Reflections from Elsewhere: Ambivalence, Recuperation, and Empathy in Moral Geographies of Appalachian

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The

By

Cassie Rosita Patterson

Graduate Program in English

The Ohio State University

2015

Dissertation Committee:

Amy Shuman, Advisor

Dorothy Noyes

Katherine Borland

Copyright by

Cassie Rosita Patterson

2015

Abstract

Throughout Appalachian Ohio, residents in small post-industrial cities grapple with redefining themselves as a place and a people in order to compete in the global economy. Young people caught in the middle of this economic transition—those born after the major factory closings in the early 1980s—struggle to negotiate their relationships with their hometowns, which typically offer limited career options beyond the service sector. Thus far, educators, researchers and policy makers have focused their attention on getting access to college for students from Appalachian Ohio, but how those students negotiate home-school relationships while in college, much less after graduation, remains unclear. Meanwhile, scholars of post-industrial contexts in the have focused on collecting and understanding the experiences of the men and women who were laid off from factory work, but rarely focus on the multi-generational impact of deindustrialization.

Listening to the stories of college students and residents from postindustrial

Appalachian Ohio is important for understanding the ways in which place, economics, and identity intersect in their lives. Students discussed being ambivalent about their relationships toward home and college because of the various messages they received from people in both spaces. In a region where place, family, and environment are important categories of meaning and significance, and where cooperation regularly makes up for a lack of resources, leaving to attend college becomes a fraught decision.

Moral geographies of the region—the ways in which people position themselves in ii relation to people and place—are thus filled with reflections from elsewhere, constructions of self and community that are responsive to the expectations of peers, outsiders, and discourses of success and failure that influence everyday choices, such as how often to visit home or where to seek employment. Reflections from elsewhere work in two ways in this dissertation: they are both the lived negotiations of self in response to the expectations of others as well as the ways that students and residents reflect upon, evaluate, and tell stories about the ruptures that have shaped their experiences.

Reflections from elsewhere include binders full of newspaper clippings and photocopies from the library, road stories that are enacted every few weeks, murals that stitch historical moments together to create a story of a place, and acts of resistance and critique.

Students’ negotiations of place reveal the tensions they experience in coming from a place that is impossible to return to without the stigma of failure and to which continued belonging is possible only by habitually traversing the long-worn road home.

Road stories, then, become all the more important as units of analysis, and force us to consider notions of place that cannot be defined in terms of a single locale.

Contextualizing the students’ evaluative discourse, I examine critical positionings staked out by the university and home communities that shed light on the ways in which economic instability strains students’ relationships with home. I attend to important spaces in which reflections from elsewhere are prominent, analyzing both public and private “moral archives” of deindustrialization and recuperation in New and

Portsmouth in Scioto County, Ohio, where community leaders and residents work

iii diligently to recuperate the value of their communities and the histories that shaped them.

These moral archives are analyzed in contrast to the negative relationship between home and opportunity constructed by a university service-learning initiative directed toward the region (Ohio State University’s Buck-I-Serv Alternative Spring Break), as it seeks to orient young people toward college. The one-way communication taken for granted in the design of the service project intensifies the devaluation of “home,” while alienating both the target audiences and the students recruited to serve.

Appalachia has long been a place where knowledge, resources, and representation intersect. While the moral archives of community elders attempt to hold these conflicting elements together, the moral geographies constructed by college students map that struggle onto the binary oppositions offered to them by the dominant culture. Both in reflection and reality, however, Appalachian Ohio students continuously travel the roads between points of value. This evaluative activity leads to some unexpected outcomes for individuals and undermines the seeming split between “going” and “staying.” Reflections from elsewhere among Appalachian Ohioans—as among many populations pushed toward mobility by a global economy—shape the life decisions of individuals. They merit the attention of the educators and policymakers who, wittingly or unwittingly, provide some of the mirrors.

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Dedication

To my family, Maritza Roxanna Patterson, Kenneth Michael Patterson, and Kenneth

Christopher Patterson, whose love and support has been the foundation upon which I have lived my life, and to Mark William Wyckoff, with whom I shared the burden of

creation for many years.

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Acknowledgments

This dissertation is the work of many hands and many minds. I would like to thank the students who shared their lives and experiences with me over the past few years. We had a lot of fun riding around in cars together, and I can’t wait to hear what you do next. The Appalachian Project has contributed significantly to my research and to

Appalachian students at Ohio State University. Dr. Patricia Cunningham, Dr. Krista

Bryson, Dr. Megan Chew, Amanda Baker, and Lynaya Elliott, I’m so proud of what we’ve accomplished so far and I look forward to the work ahead.

To my advisor and dissertation chair, Amy Shuman, I cannot express my gratitude for the ways you have challenged my thinking and continually reminded me that my ideas were valuable. Thank you for your compassion. Thank you for your conviction.

And thank you for the delicious food!

Dorothy Noyes and Katherine Borland were both my committee members and my

Directors at the Center for Folklore Studies and supported my dissertation wholeheartedly, giving me time to write during the workweek, approving requests for time off for fieldwork/writing, and suggesting strategies for staying well while juggling work and writing. I absolutely could not have finished this dissertation without flexibility in the workplace and without their valuable comments. Thank you for supporting me in

vi all the ways that mattered and for going beyond what others in your position are willing to do.

To my “spit” sisters Leila Ben-Nasr, Dr. Yalidy Matos, and Dr. Katie Carmichael:

“write on, write on, write on” and …@”. Leila, words cannot express my gratitude for your friendship and support over the past few years. Heart. To the many friends who helped me along the way and reminded me that this was “totally doable”: Cristina

Benedetti, Olivia Caldeira, Andrew Cooper, Puja Batra-Wells, Lindsay Bernhagen, Elena

Foulis, Emily Hooper-Lewis, Rachel Hopkin, Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, Anne

Langendorfer, Barbara Lloyd, Sonia Manjon, Lindsay Martin, Kate Parker-Horigan,

Joanna Spanos, Alli Vermaaten and Nancy Yan. To my family members who have encouraged me in my academic pursuits since childhood: Lisha Gonzalez, Victor

Gonzalez, Carole Bunch, Walter Bunch Sr., Irma Gonzalez, Julio Gonzalez, and my Nina

Yoke.

Thank you to Bob Morton, Mandy Hart, Nevada Hart, Kim Bower, Robert

Dafford, Steve Jenkins, John Lorentz, Sean Boldman, Nikki Karabinis, Kim Cutlip, and other residents who were willing to talk to me about their city. I enjoyed hearing your stories, attending your events, and getting to know you. I look forward to many more years of working together. Thanks to Garage Café for the great eats!

This work was made possible by the 2014 Ohio State Critical Difference for

Women Grant, which allowed me to make six trips to Portsmouth during the 2014 year and to build deeper relationships with residents.

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Vita

2007 ...... B.A. (Honors) English, California State

University, San Bernardino

2007 ...... B.A. (Honors) Philosophy, California State

University, San Bernardino

2008-2009 ...... Graduate Teaching Assistant, Department of

English, The Ohio State University

2009 ...... M.A. English, The Ohio State University

2009 ...... G.I.S. Folklore, The Ohio State University

2009-2011 ...... Graduate Archivist, Center for Folklore

Studies, The Ohio State University

2011-2012 …………………………………..Graduate Teaching Assistant, Department of

English, The Ohio State University

2011-2012 …………………………………..Graduate Research Assistant, Literacy

Studies @Ohio State GradSem, The Ohio

State University

2012-present ...... Assistant Director, Center for Folklore

Studies and Director of the Folklore

Archives, Ohio State University

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Publications

“Moral Geographies and the Economics of Attention: Commitment, Community-

Building, and Tourism in Portsmouth, Ohio.” The Folklorist in the Marketplace.

Eds. Willow Mullins and Puja Batra-Wells. Manuscript accepted.

“Performance, Play, and Impersonation in Harriette Simpson Arnow’s ‘The Goat Who

Was a Cow.’” Seeking Home: Tradition and Modernity in . Eds.

Jürgen Grant and Leslie Worthington. University of Tennessee Press.

Forthcoming.

Fields of Study

Major Field: English

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Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Dedication ...... v

Acknowledgments ...... vi

Vita ...... viii

List of Tables...... xiv

List of Figures ...... xv

Introduction ...... 1

“But, I didn’t apply for the Appalachian scholarship…” ...... 1

Moral Geographies: Road Stories and Home Stories ...... 11

Traveling Out of Bounds: Home, Place, and Critical Regionalism ...... 16

Interrogating Home ...... 23

Post-industrial Appalachian Ohio? ...... 26

Educational Attainment and Brain Drain in (Appalachian) Ohio ...... 28

My Journey to the Dissertation ...... 34

Fieldwork Methodology ...... 37

Descriptive Analysis & Limitations ...... 48

Dissertation Overview: Ambivalence, Recuperation and Empathy ...... 49 x

Chapter 1: (Re)making Postindustrial Appalachian Ohio: Archiving and Narrating

Landscape ...... 57

“The Day the Fires Went Out”: Documentation, Memory, and the Event in

Postindustrial New Boston, Scioto County, Ohio ...... 57

A Theory of Memory and the Event ...... 63

Steve Jenkins’ Notebook: The Personal and Community Archive...... 64

“Everything was Mill”: Driving Around with Steve Jenkins ...... 73

Conclusion ...... 77

Chapter 2: Ambivalence on Route 23: Personal Experience Narratives of

Appalachian Ohio Students attending Ohio State University ...... 79

Talking With the Students ...... 83

Charting Ambivalence ...... 86

“On the Road to Anywhere Else”: Exceptionality at Home ...... 88

“Wherever I’m Happiest”: Constructing Comfort & Belonging ...... 94

“They think that I forget where I came from”: Negotiating Value in Stories about

Visiting Home ...... 98

Keeping Ties ...... 106

Dead-End Stories ...... 108

Conclusion ...... 114

Chapter 3: Public Display and Commemoration in Portsmouth, Ohio ...... 116 xi

2,000 Years of History, 2,000 Feet of Art: The Portsmouth Floodwall Murals ...... 119

Constructing a History of Portsmouth: Temporality, Spatiality, and Place ...... 127

Ways of Seeing & Techniques of Incorporation: Framing, Mirroring, Reflection, and

Incorporation in the Portsmouth Floodwall Murals ...... 136

“You Have to Take the Time to Pause and Look at Each Detail”: Gaps & Resident

Tours ...... 145

A Moment for Murals ...... 151

Mural Compliments: The Portsmouth Floodwall Stars & State University

Banners ...... 151

Conclusion: Celebration and Conflict in Heritage Tourism ...... 155

Chapter 4: Good Works at Home: Economic Access Initiative College Access Tour to Brown County, Ohio ...... 160

Preparing for the Trip: Pre-meetings as ways of Defining and Enacting Service ...... 160

Access to vs. Success in College ...... 168

Introducing the Students...... 169

My Positioning on the Service Trip ...... 171

Moments of Tension in Service ...... 174

Lessons Learned from Last Day Informalities ...... 183

Post-Trip Reflection: Exploring Empathy, Ambivalence, and Redemption in Service

...... 186

xii

Conclusion ...... 197

Conclusion...... 200

Wrapping Back Around: Fragments From Extended Fieldwork ...... 203

Moral Geographies, Sense-Making and Performance in Reflections from Elsewhere 204

Further Research: Intersections of Staying and Public Display ...... 205

Works Cited ...... 208

xiii

List of Tables

Table 1: Enrollment of students from Appalachian Ohio counties at Ohio State

University, autumn 2011- spring 2015 ...... 41

Table 2: Timeline constructed from the Story of Iron and Steel Industry in New Boston by Steve Jenkins ...... 68

xiv

List of Figures

Figure 1: Steve Jenkins and his New Boston Archive...... 65

Figure 2: Mill smokestack visible behind the new shopping center...... 76

Figure 3: 1810 House. Photo by the author...... 128

Figure 4: Open lot north of Tribute to Organized Labor. Photo by the author...... 129

Figure 5: View of Tribute to Organized Labor (left) and Tour of the Valley

(right) murals from Route 104. The open lot to the right is the one that Bob wants to purchase to ensure the view of the mural is not obscured...... 130

Figure 6: Millbrook Park. Photo by the author...... 136

Figure 7: Art Deco, Portsmouth, 1939 transition between Portsmouth Shoe Steels and

Greyhound Bus Station mural. Also note the little boy playing in the bottom right corner of the bus station mural on the right. Photo by the author...... 138

Figure 8: Close-up of boy peeking out from mural. Photo by author...... 138

Figure 9: Close-up of Sister Cities. Photo by author...... 139

Figure 10: Portsmouth Motorcycle Club. Photo by the author...... 143

Figure 11: Floodwall Stars located on opposite side of Portsmouth Floodwall Murals and facing the and Kentucky in Portsmouth, Ohio. Photo by the author...... 152

Figure 12: Shawnee State University "Stand Out" banner. Photo by the author...... 154

Figure 13: Close-up of Tribute to Organized Labor. Photo by the author...... 156

xv

Figure 14: College boards at parent-student night. 2014 Ohio State Alternative Spring

Break. Photo by the author...... 178

xvi

Introduction

“But, I didn’t apply for the Appalachian scholarship…”

It was the middle of winter and there was an enormous, perfectly rectangular hole in the wall of my living room. A semi-transparent tarp draped down on either side to keep the warmth in as a few men worked on either side. All three panes of the sliding glass door had been removed to install a, more efficient double-paned version. There was a small team of men going back and forth between the tarp as they worked. I had turned off the heater and let it go cold in the apartment. Bundled up in my sweater, I loaded the dishwasher as they worked. One of the younger ones and I got to talking about how he wanted to eventually own his own door and window replacement company some day and be his own boss. He said he was from southeast Ohio and had graduated from Ohio State

University with a degree in business not too long ago. As soon as those two pieces of information existed together—Ohio State and southeastern Ohio—he was quick to clarify that he hadn’t received “the Appalachian scholarship.”

