one is perfect.
But there is one thing that I do miss, and there is nothing now that can compare to it. And that is the service station. Of course, now we have mini marts and convenience stores with gas pumps out front. While you’re pumping your gas, you can get an overpriced coffee, a hot dog, a Slurpee, and any variety of snacks, beer or soft drinks. But the one thing you can’t get is service.
For those of you not old enough to have experienced the service station I’ll give you a brief synopsis of a visit at a top service station. You would pull up to the pump and the service station attendant would come out to your car. He would clean your windshield, check the oil, check the water in your radiator, check the air in your tires and pump your gas. You never had to leave your car.
Now I know what some of you are thinking; my new car never has to have the oil or the water checked and it also has self-monitoring for my tire pressure. But I just have to tell you, there’s nothing like sitting back and having someone else take care of your car. For the cost of a tank of gas you felt like you were getting top line treatment. I’ve never seen a mini mart that can give me that.