Hillbilly Part II

When I was 9 years old I traveled with some relatives to Baltimore MD. I don't know how long I was in Baltimore at this time, or what I did there. There is only one incident, one memory from that trip.

The people we were visiting lived in a working-class section of Baltimore, in what I would consider row housing. I was out playing on the street one day when a neighborhood kid greeted me. We played hopscotch. The kid, who I assume was my age, knew that I wasn't from the neighborhood and asked where I was from. When I told him I was visiting from West Virginia, he scowled his face and said in a disgusted, angry tone, "you are a hillbilly." I was crestfallen. I didn't know what the word meant, but I knew it wasn't good. For the first time in my young life I realized that I was different from other people. Instantly I felt inadequate, othered and inferior. I was so traumatized by his remark that I fled back into the house and never played with him again.

That's all I remember about that trip to Baltimore in 1974.

This was a pivotal moment in my life. Unfortunately, I internalized a lot of those feelings because this wasn't the last time I was called a hillbilly or made to feel inferior because I come from Appalachia. Each and every time it hurts just like it did in 1974.

When I returned home to West Virginia I asked my parents what this word meant, and why it pertained to me. My mother informed me that people outside of the state have this view of Appalachians as "poor, barefooted, toothless, backwards hillbillies." I was perplexed as to how people in other states could actually believe that we didn't possess shoes, or teeth. I remember questioning the logic of this, wondering who, in this equation, was truly backward. My mother informed me that I couldn't pay attention to people who said such things, or held such views because they were "ignorant." Yes, supreme ignorance, but it still hurts.

This exeperience calls to mind Countee Cullen's poem "Incident," which I read in an African American lit class in 1990. This poem, centering on an 8 year old kid's first experience with overt racism in Baltimore, called to mind my childhood experience there. The lasting effects of discrimanatory "incidents" of being cast as different and inferior are so skillfully described by Cullen in this poem. His experiences were based on race, of course, while mine were based on class. It's a sweet poem that shatters.

Did I mention that I hate the word "hillbilly?"