My reaction was mixed: on one hand, as a native southern Californian, I was unfamiliar with the assumptions that a native Ohioan might have about the county he mentioned and the types of scholarships they might have access to; on the other hand, as a scholar of Appalachian Studies and a minority student who has personally benefited

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from affirmative action and minority-based programs, I understood how university funding awarded based on identity and class often comes with a stigma attached. As a folklorist interested in the politics of place, I was curious about the meaning of his refusal, so I asked him to further explain what this “Appalachian Scholarship” was all about. He told me that a number of kids from his high school received scholarships because they would not have been able to get into Ohio State on their own merit.

According to him, the “Appalachian scholarship” was not a mark of high achievement, but rather a mark of academic deficiency. He said that students who received this scholarship were recruited to Ohio State merely to satisfy a diversity requirement, even though, based on their high school performance, they would likely drop out.

Quickly severing the relationship between his personal academic experience from those of “others” from his county of origin, the young man exposed what could be a critical disconnect between vernacular and institutional perceptions of identity-based university financial aid. The stigma of the scholarship was enough to keep him from applying. Interestingly, the nature of the student’s refusal to apply for this particular scholarship was not because he didn’t identify with the area he grew up in, but rather because of the way people within his community talked about the scholarship. To him, the scholarship was for students who were underprepared for college and would likely drop out, not for those like him who could succeed independently. It was not that he didn’t want to identify with his county—he was quick to tell me where he was from—but that he rejected the “handouts” he felt came along with being from his county and the stigmas that were attached to them. My discussion with the young graduate led me to ask

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questions about the relationship between community and institutional discourses with regard to what it means to be a student from an Appalachian county in Ohio attending a large university like Ohio State.

James Scott’s concept of “hidden transcripts” is helpful for unpacking these types of interactions.1 He explains that hidden transcripts include “discourse that takes place

‘offstage,’ beyond direct observation by powerholders,” while the public transcript is the

“open interaction between subordinates and those who dominate” (4, 2). In the recent graduate’s case, the public transcript consists of institutional support for Appalachian students whereas the stigma attached to these scholarships and his refusal to apply for them reveal a hidden transcript about such offerings. Though the university confers prestige upon recipients, some community members interpret that prestige as false hope for success. The public transcript claims that the university is supportive of Appalachian

Ohio (and other underprivileged and/or minority) students, but the hidden transcript forces us to acknowledge that there are a number of other, less visible discourses that complicate this message. That is, offering the scholarship isn’t a good in itself, and it’s important to pay attention to the ways that the communities they intend to serve interpret such efforts at educational equity. When the young man revealed his community’s hidden

1 While some may wonder at the appropriateness of using Scott’s concept of the hidden transcript to analyze community discourses in non-life-threatening contexts, Scott points out that concepts of hidden and public transcripts are meant to help us understand power relations in various contexts to highlight the ways that subordinate groups are asked (or required) to perform: “We might imagine…situations ranging all the way from a dialogue among friends of equal status and power on the one hand to the concentration camp on the other, in which the public transcript of the victim bears the mark of mortal fear. Between these extremes are the vast majority of the historical cases of systematic subordination that will concern us” (3). Later on page 46 Scott states that “[s]mall ‘ceremonies,’ being much more frequent, are perhaps more telling as daily embodiments of domination and subordination.” I count students’ personal statements, discussions about their plans after graduation, and drives home among these “small ceremonies,” as they are ways that students perform their relationships to home among one another and to people in positions of power. 3

transcript about the scholarship, it led me to wonder about the spaces in which these transcripts are expressed. Where else were these hidden transcripts about the discrepancy between home and university spaces circulating, and what do they mean?

Later, in fall 2011, I heard another story that further confirmed the disconnect between Appalachian students’ identification patterns and university expectations for their behavior. Following up on a fieldwork lead with a new Ohio State student organization called Buckeyes for Appalachia, I met with Vonna Page, an Appalachia native, academic counselor in Arts and Sciences, and advisor to the student group. She explained the beginnings of the group: she and Natala “Tally” Heart, a first-generation college student and the senior advisor of Ohio State’s Economic Access Initiative, felt that Appalachian (especially first-generation Appalachian) students needed to be better connected with one another across campus because of the alienation and homesickness they experienced when arriving to college. In Tally’s experience, first-generation

Appalachian students who dropped out of college often did so early on in the first semester/quarter2 of freshman year because they did not feel connected to college life and longed for the comfort of home. Together, they felt that an Appalachian student organization could provide an important social structure for students during the first few months and throughout their college career.

The two hosted a focus group with faculty and staff from across the curriculum to see if others agreed that a student organization geared toward Appalachian students could help serve the student population at Ohio State. Vonna was frustrated by the group’s

2 Ohio State converted from semesters to quarters in summer 2012. 4

response: they didn’t doubt that Appalachian students needed to have an academic community, but a number of focus group participants were skeptical about whether students would feel comfortable identifying themselves as Appalachian on campus.

Participants felt that students usually tried to hide Appalachian markers, especially their dialects, and so would not want to join a student organization that “outed” them as

Appalachian. Having seen the impact social networks could have on the retention rates of first-generation students through other programming, Vonna and Tally decided to create the group anyway, and, together with undergraduate students, they formed Buckeyes for

Appalachia, which remains active today.3

Members of the focus group considering the creation of an Appalachian student organization were skeptical of students’ desires to publicly identify with the region itself.

As with the first anecdote, the issue of identification is a concern, but it registers in a different way. Whereas the university scholarship provided the option to privately identify with the region in order to obtain funds for college, the student organization would make public students’ affiliation with a stigmatized group without any financial reward. And yet, when I volunteered one year at a Student Involvement Fair representing

Buckeyes for Appalachia, a number of students were eager to identify as Appalachian and even took pleasure in pointing to their home county on the map of Appalachia on the student organization’s promotional poster board.

These two anecdotes highlight the misalignment of institution and community conceptions of student identification patterns of Appalachian Ohio students at Ohio State.

3 As of July 2015, the student organization has 116 members listed on their Facebook page. The group hosts social events, fundraisers, and educational outreach trips to the region. 5

The recent business graduate was eager to let me know that he had earned his degree without the help of a scholarship that many of the kids from his high school relied upon.

To him, the scholarship had a deficit stigma attached to it such that those who receive the scholarship were considered academically unprepared for college and were thought to have received it based on their minority status alone. The young man didn’t shy away from identifying with Appalachia or with southern Ohio necessarily, but he did distance himself from the scholarship that was specifically aimed at assisting members of his community. While the university was attempting to meet the needs of Appalachian Ohio students through scholarship funds, he was unwilling to identify with such efforts because of the stigma he would feel for receiving it.

These examples raise important questions about the various contexts in which students from Appalachian Ohio articulate and negotiate their identities at Ohio State in various contexts. To what extent are the university’s assumptions about the ways that students from Appalachian Ohio interact with their region of origin in line with the students’ actual identification practices? What contexts of communication might we study in order to better understand these hidden transcripts and their impact on

Appalachian students’ lives at Ohio State?

Investigating these questions took me in a number of seemingly disparate directions and eventually urged me to ask different questions. On numerous occasions, I drove to cities, towns, and villages4 in Appalachian Ohio seeking to understand the contexts of the students’ lives, the places they came from, how such stigmas arose, and

4 In Ohio, villages have populations of 5,000 people or less. 6

what shape they took over time. What became clear was how important it was to also understand the historical, economic, and community contexts that students grew up in and negotiated throughout their college careers. For that reason, this is a wandering dissertation and it follows the numerous winding paths that the students themselves take—the places they come from and continue to revisit as well as the people who come to visit them. While I initially began approaching the students’ stories using Mary Louise

Pratt’s concept of the “contact zone”5 as a controlling metaphor for understanding the relationship between home and school, my work encouraged me to see individuals traveling in and through porous, rather than distinct, spaces; they used multiple points of entry and exit, and created a map of existence dependent upon travel. Critical to my investigation is the way in which relationships, values, and positionings are negotiated throughout these movements.

As I researched these questions, I found that public transcripts about college students from Appalachian Ohio typically focus on defining success, often in the form of educational transformation. These public transcripts limited the ways that students could make their ways through the world and relate to home because they often cast home as something away from which students should move. This process transforms home into a place that needs help rather than recuperating it as a source of knowledge. The anecdotes that open this dissertation were the first inklings of the pressure of these public transcripts, which suggested that one had to get through college on one’s own merit and that, once there, she would not want to identify with her life back home anymore. Public

5 Pratt defines the “contact zone” as those “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such a colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today” (173). 7

transcripts of Appalachian Ohio success, then, require self-sufficiency and rejection of home. If home is not rejected, it ought to be returned to as a site of service through one of the helping professions, such as Public Health or Social Work.6 Only one of the students I interviewed, Anne, was interested in engaging the Appalachian region as a space of knowledge and cultural validity. If the public transcript is comprised of scholarships, success stories, and the personal statements that students write to get into college and to receive financial assistance (in which they have to perform particular, acceptable relationships to home), the hidden transcripts are the trips they make back and forth between university and home, and the ways that they constantly navigate relationships in each space.

Paul Willis’ Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class

Jobs (1977) and Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas’ Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural

Brain Drain and What It Means for America (2009) are canonical texts that analyze educational trends among white working-class students. While the two texts focus on quite different contexts and populations—Willis on urban working-class boys in early1970s Britain and Carr and Kefalas on rural Iowans of various class backgrounds who graduated from high school in the late 1980s and early 1990s—they provide important concepts for my research.7 Willis, Carr, and Kefalas argue that the social reproduction of class is closely tied to the ways in which students relate home culture

6 I talk more about this in the conclusion where I analyze the personal statements students submitted for school, internship, and job applications. 7 Carr and Kefalas, for instance, note that their “Stayers” “bear a striking resemblance” to Willis’ working- class lads (59). 8

with education and schooling.8 The high-school-to-college transition years (and, in the case of this dissertation, the college-to-career transition) are especially telling moments of students’ lives because they are critical junctures at which students assess their place in the world and their ability to make their way in it. Transition moments reveal the opportunities as well as the restrictions different students face, and, for the students I interviewed, these restrictions often point back to home spaces because they lack economic opportunities in the spaces they feel emotional and cultural attachment.

Katherine Kelleher Sohn’s research on female first-generation non-traditional college students in eastern Kentucky also serves as an important comparison to my work.

In Whistlin’ and Crowin’ Women of Appalachia: Literacy Practices since College (2006),

Sohn analyzes the lives and literacy practices of three women, arguing that getting a college education helped the women find their voices (32). Each of the case studies highlight the personal, familial, and social tensions that the women experienced while navigating the college process and how they intersected with expectations of them as women, mothers, and workers within the community. In both Sohn’s work and my own, we see Appalachian students struggle to develop an academic identity while also remaining connected to their families, peers, and neighbors. One of the Buck-I-Serv students, for instance, who is from an Appalachian Ohio county, mentioned how she had an argument with her father in the car on the way home from Thanksgiving break:

8 Importantly, though, Willis and Carr and Karfalas point to inequality in social reproduction in very different ways. Willis argues that “the lads’” valorization of working-class culture is a creative cultural response to their economic and social constraints (120, 126-137). Carr and Karfalas, however, ultimately find fault with home communities themselves, stating, that though “socioeconomic cycles affect the conditions that shape these places and expand or constrict the options available to small towns, it is people’s actions that ultimately determine whether a place hollows out” (xii). Carr and Karfalas claim that community members drain their towns when they invest in Achievers rather than Stayers (19). 9

…what he ended up saying was ‘do you think that I’m stupid just because

you’re going to college?’ And it’s hard looking down on it where you feel

like you’re kind of, in a way you sorta look down on your parents even

though you really love them because they don’t have the same level of

education and goals as you do. At the same time they’re kind of looking at

you and you seem so far away from them and you seem so different from

anything they’ve ever experienced. (Buck-I-Serv group reflection, March

27, 2014)

Her quote emphasizes the intellectual, experiential, and physical distance that families and communities in Appalachian Ohio have to contend with when young people attend college outside the region. This particular student had to deal with her parents equating being a feminist with being a lesbian, for instance, which she responded to by explaining the difference between political and sexual orientation. Teaching her parents about feminism disrupts the parent-child power dynamic, turning her into the teacher and her parents into the students.

While my dissertation draws from the insights Willis, Carr, and Kefalas provide, I work to further our understanding of the intersection of education, place, and social power from the perspective of folklore scholarship, which investigates the ways that students and communities understand their own experiences of the importance of place and mobility. Since I worked most closely with the group that Carr and Kefalas would call Achievers (though it remains to be seen whether they will become Returners), most of them come from working-class backgrounds but are a decidedly different population

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than Willis’ lads. They’re the students whose lives are constructed as success stories by the community, the university, and themselves. As we will see, narratives of successful students from Appalachian Ohio have limited options for relating to home, especially since home culture is all but absent in college life except for occasional trips back home.

Successful students break from home traditions or carry home nostalgically inside them as they climb the social ladder. We need look no further than the Ohio State Buckeye

Common Book for 2014, Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle, for affirmation of the prevalence and power of this story. In addition to these “getting out” narratives, though, I also found ambivalence about making one’s way in a post-industrial society both in the students’ personal narratives and community landscapes. Travel and “keeping ties” exemplifies the tension and slack that characterizes students’ relationships with home and their community’s relationship with them.

