Hindman: Day One
After a brief introduction on Sunday night that showed me where I would eat, where I would sleep and where I would sit for a good part of the week ahead, I didn't have enough experience of the place to know what to do with myself in the dark when I woke up at my usual 4:30 on Monday morning, the first full day at Hindman. I opened my eyes and had a waking dream that I was hiding--from what?--under my bed. Above me, a mesh of wire and metal hovered a half-arm's-length above my face, barely visible in the orange wash of hiway 160 Had I climbed under the bed on my own, or had someone--or something--put me there, I wondered as I slowly regained my mental gyroscope. Oh yeah. I'm at Hindman in a room with two sleeping roommates. I'm on the bottom bunk, the middle meat in a mattress sandwich with almost 4 hours to kill before my first cup of coffee. I barely squelched a despondent sigh.
I sat on the edge of my bed, flexed almost double by the top top bunk just above my spine. I found my sandals and shorts, grabbed my camera bag and tripod and tiptoed out of the room. Now what? A thin fog hung over the valley. Maybe it was only coal truck exhaust, it occurred to me, but it did create a certain eerie ambience slumped in the mercury vapor of downtown, a few blocks away. I spent a half hour there, struggling to find the visual story. Perhaps it had always been, would always be as I found it: half in decline, half under construction. There were ghosts there. That is all I know.
Finally, daylight; and instant moist heat, alien and by 6:30, unquiet with the hum of coal trucks. I read on the porch of the main building until almost 7:00, and walked back up the hill to my room, hoping my roomies would be awake and I could change clothes for the day. Midway, I passed a distinguished, bearded fellow I'd seen at the meeting the night before. We struck up an instant conversation, and I felt sure we would talk again. We did. Often. And with the kind of familiarity and comfort that I haven't experienced nearly as often as I'd like to in this life.
I appreciated my new friend, Lee Maynard, for his quick laugh, self-deprecating humility and for the richness of his personal story. His kindness brought me into the fold that first full day at Hindman, even though he too was a first time guest there. Only later did I discover his talents as an author. His first book, Crum, has become an Appalachian "cult classic." Here's one take on it:
Critics have compared the novel to classic coming-of-age tales Tom Sawyer and The Catcher in the Rye. The Charleston Gazette's David Peyton calls the book "brilliantly written, carefully crafted, and downright funny. Most of all, it is real." Meredith Sue Willis, who writes the Introduction to the new edition of the novel from West Virginia University's Vandalia Press, writes "Each time I read Lee Maynard's Crum, I ask myself why this foul-mouthed, sexist, scatological, hillbilly-stereotyping novel is one of my favorites." Her answer to that question explores the honesty of Maynard's prose, the complexity of his thoughts, and the honesty of his portrayals of young people coming of age and growing out of the box where they've been planted. link
I was happy to find this NPR "Driveway Moment" with Lee, interviewed by Terry Gross. It will help me remember Lee's voice, so that when I read Crum (my copy is still in KY--my roommate carried it home by mistake) I will be able to hear his sonorous and thoroughly genuine voice in it, all the way through. His second book--about his life after leaving Crum--is Running with the Cannibals. I'm saving it for Thanksgiving break.