Think Floyd

Yesterday was our rest day -A day to enjoy nearby recreation, or to read and write. And we have needed the rest. The past few days have been stimulating and engaging. I have spent this week rushing off to seminars, meals at designated times, cultural activities, and daily workouts. I have had a million conversations about a million different topics, and I have gone to bed every night with my brain buzzing. It’s a wonderful experience so far, and I have enjoyed talking about culture in a way that I haven’t done since I left graduate school at Bowling Green.

Yesterday, I spent some of the morning scheduling interviews with members of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. After that I decided to take a drive, and ended up in Floyd.

Floyd is a small mountain town in Southwestern Virginia that prides itself on eschewing the excesses of modern day consumerism. It’s a rural community where latter day hippies, environmentalists, poets, visual artists and musicians converge harmoniously with old school Appalachian folks. One of the instructors at the institute lives in an old house in Floyd without running water or electricity. By choice. Lots of people in Floyd live this way.

In the mid 90’s, while attending graduate school at nearby Radford University, I visited Floyd on a Friday night with two friends. We walked the two streets of Floyd accompanied by the soundtrack of local musicians playing fiddles, banjos and guitars. They do this every weekend on the streets of Floyd. After enjoying some of the music, we popped into the corner hardware store, and stood, amazed, as if we had been transported back in time. People – young and old -dressed in traditional attire of jeans, western shirts and boots – were square dancing and clogging ( to the accompaniment of live, local musicians positioned in the corner) in a large area of the store that had been sectioned off (so to speak) for just that purpose. One young guy even asked my friends and I if we would like to dance, and we politely said “no, thanks” since we didn’t know how to clog and didn’t want to make total fools of ourselves. Musicians play, and people square dance and clog every weekend at the Floyd hardware store.

On the drive home that night we talked about the diversity of American culture. This huge country has lots of cultural, folk pockets and we had certainly stepped into one on that Friday evening. I’m sure my experience in Floyd initiated or solidified my decision to pursue a PhD in American Culture Studies. I’m still astounded by the sheer cultural diversity of this country. I hate the politics of the U.S. but I love its traditional culture(s).

While in Floyd yesterday, I dropped into The Harvest Moon, a locally owned and operated store that sells gourmet foods, wine, beer, and environmentally sound products. I overheard a conversation between a customer and the store owner about a particular kind of olive oil sold my Harvest Moon. The owner explained the process of making this particular oil, assuring the customer that it was, indeed, created with very little mechanization. I was intrigued by their bamboo items. They had sets of bamboo plates ( a set of 4 for $4.25 ) and forks, which is a good choice for dinnerware considering that bamboo disintegrates into the environment fairly quick, but I was a bit put off by the “for single-use” label. It’s certainly better than plastic or paper but of course, not as widely available or as cheap. Anyway, after browsing the store, I went upstairs to the gallery/café and enjoyed a damn good chicken salad sandwich while listening to Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams on the gallery stereo. After eating, I enjoyed some of the work by local artists, and then headed back to Ferrum.

The first pic is one of Harvest Moon, and the second one is the hardware store.

Think Floyd. It’s a wonderous place.