Moral Geographies: Road Stories and Home Stories

The concept of moral geography is central to my work, and, indeed, encompasses concepts of home, belonging, literal and metaphoric travel/traversing, boundary construction and maintenance. Borrowing the term from Jane Hill, Gabriella Modan in her book, Turf Wars: Discourse, Diversity, and the Politics of Place, defines moral geography as “an interweaving of a moral framework with a geographical territory” through which “community members create alignments and oppositions among people and places” that are then positively or negatively assessed according to community values

(90). Modan’s work emphasizes a dialogic relationship between people and places, such

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that evaluations of places simultaneously construct speakers’ own identity. Inevitably, she argues, because people have many facets and link their identities to their place of residence, “community members talk about the neighborhood in multiple and sometimes conflicting ways” (92). This “stance-taking,” or the process by which community members articulate their alignments, builds on Goffman’s notion of footing9 to be able to encompass not only the ways that people position themselves but also how they position others in relation to place (297). Modan emphasizes that positioning (or stance-taking) is dynamic, emergent, relational, and that it relates to places as well as people (297).

Students and residents from Appalachian Ohio construct moral geographies of home, school, and other places on a regular basis, defining themselves at the same time that they describe others. As we will see in the first chapter, the students I interviewed often constructed themselves in ambivalent ways in relation to their homes. They described themselves as being at intellectual and ideological removes from their homes and the people who continue to live there (especially toward residents that are of a similar age as them), but they also identified with the working-class values of their upbringing and credited their backgrounds as a source of strength. The former is in tension with discourses of significance and value that are articulated by residents in their home counties where projects like the Portsmouth Floodwall Murals practically scream the need to be seen, understood, and appreciated. And, at the same time, many of the students from the region who are at Ohio State were in many ways encouraged to leave their home counties to pursue careers that prohibit students’ return. Proximity and value are major

9 Goffman defines footing as “a change in the alignment we take up to ourselves and the others present as expressed in the way we manage the production of reception of an utterance” (“Footing” 10). 12

tensions in this dissertation, and the concept of moral geography is at the heart of those tensions.

The ways that students and residents think and feel about Appalachian Ohio and themselves in relation to it are reflections from elsewhere, too: they’re the product of historical, social, economic, and discursive forces circulating around the notion of region that have come together to give it shape. For them, reflections from elsewhere are processes by which they see themselves as others see them and by which they understand themselves in relation to the landscapes they inhabit. Reflections from elsewhere are also the ways that Portsmouth residents stage themselves for tourists and the ways in which students wonder how their families and old high school friends perceive them.

Commuter culture and “keeping ties” in Appalachian Ohio and among

Appalachian Ohioans involves relationships to place that are constantly in flux, continually being reconfigured and reinterpreted. Being here, being there, and being from there are important and deeply felt experiences that take time to sink in, shake off, and come to terms with.10 In following a mobile population, fieldwork becomes mobile too, and one begins to question what really stands still anyway. (Indeed, we should be skeptical of anything that appears or purports to stay put or be isolated, because movement, influence, and contingencies are inevitably lurking around the corner.) So, I take moral geographies on the road with me. Attempting to understand the students’ and communities’ travels and representations, I ultimately ended up looking at movements of

10 Indeed, even as a fieldworker, I found traveling back and forth between Portsmouth and Columbus disorienting. There were only a few minutes separating the two-lane road of US-23N and the larger freeways of I-270W and I-71N, where the Columbus skyline would come into view. In that short distance I felt the sharp distance between places. 13

others into and out of communities in Appalachian Ohio—what one might at times call

“the new missionaries”: people who coordinate education access tours and outreach programs to Appalachia. But the students are missionaries too (or, perhaps instead, the new migrants), bringing their histories and sentiments with them and being called upon to perform themselves.

Other scholars have similarly focused on the road as a central metaphor for understanding moral geographies. Dimitris Dalakoglou examined the Kakavijë-

Gjirokastër road on the Albania-Greece border, showing how “road stories” (144) reveal the political meanings attached to borders. Jane Hill’s sociolinguistic analysis of Don

Gabriel’s narration of his son’s murder along the entroque examined how individuals construct moral geographies that position people, culture, landscape, and technology along moral axes. And, for Kathleen Stewart, “the haunting experiences and memories of

West Virginians—those impacts and remainders storied as a space on the side of the road” destabilize the narrative of national progress (90).

The saying, “Readin’, writing,’ and Route 23” takes on new meaning, though, in the twenty-first century when a college education, rather than manufacturing jobs, are the ultimate goal of migration and two-hour commutes. The students I worked with are different kinds of travelers, and the road served as a highway for traveling back and forth, rather than a space for sitting, watching, and remembering. Instead of staying put, they were increasingly mobile. For one permanent resident in Portsmouth, for instance, roads were critical connectors to resources, as he and his family traveled semi-regularly to either or Columbus to gain access to a greater variety of grocery options, such

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as Whole Foods.11 While the limited grocery options in town reflect the economic circumstances of the city, the Portsmouth family exemplifies travel as a form of adaptation to gain access to otherwise unavailable goods. Unlike the sidelined onlooker in Stewart’s road metaphor, the students and residents I spoke with used the road as a literal and metaphoric resource to travel back and forth, transporting goods, ideas, and relationships across geographic space. Stewart’s roads are spaces to pause and remember whereas residents’ and students’ roads serve as ways to stay connected across distance, what they call “keeping ties.”

Interestingly (and tellingly), I have only the most ephemeral material about students’ and residents’ road stories. For the students, they are drives they make alone during the holidays and summertime, or if someone is sick. For residents, it’s a Friday trip to the Whole Foods in Cincinnati. I typically wasn’t around for these trips, nor did I feel comfortable asking to be a part of them. They are trips that happen, but they almost always happen without me, and they’re difficult for people to recall with much detail.

Appalachian Project research trips were my main entrance into this space: two-hour drives to the region with the students in tow, sleeping, cracking jokes, telling us about their relationships and classes. And then, as we got closer and the landscape looked more familiar, there were local stories, locations of buildings, and talk of various landmarks.

These were the conversations that weren’t supposed to be recorded, so they hang in the air now and are only sometimes able to be recalled. Road stories are at the center of the experience that this dissertation attempts to explain, and yet they are the least concrete

11 Another couple in McArthur, Vinton County, Ohio traveled two-hours in opposite directions each day to get to work in Columbus and over the river in Kentucky. 15

part of it. They’re the empty center that holds it all together. It’s all the things and the thoughts that happen in transit, when all you can do is think, listen, talk, and feel.

Traveling Out of Bounds: Home, Place, and Critical Regionalism

A guy died and went to heaven. St. Peter was showing him around, and

the guy thought it was wonderful. They went around the corner, and there

was a bunch of people in chains, and the guy asked St. Peter why in the

world these people were chained. St. Peter replied, ‘That’s a bunch of

hillbillies and every Friday at 5 p.m., they want to head home for the

weekend! –Excerpt from “Hillbilly Jokes” in Encyclopedia of Appalachia

Home quickly emerged as a central place and concept of investigation, perhaps because of the work of The Appalachian Project, a research initiative I have been involved with since 2011.12 I’m not sure how much the students talked about home before being involved in The Appalachian Project, but I do know that being a part of the project allowed them a space to talk about it in an academic context, which was a new experience for them. Previous to the project, they at least enacted home, or “keeping ties,” through their regular (even if waning) trips to visit family in their home counties. In

12 I describe The Appalachian Project in more detail in the section of the introduction titled “Fieldwork Methodology.” Interestingly, The Appalachian Project and Buckeyes for Appalachia formed simultaneously but grew separately, having little intersection, perhaps because the former is a research initiative while the latter is a student organization. I was involved with Buckeyes for Appalachia early on but felt that my age and graduate student status was an obstacle to belonging. Since the Appalachian Project had mentorship roles built in for staff and graduate students, it was much easier to join and feel comfortable as a contributing member. 16

his essay for Kentucky.com, “A Child of Appalachia No Longer Knows, As an Adult,

Whether He Still Belongs,” Graham Shelby refers to the roads traversed between his distant homes as “umbilical highway[s]” that constantly tug him back home. The umbilical metaphor gets back to the anecdotes that opened this introduction: students from Appalachian Ohio counties relate to home in both connected and strained ways.

This ambivalent relationship has little space for articulation or mediation at Ohio State

University, the institution from which many of these students will take their permanent leave from the region (or semi-permanent, if they return later in life).

Throughout the twentieth century, Appalachians have migrated to new areas in search of jobs and found ways to “keep ties” to home.13 Reunions, homecomings, and weekend trips are excellent instances of this phenomenon. In the early 1900s, Akron, the

“rubber capital of the world” also came to be known as the “capital of West ,” as

Appalachians migrated to work in tire factories (Johnson 110).14 At the time, factory owners preferred Appalachian migrants over European immigrants because they already spoke the language and were thought to be staunchly independent and thus anti-union, so during the early-to-middle 20th Century, manufacturers in Ohio heavily recruited from neighboring states such as , Kentucky and Tennessee (Johnson 110).

Automotive plants in Columbus and Toledo “drew Appalachians living in the hills of eastern Kentucky and Tennessee and western West Virginia up Route 23. They had a saying: if you wanted to make yourself and yours a better life than you could down home,

13 Harriette Simpson Arnow famously wrote about Gertie Nevel’s journey from rural Kentucky to industrialized Detroit in her 1954 novel The Dollmaker. 14 Johnson writes about how West Virginians worked and lived in Akron. Some stayed only long enough to purchase land and a house back home while others stayed for decades. Sometimes men would move to Akron without their families because it was too expensive to live there or there were housing shortages. 17

you’d better get some readin’ and writin,’ and then get up Route 23” (De Stefano 141).

Peggy Calestro states in her entry on “Columbus, Ohio” for the Encyclopedia of

Appalachia that

First-generation migrants entered urban life in three major Columbus

enclaves: the South Side (Southside), the Near North Side (formerly

Flytown, later ), and the Near West Side (known as the

Bottoms or Franklinton). These neighborhoods provided proximity to

relatives who had arrived earlier, to factory jobs, and to low-income rental

housing. From these neighborhoods migrants frequently journeyed back

down Route 23 to see their friends and families, creating Friday and

Sunday traffic jams on bridges connecting Ohio with West Virginia and

Kentucky. (365)

Cincinnati, , Dayton, Hamilton, and Portsmouth were also popular Ohio destinations for Appalachian migrants seeking factory work throughout the twentieth century.15 Along with Steven Howe, Robert Ludke, and Eric Rademacher, Philip

Obermiller has been using U.S. Census data to analyze Appalachian migration (especially that of Urban Appalachians in Cincinnati) throughout the second half of the 20th century and on through the 21st century, noting the ways that seeking work and education have defined Appalachian life just as much as more rooted notions of family and place.16

15 See entries for each of these cities in the Encyclopedia of Appalachia. 16 See, for instance, Appalachian Migration Patterns, 1975-1980 and 1985-1990 (2000), “New Paths and Patterns of Appalachian Migration, 1975-1990” (2001), “Moving Mountains: Appalachian Migration Patterns, 1995-2000” (2004), and “Demographic Change in Appalachia: A Tentative Analysis” (2012). 18

During World War I and World War II major waves of Appalachians from the south and east came to work in Ohio’s industrial cities. Labor shortages were exacerbated by immigration restrictions, leading labor recruiters to look closer to home. George

Knepper, author of Ohio and Its People, explains,

The Industrial Commission was unable to provide the tens of thousands of

new workers, so company recruiters ran ads in newspapers and scoured

the hills and valleys of Appalachia seeking hardscrabble farmers,

unemployed miners, and other available workers to send to the ‘gum

mills’ of Akron. (332)17

The production demands of war opened up jobs for Southerners (both White and African

American18), including Appalachians.19 Women, retirees, men disqualified for the draft, and persons with disabilities were also recruited to help in the factories (Knepper 371).

Knepper cites Jack T. Kirby’s estimate that “by 1950 about 568,000 or 7.2 percent of the state’s population, came from the southern highlands” (372). Southern Ohioans and West

Virginians made their way to cities in northeastern Ohio and residents of Appalachian

17 Summit County, where the city of Akron is located, is not in the ARC jurisdiction but, as I argue in the introduction, these federal designations are contested geographic, political, and cultural categories. 18 African Americans from the South had a racialized experience of migration. Knepper explains, “many blacks were confined to menial jobs until the need was so acute that the more fortunate moved into semiskilled and skilled positions” (371). Linkon and Russo’s analysis of work and landscape in Youngstown explores this topic further by commenting on the racial segregation of the city landscape (53, 65, 95) and the ways in which segregation among racial and national groups in the workplace strategically kept laborers from unionizing (95). 19 In his contribution to “Major Turning Points: Rethinking Appalachian Migration,” Roger Guy estimates that about a quarter of Southern White migrants came from the Appalachian region. Guy argues that while current trends in Sociology favor an emphasis on a generalized “Southern White migrant” integration experience, which was quite successful, Southern Appalachians actually “struggled alongside other disadvantaged groups in almost exactly the way that Appalachian-focused literature has led us to believe they did” (170). 19

Ohio migrated within the state to industrial cities such as Hamilton, Middletown,

Cincinnati, Dayton, and Columbus to find work (Knepper 372).

The decline of the manufacturing industry in Appalachian Ohio in the past 60

(and especially the past 30) years has greatly impacted not only job opportunities in the area, but also the ways in which young people can envision themselves at home or relate to it from afar. The decline of the coal industry in Central Appalachia is having a similar effect, and residents are grappling with questions of how to remake and redefine their economies, cultures, and lives.20 While extraction and manufacturing industries were environmentally detrimental to the region and often exploited local labor, they also provided opportunities to make a living at home. Anchor economies provide some measure of continuity at the same time that they attract fluctuating labor pools and influence national and international migration patterns.21 What home looks like—it’s economic, social, and geographical history, present, and future—greatly influences how young people relate to it.

Over the past 50 years, folklorists have challenged the concept of the folk group as a homogeneous, insular concept confined to a single location in time and space.

Instead, folk groups have ben understood as constructed, performed, contested, and constantly negotiated. Richard Bauman argues in “Differential Identity and the Social

Base of Folklore” that “difference of identity, not necessarily sharing, can be at the base of folklore performance” (45). His example of how difference is performed in regional contexts is well suited to the topic of this dissertation:

20 See the SOAR “Final Report to the Region” (2013). 21 The recent hydraulic frackturing (“fracking”) boom in Appalachian Ohio is repeating the boom-and-bust extraction cycle in the 21st century. 20

In trying to come to terms with the essence of American frontier humor,

[Mody] Boatright suggests that many of its special forms and

characteristics may be explained as a reaction of the frontiersman to the

exaggerated and distorted view of the frontier and its people held by

easterners and other ‘civilized’ outsiders. The westerners took over the

stereotypes and built them into extravagant burlesques to be turned back

on the credulous and opinionated outsiders. (46-47)

This same type of artful, reflective, and satirical performance is prominent in

Appalachian humor and tricksterism,22 and I have spent some time analyzing the sophisticated narrative techniques that Harriette Simpson Arnow employs in her short story “The Goat Who Was a Cow” to explore the power dynamics at play in such mirroring-style performance-critiques wherein the outsider is engaged at a distance because she can only interact with the local that she herself has imagined. These performance-critiques, or what is called “deviling the opponent,”23 as well as the personal experience narratives and commemorative displays that I discuss in later chapters, are reflections from elsewhere24 —the idea that self-fashioning is responsive to the expectations of others.

Amy Shuman’s groundbreaking article “Dismantling Local Culture” argued that

“local culture is always marked and always part of a larger-than-local context” (345). An

22 Pranks pulled on outsiders or lost wanderers, and jokes told about such interactions, often emphasize the ways that Appalachians get the last laugh by feigning ignorance. In that way, reflecting back the expectations of the outsider makes the outsider the butt of the joke. Jack Tales also highlight the wit of a less socially, economically, or physically powerful character (with the help of some friends and magic, of course) as the source of ultimate power. 23 Herb E. Smith quoted in Katherine Kelleher-Sohn’s Whistlin’ and Crowin Women of Appalachia (2). 24 I am indebted to Amy Shuman for this concept and phrasing. 21

anti-essentialist view of the local, she argues, must engage the concept as a constructed cultural category that operates in a system of value. Viewing local knowledge as a natural, homogeneous, closed category “obfuscates the politics of culture” (349). Just four years later, James Clifford’s essay on “Travel Culture” in Routes: Travel and

Translation in the Late Twentieth Century asked what a comparative emphasis on travel might illuminate in studies of culture. Proposing “a view of human location as constituted by displacement as much as by stasis” (2), Clifford offered up the hotel as a potential metaphor for understanding “traveling-in-dwelling, dwelling-in-traveling” (36), though he was conflicted about the affordances and limitations of the hotel as the model chronotope since it has been primarily reserved for those in positions of power (31-39).25

I offer up the road as an alternative metaphor and chronotope for thinking about the ways that people and groups both travel and stay connected. For both Shuman and Clifford, influence, dispersal, and temporary connections are recognized as key modes of experience that require scholarly attention, and, indeed, are moral imperatives of an anti- essentialist methodology.26

Indeed, places like Appalachian Ohio and situations like Appalachian Ohioans attending Ohio State University confound strict notions of identity, place, and region.

Appalachian Ohioans in Columbus (or in Cincinnati, Dayton, and generally outside of the

25 “The hotel image suggests an older form of gentlemanly occidental travel, when home and abroad, city and country, East and West, metropole and antipodes, were more clearly fixed. Indeed, the marking of ‘travel by gender, class, race, and culture is all too clear” (31). 26 Folklorist Dorothy Noyes’ recent chapter on “The Social Base of Folklore” surveys the ways that folklorists have tried to define and make sense of the relationship between “bodies of knowledge and groups of people” and “cultural forms and social structures” (13). She notes how folklorists have increasingly pushed against natural and bounded concepts of folk, community, and group, and recognized the many ways that difference, conflict, competition, and boundary-marking drives this relationship (14, 22). 22

already-contested ARC-defined region) challenge stable notions of what it means to be

Appalachian and force us to recognize a range of experiences that push the boundaries of regional belonging. As the following chapters will show, it is often in experiencing change, contrast, and difference (whether at home or elsewhere) that one finds opportunities to define oneself through performance. Debra Moddelmog, founder of the

Sexuality Studies program at Ohio State, once said something very powerful at an event about in/visible identities: “We are all more complicated than the identities we are given.” Her remark spoke volumes in its own context and continued to impact me as I thought about the ways students related to their homes. Their complicated relationships to the homes they came from, the ones they inhabit, and the ones they will come to know

(and (re)visit) are evidence of the ways that experiences confound bounded notions of group, region, identity, community, and place, as all of our lives do.

Interrogating Home

Drawing on scholarship and personal experience, Ruth Behar’s “Folklore and the

Search for Home” argues for a folkloristics of home that acknowledges and engages

“multiple affiliations”27:

To acknowledge that identities and cultures are mixed, impure,

miscegenated in complex and ever changing ways is truly revolutionary

for our scholarship…How are we to go beyond traditional research that

unwittingly continues to draw borderlines around peoples and

27 Behar borrows this phrase from Amin Maalouf’s In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong (1996) (Behar 263). 23

communities, which, now more than ever, need to be seen as entangled

with one another? (263-264)

Behar shows how home and identity are intertwined concepts that are continually shifting and being negotiated. For example, she contrasts how she had to conceal her Jewish identity while growing up in Catholic-dominated Cuba with how, years later, she was ridiculed for claiming Latina identity (because she is Jewish) to a class of predominately

Latina and Chicana students. In examining the multi-placed, multi-positioned history of

Jews, she came to see identity and home as constantly fluctuating depending on the context of interpretation.

Michael Ann Williams takes a more geographically and architecturally rooted approach to the concept in Homeplace: The Social Use and Meaning of the Folk

Dwelling in Southwestern North Carolina (1991). Williams explains that she was interested to learn about “folk buildings through the testimony of individual experience” and to “examine the extent to which the use and meaning of dwellings are revealed in physical form” (2-3). In her chapter titled “Abandonment and the ‘Old Homeplace,” she investigates the way social and economic changes in the mid-to-late twentieth century impacted buildings and the ways in which residents relate to them. “Ambivalence,” she writes, “is not surprising under such circumstances” (116). Experiences of the homeplace vary: some people leave their homes to seek other places; some dwellings are demolished for firewood; some families keep the dwelling, using it as storage or a reunion site; still, others travel to the site where home structures once stood. Family inheritance patterns, changes in building materials and the lifespan of a home, work opportunities, and

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migration all affected the dwelling landscape in southwestern North Carolina. In

Appalachian Ohio, remnants, ruins, rebuildings, and absences are also important symbols of how residents relate to the landscape and how the local landscape has been affected by national and global economic trends. As we will see in chapters 1 and 3, the burning fires of steel mills and the physical and economic magnitude of factories as major employers in small cities still looms large in public memory and is attached to physical locations.

Critical geographers have also attended to notions of home, interrogating the ways in which attention to the concept has privileged a romanticized notion of home as a space of harmony and lack of social politics. Katherine Brickell’s “‘Mapping’ and ‘Doing’

Critical Geographies of Home,” explains how critical geographies of home reveal the domestic as an already political site that can be experienced in differentially complex ways. She charts the concept of home in geography over the past few decades:

Once cast as a uniform space of safety and familiarity, the home is now

established as a far more problematic entity across the social sciences.

Building on the work of humanistic geographers writing in the 1970s and

1980s, the home was hailed in the geographical canon as a site of

authenticity and experience, provisioning a sense of place and belonging

in an increasingly alienating world (Moore, 2000)…As one of the most

idealized sites of human existence, the home became a, if not the,

metaphor for experiences of joy and protection that conspired to produce a

normative association between home and positivity (Giuliana and

Feldman, 1993; Moore, 2000; Short, 2006). Such deterministic

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associations between home and comfort led David Sibley (1995: 93) to

bemoan the ‘benign’ approach taken by studies of domestic environments

in a world which was actually replete with tension and conflict. (225)

Home is a complex concept and place: it is a site of conflict; it reflects the politics of the world; and, most of all, home is a place to which we may not want to return. Students from Appalachian Ohio attending Ohio State are grappling with their multiple relationships with the places and people they grew up with and trying to understand how their earlier experiences relate to their current college experiences in Columbus.

Post-industrial Appalachian Ohio?

There are at least two points of tension that arise when presenting the topic of post-industrial Appalachian Ohio. The first, which might not immediately be apparent to those outside of Appalachian Studies, is how the categories of Appalachia and Ohio come together. “Appalachian Ohio” is a contested category, and research conducted with students living outside the region is especially sensitive. At both the 2013 and 2014

Appalachian Studies Association conferences, for example, The Appalachian Project team was openly scrutinized for being an initiative operating outside of what are considered regional boundaries. During a group discussion for emerging youth leaders in

Central Appalachia in 2013, one facilitator challenged the inclusion of Ohio counties in the ARC-defined region, stating that such inclusions were merely “political.”28 (She was

28 This interaction encouraged me to better understand the history of county inclusion in the ARC’s definition of the region. I found that the original Report by the President’s Appalachian Regional Commission in 1964 included 20 counties in Ohio and 340 total for the region. Today, 32 counties in Ohio are designated as Appalachian and the region spans 420 counties. So, while Ohio’s Appalachia has indeed 26

likely referring to the additions of Ashtabula, Mahoning, and Trumbull counties to the

ARC jurisdiction in 2008.29) Then in 2014, a group of retired faculty from Ohio

University told us point blank that they attended our panel because they were skeptical about what Ohio State University would have to say about Appalachian Ohio. In the first scenario, Ohio’s inclusion in the category of Appalachia or Central Appalachia is challenged, whereas in the second scenario Appalachian Ohio is a given category but our ability to speak from or about it was challenged. Both scenarios are much more complicated than what I can delve into here, but they nicely illustrate the ways that

Appalachian identity and region are constructed categories whose meanings shift based on the audience being addressed.

Critical geographer Eugene McCann argues that maps “are part of a mythologizing process” that draws “attention to certain features of a place while eliding others…This naturalizing discourse constructs maps as neutral and innocent windows on

‘reality’ rather than contingent and arbitrary products of social relations” (87). Like

Shuman’s local, he argues that maps can conceal their constructedness and instrumentality. Focusing on the ways that Appalachians live, work, play, travel, and have relationships outside the governmentally-defined or individually-defined region allows us to consider the ways in which Appalachia has been and continues to be constructed by individuals and groups operating in a system of power.

grown, the rest of ARC’s designation of the region has grown along with it. Some Appalachian scholars and activists call the ARC designations a map of poverty (as opposed to a cultural map of “Appalachianness”), and that’s certainly part of what’s going on with the expansion of the region, though I don’t think that fully encompasses the reasoning behind it. 29 These northeastern post-industrial Ohio counties lobbied for ARC recognition on the basis of economic need rather than cultural continuity, a point which, again, raises questions about who gets to define what it means to be Appalachian. (See Auster and Gatta.) 27

The second point of tension arises with the combination of (post)industrial and

Appalachia. When we think of Appalachia we think rural, with the hollow as the epitome of isolation, ruggedness, independence, and all those other things we’ve come to associate with the region. When we think of post-industrial cities (or the “rust belt”), we turn to places like Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh—large industrial cities whose decline has come to symbolize the rise and fall of industrialization and the American

Dream for a particular section of the country. We may forget (or didn’t know) that places like Youngstown, Steubenville, and Portsmouth, Ohio also participated in the national conversation about deindustrialization.

Post-industrial Appalachian Ohio eludes concrete definition: it’s both small cities and rural areas; it’s a place where people commute up to two hours in order to stay put; it’s a combination of brain drain and youth who “just stayed”; it’s meth, heroine, and human trafficking as well as America’s nostalgic heartland—you know, barn quilts and canned vegetables. Sometimes it is too many things, and yet it is never quite enough either. It’s an object of both pity and of pride. Most importantly, it’s a place where people live, and for that reason, a concept with which we must grapple.

Educational Attainment and Brain Drain in (Appalachian) Ohio

Many people, groups, and research reports (my own research included) have a general sense about what high school graduates from Appalachian Ohio do after they graduate, but these trends require further investigation. In many reports on education, brain drain is either stated as a “given” with little explanatory detail or explained through

28

statistics at a remove, such as the amount of people with graduate degrees residing in a given county. This is perhaps explained by the fact that brain drain can be difficult to track and interpret, since young, single, college-educated people are the most mobile population throughout the nation (McGuire 4). Further, much of the educational efforts in

Appalachian Ohio are geared toward college access and, in some cases, retention and graduation rates, rather than post-baccalaureate paths.

Analysts and policy makers talk of the need to create more jobs in the region that require higher education, and scholars such as the authors of Hollowing Out the Middle have discussed the barriers that exist for those returning to areas of economic transition.

But these aspects of research on brain drain—the narrative, economic, educational, and statistical—don’t typically overlap in the ways that one would hope, so information about

Appalachian Ohio graduates remains sparse. One can find research on Ohio and

Appalachian graduates and brain drain affecting either the state or the region, but little data exists specifically on students from Appalachian Ohio. This dissertation doesn’t address that problem directly, but it does give us some more insight into the narrative positionings that necessarily impact efforts to increase return rates in the region.

Some of the intersecting issues affecting educational trends in the state of Ohio and the region of Appalachian Ohio are students’ desires to obtain higher education locally, the particularly high cost of education within the state, the number of lower- skilled work available just out of high school, and the lack of jobs in the state that match up with higher education degrees being conferred. Writing in 2010 for The National

29

Center for Public Policy and Higher Education about Ohio’s brain drain and statewide efforts to curb it, Jon Marcus noted the challenge legislators faced:

Even though Ohio produces more bachelor’s degrees per capita than the

national average, it ranks a distant 36th in the proportion of adults with at

least an associate’s degree, 35th in the proportion with a bachelor’s degree

or higher, and 26th in the proportion with a graduate degree. That’s

because…nearly two-thirds of graduate—and half of those with graduate

and processional degrees—leave the state…

Even before the current economic recession, manufacturing-dependent

Ohio lost 236,000 jobs between 2000 and 2007, the sharpest decline in any

state since the Great Depression. Since then, as the recession took hold,

Ohio has seen another 13.5 percent of its manufacturing jobs disappear,

compared to the national average of 9.5%. Of the top ten American cities

with falling populations, three are in Ohio. (181)

The 2014 Ohio Board of Regents report on “In-State Retention and Salary Analysis of

Spring Graduates, 2008-2012” shows that “79% of graduates worked in Ohio or attended an Ohio public college or university in 2012-2013,” but that these retention rates decreased as levels of education increased, such that “sixty percent of professional practice doctoral degree recipients and 56% of research/scholarship doctoral degree recipients were retained in Ohio” (1). Overall, the higher the degree an Ohio resident gets, the more difficult it will be for the state to retain her.

30

A 2004 report of the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) titled

“Development and Progress of the Appalachian Higher Education Network” (AHEN) describes how in 1998 the ARC began developing the AHEN with a mission of increasing post-secondary education for Appalachians right out of high school. The report explains that the college-going rate of high school graduates is between 35-55% in

Appalachia compared to 63.3% nationwide (Schwartz i). Though the AHEN focused on finding ways to increase college attendance in Appalachia and to understand the barriers to access and success, Schwartz admits in his executive summary, “we do not know what happens to students after they enter college” (Schwartz ii). Brain drain, the report shows, is still an under-researched topic, and it remains unclear how programs like AHEN impact student return rates after college30 (Schwartz ii, 17).

The Ohio Appalachian Center for Higher Education and ’s

Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs conducted surveys with high school seniors in 1992 and 2008 to get a sense of students’ post-graduation plans and access to higher education. The results of the study were published as “Access & Success—

Appalachian Ohio.” They found that the students they interviewed predominantly plan to attend college near home or within Ohio:

Almost half of the students who planned to continue their education

indicated that they planned to attend a college close to their home. Of the

2008 sample, 47 percent indicated that they planned to attend an Ohio

30 Interestingly, the report states that “[a]necdotal data from high schools in Ohio…appears to show that those who attend college do not appear to leave the Region at higher rates than their peers who do not attend college. In other words, whether they go to college or not, it appears that some young people will leave the region and others will stay” (17). 31

college within fifty miles of home. Another 25 percent indicated plans to

attend a college in Ohio, but farther than 50 miles from home. Eleven

percent expressed plans to attend college in a neighboring state, and

another 3 percent planned to attend in some other state. (1)

While brain drain is very much a hot topic in the region, this data shows that students actually stick relatively close to home after high school. Research on Appalachian Ohio college students shows a tension between efforts to increase college access and decreasing brain drain, as well as a tension between the statement that brain drain is a problem and the quote above that suggests that leaving rates are about the same regardless of educational attainment.

A couple of bullet points from the executive summary of the Urban Affairs

Center’s 2006 report, “Brain Drain in Ohio: Observations and Summaries with Particular

Reference to ,” further complicates the picture:

 Brain drain is not as common in [Ohio] and [northwest Ohio] as is generally believed. Only about 20% of 2000-2003 graduates left the state—a relatively low percentage.  Many who leave relocate to adjacent states, not to ‘cool cities’ or the sunbelt.  Most graduates who stay in Ohio for more than 3 years after graduating, remain for two decades. Roughly 60% of the graduates of the state-wide and of the northwest Ohio 1980 cohort are still located in Ohio, and roughly 70% of all 1980-2003 graduates are located in Ohio.  There is a significant ‘brain drain’ indicated where alumni with advanced degrees (Masters, Doctorates, etc.) from both our state-wide and northwest Ohio samples disproportionately exit the state. (2)

Rather than brain drain being the problem, the report argues that having an “under- educated workforce and insufficient demand by the business community for well- 32

educated workers” decreases the number of advanced degree holders in Ohio (2). Young

Ohioans, the report shows, are moving from urban and rural areas to metropolitan, suburban, and exurban areas within the state (5). This speaks more specifically to the ways that Appalachian Ohio is affected by brain drain and how young people increasingly travel in order to stay connected to home and family.

In addition to gaining a better understanding of post-high school trends, we need more research about college educational attainment among (and post-graduation job opportunities for) Appalachian Ohioans. While programs exist to help Appalachian

Ohioans get to college after high school, more information is needed about how

Appalachian students fare once they arrive at college, how they relate to home throughout their college years, and what they plan to do after graduation. A major motivator for understanding the behaviors of this group is to comprehend the nature and extent of the region’s “brain drain” and what discursive as well as material circumstances keep students from Appalachian Ohio from either wanting to or being able to return home after graduation.

Interestingly, Ohio and the Appalachian region experience high population return rates slightly later in life when people think about settling down and then retiring— typically after their highest income-earning years. According to the Foundation for

Appalachian Ohio, in 2013, the 20-24-year old population in the region was 93% of that of the state of Ohio and 87% relative to the US. This percentage drops to 90% and 85%, respectively, for 25-29-year olds, and then jumps back up to 97% and 89% for 30-34-year olds. Overall, the amount of college- and new-professional-aged Appalachian Ohioans is

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between 3%-10% below Ohio levels and 11%-15% below US levels (7). Appalachian

Ohioans often return home later in life because they value the pace of life in small cities and towns.

Statistics about Appalachian Ohio brain drain show that young people who seek higher education (especially those seeking advanced degrees) leave the region (though not necessarily the state) to attend college and to seek employment opportunities after graduation, but they end up returning to the region later in life, though a majority of

Appalachian Ohioans stick close to home throughout their most financially productive years. So far, the students that I’ve worked with show the same early patterns, with more than half of them attending Master’s programs and taking jobs in-state or in a neighboring state. Even Anne, who worked in Bulgaria for a couple of years (notably, in a region with similar issues as Appalachia), has returned to Ohio. Staying in contact with students over the course of their lives will give us a deeper sense of the ways that college graduates manage their relationships with home in the post-industrial economy.

My Journey to the Dissertation

In 2001, when I graduated high school at the age of 17, I chose to attend a nearby state college rather than moving away. Months earlier I had toured California State

University San Francisco with my friend Carrie and, despite my enthusiasm beforehand, immediately decided that it wasn’t for me. Instead, attended California State University

San Bernardino, just 20 minutes away from home. Perhaps it was that San Francisco was too large a jump for me from the small suburb I grew up in, or maybe I just

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wasn’t ready to fly the coop. I remember completing a writing assignment shortly after that decision had been made, and titling it “Keeping Home.” It was about how I was staying home in Rancho Cucamonga while others were leaving to attend college elsewhere. The story gave my staying purpose. I was going to be their connection to

Rancho Cucamonga; I would be the continuity between their new and old homes. When they came back to visit I could catch them up on the gossip and goings on. Home would be ready and waiting for them when they returned, and so would I.

Six years later I left my home city of Rancho Cucamonga to pursue a graduate degree at Ohio State University, over half way across the country. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel the pang of loss until the moment we turned the corner at Taupe St—the street I’d lived on my whole life—and made a right on Victoria. It was at that moment that I realized that I didn’t know when I’d make those turns in the other direction, making two lefts instead of two rights. I didn’t know when I’d see my folks again, and the rest of my life seemed like this long path that may or may not be punctuated by seeing my family, the people whose faces I’d looked upon almost every day for 24 years. So I experienced both staying and leaving at different points in my life, and I can understand what it feels like to be on either side of the move.

Home is a vibrant, fleshed idea, almost something I can wholly feel by just thinking about it. It’s sitting on a blanket on the lawn in Red Hill Park on a summer afternoon with my brother, mother and father with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken waiting for dusk when the outdoor movie will start. It’s bike rides and walks down Haven

Avenue to rent a movie at Longs Drugs. It’s the edge of the metal railing at the top of the

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stairs that had to be re-welded into place, and the way we always hang our shower towels on the second floor banister. It’s my name spelled out in wooden block letters on my bedroom door with the little flowers adorning it. (Dad tried to take them off one day but I guess they’re just stuck forever.) It’s my mother’s side of the bed and my father’s side of the bed. It’s everything being painfully different and everything being painfully the same.

It’s way too many memories and never enough time to digest them. I miss it every day and know that I can never go back to how it was before I left because the reality of experience could never live up to how I feel and think about home now.

I didn’t stay home in the end. I went to Ohio and made a life for myself. First it was graduate school, and then a job kept me here. Perhaps my research stems from my longing for home—for my family more than California, but California is part of it, too— but my personal perspective keeps me from romanticizing the notion of staying home because I understand at least some of the reasons to leave, even if the distance is sometimes almost too painful to bear. My point here is that, although my research focuses on finding ways to create opportunities for young people to stay home, I didn’t choose that for myself even though I could have.

I don’t think that staying home is the only option: staying home shouldn’t be the only option just as much as leaving shouldn’t be the only option. Unfortunately, that is not what I see happening in Appalachian Ohio. College students I spoke to were encouraged to leave from an early age and their success in life was judged along these same standards. They are told that they must leave their homes if they want to make a life for themselves beyond working in low-paying retail industries. These messages divide

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youth populations into the successful individuals who “got out” versus those who “just stayed,” regardless of the reasons, resources, and sentiments guiding each person’s choices and options. This divide constructs a limited notion of success for young people, especially for those who decide to stay in their hometowns.

In a region where place, family, and environment are important categories of meaning and significance, and where cooperation regularly makes up for a lack of resources, the option to stay home is critical for the wellbeing of both individuals and communities. Discourses of failure that surround choices to remain at home not only limit the amount of people who remain but also affect the ways that people feel when they do make the decision to stay.

Fieldwork Methodology

The Appalachian Project

I began fieldwork for my dissertation in autumn 2011 when I joined a project being headed up by Patricia Cunningham that was, at the time, being run through the

International Poverty Solutions Collaborative.31 According to the webpage for The

Appalachian Project on the Center for Folklore Studies website, the group is a mixed- methods, interdisciplinary team of faculty, staff, and graduate and undergraduate students dedicated to understanding the educational routes of young people in the 32 Appalachian

31 IPSC disbanded later that year, which made it imperative that the Appalachian Project seek either university or outside funding. In summer of 2012, I began my new job as Assistant Director of the Center for Folklore Studies and worked along with Dr. Dorothy Noyes to incorporate the work of the Appalachian Project (including grant-writing) into my new position and the outreach mission of CFS. 37

counties of Ohio. The AP team takes a predominately narrative approach to data collection, relying on quantitative data for supporting and complicating information. The team proceeds from the assumption that listening to the personal reflections of the community will provide a fuller picture of the issues affecting the region and lead to new findings to assist recovery.

The project was, in part, created in response to the Executive Summary of the

Ohio University “Access and Success—Appalachian Ohio” study, which found that students from Appalachian Ohio did not lack the motivation to attend college, but rather experienced problems such as “lack of finances, lack of financial aid information, lack of information regarding college, want [of] immediate income, poor grades, and not

[feeling] smart enough” (1-2). Our AP team appreciated the thorough research of the

Voinovich School and the summary’s contribution to our own project, and were interested in fleshing out the details of the study in order to better understand the lived experiences—the on-the-ground circumstances and choices—that contributed to the findings of the study. In short, we wanted to talk to the students and community members, hear their stories, and learn about how they frame their own life situations. The

Appalachian Project page states that the group seeks to use interdisciplinary approaches to

 identify the choices Ohio Appalachian students make about post-secondary education  identify factors affecting Ohio Appalachian students’ decisions and/or readiness to obtain post-secondary education  understand Ohio Appalachian students’ strategies for negotiating their college experiences

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 produce recommendations for addressing the barriers and challenges that students face, and work toward creating a sustainable educational and economic atmosphere in Appalachian Ohio  create a conversation at Ohio State and beyond about the issues Ohio Appalachian students and the region face

There are three major aspects of the project:

1. Initial background scholarly research on Appalachian Ohio counties, focusing especially on educational resources and reports, economic trends and changes, and available social services 2. Visits to Ohio Appalachian counties wherein we conducted video interviews with residents, educators, civic leaders, business owners, and others about the factors affecting the ways that students get to college 3. Peer interviews between current Ohio State University students from Appalachian Ohio counties in which they discuss their routes to Ohio State and how they manage their relationships with home once they are on campus

The team has conducted over 15 site visit interviews to Appalachian Ohio counties, gathering data with an eye toward understanding the obstacles that students, teachers, legislators, and residents face when applying to, attending, and graduating from college. We looked at banners and posters in school hallways and picked up educational literature to better understand the messages students were being given about college.

In 2013, the Governor’s Office of Appalachia awarded the Appalachian Project

$15,000 to support expenses for personnel, video equipment, 8 site visits, publicity, and our presentation at the annual conference of the Appalachian Studies Association during the 2013-2014 year. Appointed by the Appalachian Regional Commission, the

Governor’s Office of Appalachia is “the advocate for Ohio’s Appalachian region,” and

“works to coordinate economic and community development and partnership endeavors to improve the lives of those living in the region.” In 2015, the team focused on conducting peer interviews with current Ohio State University students from the region,

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and during the 2015-2016 year the group will focus on setting up a peer mentorship program that will connect incoming freshmen and transfer students with third- and fourth-year students who have experience navigating campus and the city.

Appalachian Ohioans at Ohio State University

In the autumn 2011- spring 2015 year period, between 8.20% and 8.74% of Ohio

State’s students from Ohio came from the 32 counties that make up Appalachian Ohio, while the other 91.8 to 91.26% came from the other 56 Ohio counties, despite the fact that, according to 2010 U.S. Census information, the Appalachian Ohio region makes up over 36% of the geographical space of the state and represents 17.7% of the state’s population. The lower ratio of Appalachian Ohio enrollment at Ohio State, compared to enrollment numbers from the other 56 counties of the state, encouraged the AP team to investigate what Appalachian Ohio students were doing after high school, if not attending

Ohio State. Were they going to out-of-state schools? Attending non-Ohio State colleges, universities, community colleges, or vocational schools in Ohio? Were they pursuing careers that do not require college degrees? Were they getting jobs right out of college?

The table below shows that both enrollment numbers for Ohioans and Appalachian

Ohioans has been slowly decreasing over the past four years. Meanwhile, total Ohio State enrollment has been increasing, with more students coming from outside the state. This shift reflects the university’s increasing demands to support itself with less and less state funding, and thus the need to attract wealthier students from outside the state.

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Semester/Year Ohio State Ohio State % Ohio University University Enrollment from Enrollment from Enrollment from Appalachian Appalachian non-Appalachian Counties in Ohio at Counties of Ohio at Counties of Ohio at Ohio State Columbus Campus Columbus Campus University Columbus Campus SP2011 3,563 (3,013 37,208 8.74% undergraduate; 550 graduate) AU2011 3,716 (3,151 43,209 8.60% undergraduate; 565 graduate) SP2012 3,444 (2,900 37,352 8.44% undergraduate; 544 graduate) AU2012 3,519 (2,982 42,093 8.36% undergraduate; 537 graduate) SP2013 3,419 (2,872 37,882 8.28% undergraduate; 547 graduate) AU2013 3,487 (2,957 38,772 8.25% undergraduate; 530 graduate) SP2014 3,384 (2,838 37,291 8.32% undergraduate; 546 graduate) AU2014 3,485 (2,906 38,666 8.27% undergraduate; 552 graduate) SP2015 3,314 (2,779 37,114 8.20% undergraduate; 535 graduate) Table 1: Enrollment of students from Appalachian Ohio counties at Ohio State University, autumn 2011- spring 2015 32 33

32 Data provided from the Office of Enrollment Services at Ohio State University, Columbus. All numbers are for the Columbus campus location and do not reflect regional campus enrollment. 41

Dissertation Interviews

My dissertation research developed alongside the Appalachian Project, though my questions were slightly different. While the Appalachian Project was focused on barriers to access and success in higher education, I am concerned with the economic and physical landscapes of their home counties and how students structured their relationships to people and places. I include questions related to my research in

Appalachian Project interviews, but they are typically not the primary focus of discussion. I drew my interviewee pool from the Appalachian Project research team, and all of the students that I write about in the student chapter were volunteers or paid workers for the project.

Interview Contexts

During the 2012-2013 year, I conducted five initial interviews with undergraduate students, Brad, Dave, Jule, and Anne, and one Ohio State graduate, Jana, on campus at

Ohio State.34 Most of the interviews took place in my office with the exception of Dave, who I interviewed in Thompson Library at Ohio State and Jana, who I interviewed at her apartment in Upper Arlington, a neighborhood of Columbus about 15 minutes from campus. Additional interviews with Wren and Dana were conducted as exit interviews for The Appalachian Project in spring of 2014 in the Center for Folklore Studies

33 At this point, my data is restricted to Ohio State University’s main campus, but future research by The Appalachian Project will extend to include Ohio State regional campuses as well, as we have found that a number of Appalachian students transfer to main campus from regional campuses and community colleges. We are also interested in comparing the number of students who are attending Ohio State main and regional campuses from each of the 32 Appalachian Ohio counties. 34 All student names have been replaced with pseudonyms. 42

Archives. Each of the interviews lasted approximately one hour. Though I had a list of interview questions that I referenced during the interviews, I typically allowed the conversations to take their own course and would follow up on things the students said rather than adhere strictly to the list.

I saw these interviews as a way to talk to the students individually and to follow up on some of the things they had mentioned in more informal contexts like meetings and car rides while working with the Appalachian Project. Since I was hesitant to openly document informal conversations, I found the interviews helpful for doing close readings with an attention toward students’ positionings. Aspects of informal conversations have been incorporated throughout the dissertation and come through especially in the conclusion where I have compiled some post-graduation reflections from the students that came up in Facebook posts, coffee dates, emails, and text messages between myself and the students during the year following graduation.

The context of my conversations with the students no doubt influenced the distances articulated in the stories they tell about their past. Columbus is situated as a

“here” while their home counties are situated as a “there.” Historically, Appalachia has been discussed as a “there” with specific meanings: it’s a backwards there, a timeless there, a depraved there, an ignorant there, and the list goes on. Multiple scholars have researched, described, and analyzed the complex nature of Appalachia’s positioning in national and global contexts. Columbus and Ohio State, on the other hand, have different associations. Ohio State is not only the biggest university in the state but also in the nation. As a Research I institution, Ohio State is constantly on the cutting edge of new

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ideas and technologies. Students consider Columbus and Ohio State to be liberal spaces, especially when compared to their home counties. While their home counties have little to do and few resources, Columbus and Ohio State have an abundance of resources and activities. Talking about a home in Appalachian Ohio from the space of Columbus raises these already existent associations to the fore and the students’ positionings reflect the context in which they are considered and spoken. The authors of Rural Literacies, for instance, offer up three critical metaphors that are often applied to rural contexts: modernization, preservation, and abandonment (19-30). These same positionings can also be seen being enacted throughout Appalachian contexts. Metaphors of modernization, preservation and abandonment eventually set up a series of binary relationships unfavorable to rural and Appalachian residents (active/passive, dominant/subordinate, and mobile/stationary), the construction of which influence intellectual and spatial relations of persons.

I conducted interviews primarily with graduating seniors who were in the midst of a critical transitional life moment in which they were considering what to do next with their lives and whether the last few years of their education was going to propel them to that next step. It was a crucial moment for constructing and defining success. The students I interviewed were either nearing undergraduate graduation or had graduated in the past year (except for Jana, who had graduated a couple years earlier) so articulating what success looks like (and where it is located) was quite prominent in their minds.

Further, articulating it to me, a graduate student and staff member of the university, someone who is invested both monetarily and ideologically in the values of the

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institution, can provide an occasion to construct themselves as having gone through an educational conversion.

I considered how my data would be different had I conducted these interviews in the students’ home spaces. Realizing the impact of the context of the interviews I conducted (which I consider to be indicative of the context in which I interacted with the students as well as an important finding in and of itself), I am interested in continuing this research in students’ home counties. I’m interested in having students give me tours of their hometowns, chatting with their families, and getting to know them in their home spaces. I’m also interested in speaking with young people who have decided to stay in their home counties to understand their choices, experiences, responsibilities, and dreams.

This is not to say that this future research will help me tap into a more “real” experience of students’ lives, but rather that it provides a different perspective from which we can come to understand their experiences.

The subtitle of The Appalachian Project, Ohio is “How I Got to College,” which signals our interest in collecting stories about students’ trajectories toward Ohio State.

This emphasis, I think, also reflects in students’ stories about home. Though I was interviewing students for my dissertation—which is a separate, though highly related, endeavor—working on both projects conflated those interests as we sat and talked in

Ohio State spaces. The students I interviewed had already built a relationship with me through The Appalachian Project, particularly by going on county visits. We spent hours in vans together, interviewed people together, and had meals together. The Appalachian

Project was in the air, so to speak, as I interviewed students for my dissertation, and, in

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fact, my interviews with Wren and Dana were exit interviews for the Appalachian Project rather than for the dissertation.

Fieldwork in Portsmouth, Ohio

My fieldwork in Portsmouth, Ohio was conducted primarily over weekend visits, phone calls, and Skype dates. Connections with residents were made in short periods of time, over email, or by relying upon residents I already knew. Often, the individuals I wanted to interview in person also worked full-time jobs and, understandably, did not always have the ability to meet on the weekends. So, my fieldwork experience was not done in typical immersion-style, to say the least, but it gave me a unique perspective on travel culture that eventually led to the major framing of the dissertation and my engagement with fluid concepts of identity and place. I became used to making two-hour drives in each direction in order to create and maintain ties, and tacking back and forth between places helped me to better understand the students’ experiences.

I’ve been self-conscious about my fieldworker status because I’ve read many immersion-style ethnographies as part of my graduate education. I can’t help but feel that

I haven’t done enough and that I wasn’t as thoroughly connected as I needed to be to do a good job. Every time I popped in to Portsmouth for a weekend I was reminded of the vast amount of information I still didn’t have access to, the many people I had yet to speak with, and places I had yet to visit. But then I realized that my experience on the road— popping in an out for short periods of time—actually mirrored the ways that the students had come to relate to their home spaces. They, too, drove a couple hours every so often to

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visit home. And making that trip on a regular basis is a continual sign of investment that both they and I chose to make. So, I came to value what I could give and the ways my restrictions helped me to understand something new about travel culture.

Early on in my visits I learned about the Scioto County Memory Project hosted by the Portsmouth Public Library. Volunteering for the project meant that the interviews I conducted in the city would be held in a public repository that residents would have access to on a regular basis. I was excited to be able to find a way to use my research to contribute to a community resource. Not only that, it gave me a reason to talk to residents.

Going to Portsmouth wasn’t cheap. I spent around $250 per trip between gas, hotel, and food expenses. The money issue further constrained my already sparse fieldwork visits, so I applied for and received an Ohio State Critical Difference for

Women Grant for the January-June, 2014 period, which funded fieldwork visits for the next six months as well as my trip to the Appalachian Studies Association conference in

2014. With the knowledge that I would be able to afford to visit Portsmouth on a monthly basis, I was able to show residents that I was committed to returning. During our conversations, I could say that I would catch up with them again next month, and I could make notes about what and whom to revisit during the next visit.35

35 Sadly, my trips to Portsmouth pretty much halted (except for one trip back in October 2014 for a story booth project) after the grant money ran out and I focused my attention on finishing up the dissertation. My hope is that I can pick back up where I left off after graduation. 47

Descriptive Analysis & Limitations

The stories in this dissertation are from a small corpus of interviews conducted with Ohio State University students and community members in Portsmouth, Ohio. Their reflections do not speak for the whole region, let alone the diverse group of people in

Appalachian Ohio or at Ohio State. Part of respecting these stories is realizing that they are individual and partial as well as indicators of larger regional trends. In reading the reflections that follow, we must also leave room for other perspectives and experiences, to hear other stories. We must consider the positional context of the people I interviewed and how students who have chosen to stay home or have needed to stay home occupy different positions and have different stories to tell about their relationship to home.

In describing their homes, the students I interviewed tended to disparage them in ways that one might expect: it’s boring; people are close-minded; there aren’t the same educational opportunities; there aren’t any jobs, etc. Some Appalachian scholars might be offended by these kinds of remarks. (In fact, at our 2014 Appalachian Studies

Association presentation, our audience members told our students outright that they were offended by how they were talking about their home counties.) These internalized, totalizing and stereotypical beliefs about Appalachian spaces are challenging for a stigmatized region and the intellectual and emotional work that has been put into making the value of Appalachian communities more visible. They are a small batch of examples of reflections from elsewhere. And yet it also seems important to listen to what these students think and say about the places they come from. Denying their stories and reflections because they are disparaging doesn’t help us as a field to find a way to make

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returning home (or attracting new populations) a more viable option. Collecting these interviews was a way for me to better understand the stakes of students’ complicated, often ambivalent relationships with their homes.

The analyses that follow are descriptive rather than prescriptive. I want there to be more opportunities for young people in Appalachian Ohio to pursue their dreams both at home and beyond, which is a challenge for the region. What follows is neither a solution to that problem nor a celebration of Appalachian culture. Instead, it is a glimpse into the discursive world of those who didn’t see a future at home and sought an education at

Ohio State as a way to exit the region. It is important to understand the student perspective in order to make meaningful regional change. What’s more, it is important that we understand the dynamic between the material and discursive aspects of this trajectory in order to work toward more sustainable Appalachian communities.

Dissertation Overview: Ambivalence, Recuperation and Empathy

This dissertation is about flows, movements, intersections of space and time, bids for significance and responsibility, acceptance and rejection. It’s about the way that economic shifts have ripple effects that last decades after the moment of rupture (or slow disinvestment) both in and beyond the communities of origin. It is about the ways that

Appalachian Ohio college students and residents make their way in their home communities and beyond. I focus on the tension that exists between travel stories and staying stories in Appalachian Ohio and the ways that they constitute a moral geography of region and home. I’m particularly interested in the recuperative and repudiating

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positionings from and toward Appalachian Ohio counties, the large state university, and student perspectives from both spaces.

The chapters that follow are connected by three core concepts—ambivalence, recuperation, and empathy—that constitute moral geographies of Appalachian Ohio. That is to say that these three concepts are recurring themes in all three chapters in which individuals construct their own identities and take stances in relation to others and places.

Ambivalence characterizes the multiple, sometimes conflicting ways that people relate to other people and places; recuperation emerges as a process by which people and communities attempt to make sense of the past in the present—to reconcile social injustice with lived experience; and empathy, the attempt to understand across difference, is an obligation constantly negotiated between people and the places they inhabit(ed).

Chapters are organized as aspects of student and community experiences and reflect the fragmented process of fieldwork—taking weekend trips to Portsmouth, going on Appalachian Project community visits, having students into my office for interviews, and finding out about a Buck-I-Serv trip to Brown County on a whim. This was my fieldwork experience, and it helped me to see how messages students received about home and success were oftentimes at odds with one another. Fragmented fieldwork also reflects the dislocated lives of the students who are trying to figure out ways of being during a moment where history, memory and commemoration in Portsmouth and New

Boston are surprisingly absent from Ohio State’s service curriculum for the region, which instead focuses on individual (as opposed to communal or structural) aspects of success.

How do students from the region understand these messages in relation to one another?

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How do they construct a notion of self based on these different understandings of place, personal responsibility, and success? Then, once they arrive at Ohio State, how do they incorporate the notion of “education as transformation” into their already complicated stories and identities?

Ambivalence

Ambivalence is prominent in moral geographies of Appalachian Ohio because of the economics of place, the processes of deindustrialization (and lack of successive or sustainable replacement industries) that have come to circumscribe opportunity and success in the region. The economics of place in Appalachian Ohio is evidenced in the ways that residents become stagers of heritage, high school graduates become expert travelers, and Ohio State students from outside the region become volunteers promoting educational access. Ambivalence in moral geographies of Appalachian Ohio reveals the strain of economic instability and social inequality no only on residents but also on groups that now conduct outreach to the region. Though ambivalence is expressed in quite personal and local terms in these chapters, each instance points to the economics of place that construct much broader binaries such as Stayers/Achievers.

Positioning is a key theoretical tool that I use to understand ambivalence and to chart the moral geography of Appalachian Ohio. Residents of Porstmouth and New

Boston, Ohio have ambivalent relationships toward their industrial heritage, at once celebrating it in memory, documentation, and public display, and also feeling slighted by the decline that necessitated its rebirth as heritage in the first place. High-achieving

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young people in these communities have to navigate difficult terrain: they are ushered out of their hometowns by teachers and school counselors who say that they must leave in order to succeed, but at the same time they are asked to remain loyal and humble to the people, places, and values from which they came. Recognizing the financial and social stakes at play in such navigation, Buck-I-Serve volunteers from Ohio State University questioned whether they were qualified to promise social mobility through educational access and what their experience implies for advocating for diversity and equity in higher education.

Recuperation

Recuperation and ambivalence go hand in hand, especially in Appalachian Ohio communities. Residents continually work to make sense of the changes they experienced in their communities and to build a more sustainable future. In Portsmouth, as in other small post-industrial cities recast as tourist destinations, the past is recuperated in the present as both a representation of itself and as potential economic development

(Kirshenblatt-Gimblett). For students, being recuperated back into their communities is a constant struggle: it’s something they resist because they’ve been told to resist it because it means failure. Interestingly, though, those who do work to recuperate home after graduation often do so in the form of service: they become social workers doing outreach to their own region. For college students conducting outreach in Appalachian Ohio, recuperation relies on deep-seated stances toward the region. It enacts the modernization

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metaphor, one of the three core metaphorical stances (the others being preservation and abandonment) often taken toward the region (Donehower, Hogg, and Schell 42).

Empathy

My engagement with concepts of empathy are drawn primarily from Amy

Shuman’s work on personal experience narratives in her book Other People’s Stories:

Entitlement Claims and the Critique of Empathy (2005). Shuman focuses on the promises of narrative and the ways that such promises construct responsibilities between tellers and listeners. While not all of my texts are personal experience narratives per se, murals and landscape in Portsmouth and New Boston, Ohio similarly engage questions about the relationship between the personal (or the local) and the allegorical and between people and the places they inhabit. Empathy features most prominently in the chapter on service- learning, especially when volunteers debated whether Ohio State educational outreach programs enact ethical ways to address underrepresented populations in higher education.

But bids for empathy are also at work in projects like the Portsmouth Floodwall Murals, where one of the purposes of public display is to reach across difference for recognition.

For the students I interviewed, negotiating new forms of empathy was a source of anxiety and ambivalence. Over time, many of them felt distant from their homes and families and had to find new ways to relate across a terrain that used to be familiar.

The chapters that follow are intentionally ordered so that they tack back and forth between home and school contexts in order to reflect students’ actual travel experiences.

Chapters 1 and 3 focus on local memory and storytelling, and chapters 2 and 4 focus on

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encounters with the university. We see in chapters 1 and 3 the impulse to tell the stories of distressed communities, and in chapter 2 we see the challenge that students have hearing those home stories when they compete against other stories that devalue the region. In chapter 4, we lose the story of commemoration completely and instead are given statistics of small-town life and heroin trafficking.

Chapter 1, “(Re)making Postindustrial Appalachian Ohio: Archiving and

Narrating Landscape,” provides the historical context of the local and global forces that shaped the economy and landscape in New Boston, a village neighboring Portsmouth in

Scioto County, Ohio. Other small Appalachian Ohio cities have had similar experiences, which is partially why I focused on New Boston as an example. The other reason is that I stumbled upon New Boston while doing fieldwork on the Portsmouth murals, and the proximity of the village was convenient. Throughout the chapter, I explore the ways in which the memory of the steel mill lingers, coexists, and is repurposed within the New

Boston memory and landscape. This chapter (as well as Chapter 3) gives the reader insight into the ways in which factory closings impacted villages and small cities in southern Appalachian Ohio and the fascinating ways in which residents, organizations, and corporations have refigured the emotional and physical landscape in the last 40 years.

Chapter 2, “Ambivalence on Route 23,” shifts ground to explore the ways that

Ohio State University students from Appalachian Ohio counties construct their personal identities in relation to home spaces. I primarily focus on personal experience narratives collected through oral interviews but also incorporate jokes and comments made by students during Appalachian Project meetings, events, county visits, and through personal

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communication that has been taking place since 2011. Using concepts of positioning and stance-taking, I argue that students’ ambivalent constructions of self and home give us insight into the ways that young people grapple with being from a place with limited economic possibilities, especially for those with post-secondary education. I pay particular attention to the ways that the students identified with or distanced themselves from people (family, friends, schoolmates, classmates), places (GPS coordinates, campus, homes, landscapes), and ways of life (working-class life and values, country and city life and values, forms of entertainment, travel culture, college life and culture).

Shifting back again to Scioto County, Chapter 3, “Public Display and

Commemoration in Portsmouth, Ohio” focuses on the ways that residents in a small postindustrial city are reshaping their historical, discursive, and geographic landscape. In

Portsmouth, the Floodwall Murals are a forum for constructing both the past and the present through a combination of art, history, and community engagement. Individual mural panels combine to create a collective story of the Portsmouth area that I argue responds to the moment of deindustrialization in the 1980s and a desire for extended history/memory and coherence in the present.

The last chapter, “University Extension: Appalachian Ohioans at Ohio State

University & Ohio State University in Appalachian Ohio,” brings Ohio State face-to-face with Appalachian Ohio in an analysis of a Buck-I-Serv/Economic Access Initiative alternative spring break college access tour in Brown County, Ohio. I explore the ways that Ohio State enacts service, the ways that students and parents in Brown County resisted such efforts, and how Ohio State student volunteers considered the limits of

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empathy in service-learning contexts. I argue that the university’s ideals of service are not carried out in practice, and that this often leads to patronizing interactions between volunteers and host communities.

In the conclusion, I briefly follow up on the lives of the students I interviewed for

Chapter 2, noting the ways that they traveled after graduation. I look especially at

Facebook posts and applications for jobs, graduate school, and internships in order to understand the various concerns guiding their relationships with their homes and families.

I also suggest areas of further research.

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Chapter 1: (Re)making Postindustrial Appalachian Ohio: Archiving and Narrating

Landscape

“The Day the Fires Went Out”: Documentation, Memory, and the Event in Postindustrial

New Boston, Scioto County, Ohio

Don Davis found a spot and settled in with his camera. It was the

early morning hours of June 16, 1980, and he was determined to capture

history. In this case it was the last moment that the fire belched from the

famed ‘Old Louise’ blast furnace at the steel mill in New Boston.

‘It was 4:45 in the morning, and I know I’m the only one who shot

it, because there was no one else sitting on that gravel pile but me,’ Davis

said. (Portsmouth Daily Times, Sunday, June 13, 2010, A1)

On Sunday, June 13, 2010, the Portsmouth Daily Times printed a story titled,

“The Day the Fires Went Out—PDT Remembers June 16, 1980” (Lewis).36 Prominently featured next to the article text, Don Davis, a local photographer, smiles as he holds up the photograph he took of Louise on the last day of operation. Directly below his photograph, and almost the same size, is an image of the once operational Detroit Steel

36 Note: this article is not contained within Steve Jenkins’ notebook. I originally found this article in the History and Genealogy Room at the Portsmouth Public Library and later located an electronic version (without the images) online through the Portsmouth Daily Times. 57

plant from the newspaper archives. The oft-romanticized glow of hot iron being poured burns bright in both images. The set of photographs—the operational steel plant, the photo Davis took of its last day in 1980, and the PDT’s photograph of Davis in 2010 holding the picture he took in 1980—present a multilayered documentation of the steel industry in New Boston. The article and accompanying images tell a story about the nested ways that people in New Boston remember the steel industry, the mill closings, and the eventual economic decline of the city.

The images of Louise’s last pour in 1980 and the image of the Detroit Steel mill in action are almost identical—they’re images of the same blast furnace, after all. Both prominently feature the glow of the blast furnace and the outline of the mill against the dark background. It is only within the context of “the day the fires went out” that we know the top image that Don Davis took on June 16th was the last time Louise would produce that glow. Whereas the bottom image suggested (and still suggests) a moment in time during which Louise was in continuous operation, Davis’ photograph is imbued with finality. No other photograph taken of the mill at any time, no matter how similar to

Davis’, will portray what his does: the last pour.

Closings and demolitions are moments of pause, lingering, and exactitude in New

Boston as well asin rust belt scholarship in general. They are discrete moments for photographing sites, collecting dates, numbers and names (number of jobs lost, years of operation, company ownership, etc.), telling stories, remembering the past and considering a future. And yet, in conversation, these numbers are difficult to keep straight. Only in print do they remain exact. During my conversation with local historian

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Steve Jenkins, he would understandably have trouble remembering which company owned the mill at different periods of time and exactly what year events occurred. Often he would point to his notebook and say, “it’s all in there.” Shutdowns and removals open up opportunities to construct memories of what used to be: from the death of industry springs the life of memory.

In “Monuments of a Lost Cause: The Post-industrial Campaign to Commemorate

Steel,” Kirk Savage argues that “[o]nly when the mills shut down and the steelworkers began to reexamine why their industry had collapsed did they begin to construct a collective memory about their life in the mills” (248). Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s concept of the “second life” of heritage is relevant to post-industrial rites of memory, as residents become both tourists and, eventually, tour guides of the rubble of the factories that once provided their livelihoods. After the fires go out, factories become physical and emotional burdens to their communities as well as reminders of what life used to be like.

In “Theorizing Heritage,” Kirshenblatt-Gimblett argues that “[o]nce sites, buildings, objects, technologies, or ways of life can no longer sustain themselves as they once did, they 'survive'—they are made economically viable—as representatives of themselves.

They stage their own rebirth as displays of what they once were" (371). Not only do they become, I would argue, potentially economically viable as heritage or recast as a different type of location,37 they also become emotionally viable as spaces and objects of memory and commemoration. As we will see soon in the section titled “Steve Jenkins’

Notebook,” industry publications, newspaper clippings, old photographs, ephemera, and

37 Allen Dieterich -Ward, for instance, writes about the mixed success of Alliance 2000’s attempt to recast Steubenville, Ohio as the “burb of the ‘burg” after U.S Route 22 was upgraded to connect Pittsburgh through Weirton to Steubenville (see especially pages 66-72). 59

landscape features take on new meaning once the mills close down and the physicality of their existence becomes a burden to the area, transforms into an absence, or is replaced by new industries and buildings.

Locating end-moments is important not only for those who experienced the shut- downs but also for those who write about them. Knowing, saying, and reporting exactly when “the fires went out” allows one to pinpoint a discrete moment in time at which a space was rendered inoperable. These end-moments make newspaper headlines that can be clipped, stored, and archived in a way that lingering feelings of unease cannot.38

Gradual shutdowns and slow declines (as well as sudden layoffs and lockouts) dominate oral histories and scholarship about post-industrial cities, making evident what little information and control industrial workers had in regard to their livelihoods. Demolition is also a discrete moment for historicizing, a time to seek the stories of those who remember what once stood there. Davis’ explanation of how he captured the last fire is followed up by historical information and quotes from local historian Steve Jenkins explaining when the mill was first built, how it was purchased by different companies over time, and how it employed about 5,000 workers. The article goes on to say that

Cyclops “started a gradual shutdown that began in 1972 and ended in 1980” (Lewis A5).

A series of ownership transfers characterized the life of the mill from 1953-1980:

Burgess Steel and Iron Works, Crucible Iron and Steel Company, Portsmouth Steel

38 In summer 2011, I observed a similar situation when Border Books Inc. went out of business and the employees at one of the stores formed a Facebook group to stay in touch with one another. As every single item inside the store (including the furniture) was being sold piece by piece, they were producing music playlists, posting images from other stores that were closing, sharing job openings and employment status updates, planning social events, and reminiscing about regular café customers who came in expecting coffee. Even now, someone posts to the group every once in a while to let others know how they’re doing or if they’ve seen another regular at their new place of employment (many of them ended up getting similar jobs at Barnes & Noble). 60

Company, Whitaker-Glessner Company, Wheeling Steel, Portsmouth Steel Corporation,

Detroit Steel, Cyclops, and then the dismantling of the mill as it was sold to the Lone Star

Steel Company in Texas. Unlike the long, drawn out, and sometimes indecipherable process of gradual shutdown, dismantling, and repurposing, “the day the fires went out” is a discrete, translatable moment and a concept that opens up opportunities for storytelling, reminiscing, and explaining.

Similarly, the period between closing and demolition—often years (if not decades) of pause during which buildings of progress turn into monuments of obsolescence—is typically less well documented than the moment of demolition itself.

On March 13, 2003, the Portsmouth Daily Times ran a front-page story titled “Coming

Unstacked: 310-Foot Remnant of New Boston Steel Mill Demolished,” which depicted the toppling of one of the smokestacks (Hickle). At the top of the article, three successive images show the tower in various stages of crumbling. Below these images and the text of “coming unstacked,” is a fourth close-up image of the brick rubble left after the explosion and a member of the demolition crew from Knoxville, Tennessee walking over the site in a hard hat. In a matter of four images an eighty year industry comes toppling down. Steven High and David Lewis, authors of Corporate Wasteland: The Landscape and Memory of Deindustrialization, describe the process of closing and demolishing industrial spaces as “secular rituals” that “dramatize North America’s transition from industrialism to post-industrialism” (24). The authors claim that this “secular ritual”— experiencing, viewing, and documenting demolition—serves to mediate tumultuous moments of change.

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…the repetitive images of falling smokestacks and imploding mills and

factories lead to predictability and, ironically, the promise of continuity in

a time of transformation. Secular rituals are declarations against

indeterminacy and serve to hide troubles, conflicts, and uncertainties. By

discouraging enquiry, the ritualized and routinized demolition of industrial

sites naturalizes these changes, even as they are used to interpret things

which are very much in doubt. (27)

Life during the mills draws fewer occasions for reporting and remembering— besides, say, when the 1936 strikes occurred. Institutional documentation during this phase focuses on describing plant operations and the production of informational booklets and other ephemera about the steel-making process. The Detroit Steel

Corporation, for instance, produced a newsletter called “Inside Detroit Steel” whose slogan was “To Keep You Posted on Progress and Prospects.” A copy of the 1965 special report on “Detroit Steel To-Day,”39 whose cover photo appears to be the same image as the one used for the 2010 PDT article that opened this chapter, gives an inside perspective on the daily operations of the mill, including short introductions to individual workers and the jobs they perform. Work moves endlessly along as the reader browses through the images and text. Thus, more overt meaning-making practices, as we will see in the next sections, occur in retrospect.

39 Three separate images from the Inside Detroit Steel special report are recycled in newspaper prints and the murals: the image of the front cover of IDS reappears in the 2010 remembrance of the closing in 1980; the blast furnace for “steel’s indispensible girls” reappears in Industrial Heritage; and the ladle pouring image from “hot metal addition” reappears in Steel Industry. 62

A Theory of Memory and the Event

Alessandro Portelli outlines the ways in which four interrelated axes work to form a theory of the “cultural construction of the event” in his chapter on “Form and Meaning of Historical Representation” in The Battle of Valle Giulia: Oral History and the Art of

Dialogue. Unlike the unending continuum of time, the event, he explains, “is conceived as punctual and discrete” (99). The four axes of the event include the grammar of time, the social paradigm, the spatial reference, and the point of view (99-106). The ways in which events are remembered, adjudicated, and historicized depends on how these four axes interact. Portelli’s chapter analyzes how accounts of two battles in Harlan County,

Kentucky—the Battle of Evarts and the Battle of Crummies Creek—were remembered differently because of a combination of factors, including the political moment, the significance of the event to the political moment, and the presence of media and outsiders. He found that the Battle of Evarts is practically over-documented in institutional texts such as newspapers and court documents while the Battle of Crummies

Creek survives almost entirely in local oral accounts and landscapes.

Portelli’s model of analyzing events and the ways in which they are remembered provides a model for understanding moments in post-industrial cities not only in terms of the ways that they are reported in newspapers, but also how individuals and communities make sense of them and create a moral archive of meaning in various public and private spaces. Using Portelli’s theory of memory and the event encourages us to ask why certain ways of remembering, forgetting, revealing, and concealing emerge at specific times and take on particular modes of expression.

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Steve Jenkins’ Notebook: The Personal and Community Archive

On Monday, April 21, 2014 I cold-called Steve Jenkins after coming across his phone number in the Portsmouth Daily Times article. I saw his name in the 2010 issue on

“The Day the Fires Went Out,” and decided to Google him to see if there was a chance of connecting with him during my upcoming fieldwork visit, as the article said he is

“probably the best-known historian when it comes to New Boston and Detroit Steel

Corporation” (A1). Sure enough, he answered the phone and was eager to talk with me about the mills and even offered to take me on a driving tour. At 10:05am on April 27,

2014, I pulled up on his narrow street and parked my car half on the sidewalk and half on the road.

The steps up to Steve’s front door are incredibly steep (the north side of New

Boston was built on a hill) and I slipped on a stair on the way up, banging my knee on the edge of the step, so that my first interaction with Steve was his catching my hand and helping me up his steps. After I thanked him for having me over, we proceeded to his living room where his wife sat with his grandson. He told me that he and his grandson had gone to Home Depot earlier that morning to pick up materials to do some work in the backyard, and that they would go out back to complete this project once we were finished talking. Heading upstairs—yet another steep incline—Steve showed me his study where he keeps multiple three-ring binders full of historical documents about his hometown of

New Boston.

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A 65-year old life-long resident of New

Boston, Steve taught high school in town

for 35 years, and had taken a summer job

as an office clerk one year at the steel

mill. He has an office where he keeps a

library of topical binders about different

aspects of life and work in New Boston.

He has information about New Boston

sorted out by each decade and folders for

the fire department, high school, and

recreational parks, among others.

Contained within each of the

Figure 1: Steve Jenkins and his New Boston binders are histories of buildings and Archive industries of New Boston, including general histories of the area per 10-year period. Over the years he has amassed the contents of the bookshelf through ongoing visits to The Henry A. Lorberg Local History

Department at the Portsmouth Public Library, scanning through files as well as individual reels of microfilm, often helping the History Department to build its own files on topics he researches. When someone wants to know about the history of New Boston, Steve’s the one to talk to. In addition to his interest in New Boston, Steve was an educator and coach for years at the local high school and has numerous files on the school and the basketball team, including a photo book he put together for them to sell for fundraisers.

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When we walked into his office, Steve handed me a four-page history of the steel industry that he had written. Laid out on his computer desk was his three-ring binder on the iron and steel industry in New Boston—the accumulation of many trips to the library where he had sifted through newspapers and microfilm to find anything that mentioned the mill or coke plant. At the end of our interview, he was generous enough to let me take it back to my hotel to scan and photograph each page. Steve is interested in sharing his work and making it available to anyone who can make use of it.40

Steve Jenkins’ binder for the steel and iron industry in New Boston contains a summary narrative that he wrote, copies and originals of articles from local newspapers, and copies and originals of documents produced by the mill during its operation, such as

Christmas cards and informational booklets. Besides his narrative summary, the binder is comprised entirely of published materials.41 Using Portelli’s axes of events as a guide for analyzing Steve’s binder, I noticed that documentation existed exclusively in the institutional and communal realms of the social paradigm, spatial referent, and point of view.42 Chronology and the act of determining a chronology (of ownership and production) were particularly prominent in the collection and there was little to no attention to temporal simultaneity (historical events occurring outside of New Boston during the years of deindustrialization) or formal simultaneity (similar stories of

40 I’m curious about Steve’s interest in New Boston history and why he has compiled various binders of information alongside the public library, often duplicating their holdings, but sometimes adding to them. Since my time with Steve was quite brief and I did not get much insight into this question, I would like to conduct follow-up interviews to ask him more questions about how and why he compiled his binders and about his role as a high school teacher in New Boston. 41 To my knowledge, Steve has not collected oral histories about the mill or when it closed. 42 One possible exception to this statement is an article titled “The Old Steel Plant Band” written by John Payton for a column called “’I Remember’ By the Old Timers” (publication title unknown). Though this article also appeared in the community realm of what I assume was a local newspaper, it is written entirely in the first person. 66

deindustrialization in different places and times). Steve’s focus on chronology struck me as significant, especially since his introductory narrative presented a summation of events contained within the notebook. The binder and the narrative summary attempt to make sense of what led to the mill closings and articulate, or make into events, processes that were obscured (sometimes intentionally by mill owners) during the industrialization and deindustrializing processes. They seemed to want to answer the question “How exactly did this happen?” though at a very local, rather than national or international, level.43

At the front of Steve’s binder is a three-page narrative he wrote to accompany the materials. His history of steel and iron production in New Boston is characterized by ownership changes, technological innovations, tonnage output, number of residents employed, and dollars invested in renovations. It is a linear chronology that focuses on the arrangement of dates, company names, and notable events. From its beginning in

1898, the New Boston steel plant was sold seven times (see Table 2). Perhaps because

Steve did not work in the mill besides a desk job during the summer before graduation, his chronology seeks to clarify the history of the steel and iron industries by creating a scaffolding of dates upon which newspaper articles and personal stories can be understood.

43 It’s possible that, having been a resident during the time when the city was undergoing these transitions, Steve is more familiar with local opinions about these changes and seeks official documentary evidence to make sense of mill operations in New Boston over time. He is interested in learning why owners of the mill made the decisions they did, perhaps because that was an aspect of the closing that remained unclear. An excerpt from a displaced millworker in Canada explains how frustratingly opaque plant closures could be. When asked how he found out about the closing he replied, “The usual ways it happens: rumors floating around for the longest time; people trying to decipher what’s on crates and invoices that are coming in. Strange people walking through the plant looking very worried or very decisive or very analytical and weren’t just studying for the usual reasons…It was all under the cloak of secrecy” (High & Lewis 139). 67

1898 Burgess Steel and Iron Works moved from Portsmouth to New Boston; 50,000 tons of steel produced annually, $25,000 monthly payroll, 700 employees July- Crucible Iron and Steel Company of America December 1900 1902 Portsmouth Steel Company 1908-1920 Whitaker-Glessner Company 1920-1946 Wheeling Steel Company; in 1937 500,000 tons of steel produced annually, $500,250 monthly payroll, mill employs “most of the residents of New Boston” 1930 Wheeling Steel coke plant is operational and allows steel mill to produce coke on site 1946-1950 Portsmouth Steel Corporation; in 1948 $5,750,000 spent on renovation and maintenance, plant produced $49,000,000 worth of steel products, 3,800 employees 1950-1969 Detroit Steel Corporation; in 1951 $150,000,000 spent on renovation and maintenance, 800,000 tons of steel produced annually, $1,250,000 monthly payroll, 4,800 employees 1969-1980 Cyclops Corporation; 1972-1980 period of “gradual shutdown” Coking plant becomes New Boston Coke Corporation (of McClouth 1980 Steel) 1982-2002 Coke plant goes independent and survives on contracts, then signs with River Rouge Steel Corporation (Ford Motor Company) Table 2: Timeline constructed from the Story of Iron and Steel Industry in New Boston by Steve Jenkins

Narrative Lingering in Steve’s Chronology

Though the majority of Steve’s history is told through successive ownership changes that could just as easily be understood through a table like the one listed above, two sections stand out as spaces where he lingers to describe the emotions and perspectives of locals during significant moments. The first pause, which I analyze

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below, occurs on the end of page two where he describes the 1936 steelworker strike. The second, which I do not delve into here but think is also a significant space of lingering, occurs at the end of page one and continues throughout the beginning of the second page where he describes a moment in 1900 when the mill almost closed down for good. Here, I focus on the former.

Steve’s evaluation of the strike serves as an important space in which he constructs New Boston and steelworker identities and their relationship to the steel mills and mill owners. He also constructs his own position as archivist and historian. Steve explains:

The steel mill had allowed the city of New Boston to become independent

and very progressive in its city government. But in 1937, the employees of

the mill went on strike for recognition of the union and better working

conditions. So the company hired strike breakers [sic] from out of state to

come in on railroad cars and live in them and work the mill. These men

who were later proven to be thugs came to town to breakup [sic] the strike

with force and violence. However, the men of the New Boston Plant were

strong-willed and fought for their rights. During the year there were many

fights and shootings, destruction and violence were everywhere. Finally

one of the strike breakers [sic] was killed and the rest left town. A union

was formed and the mill was back working again. (Jenkins 2)

His description casts New Boston as a “progressive” city with a “strong-willed” labor union. In contrast, the strikebreakers “from out of state” are described as “thugs” who

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“came to town to break up the strike with force and violence.” While focusing on the strike opens up a space for Steve to consider worker and resident perspectives more fully in his overwhelmingly owner-dominated narrative of the steel industry in New Boston

(recall that almost all the documents contained in Steve’s binder are newspaper articles and plant publications), the tension he introduces in this section is between local and scab labor as opposed to that between the proposed union and the mill owners.

Mill owners are never mentioned in the recounting of the strike and the only reference to them is through an unembodied mention of “the company” in the third sentence. The second sentence, which explains that employees “went on strike for recognition of the union and better working conditions,” combines embodied strikers with concepts of rights and recognition rather than and embodied opponent. Mill owners are implied in the sentence as opposed to named or made real through embodied description. The third sentence points abstractly to mill owners by saying that “the company hired strike breakers,” but the subject of the sentence is the strike breakers themselves rather than those who hired them, as the rest of the sentence focuses on where the thugs came from and how they got to New Boston. Any potential blame of the mill owners is quickly transferred to the outsider thugs who carry out their dirty work for them. By the time we read that “the men of the New Boston Plant were strong-willed and fought for their rights” we might assume that they fought against the strikers rather than company owners. The resolution of the story also focuses on the workers and mill production itself rather than individuals involved in the negotiation process. In Steve’s account of the event, the tension is resolved once “one of the strike breakers was killed

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and the rest left town,” even though the scabs were hired by the mill to break the strike to squash unionizing efforts. 44 Steve preserves the legacy of the New Boston steel industry post-strike by ending the paragraph claiming that the “union was formed and the mill was back working again.” In this story, steelworkers are constructed as strong and progressive at the same time that the mills are preserved as the backbone industry of the community.

The steel mill is preserved as a space of work relatively free of conflict and the mill owners are absent from the event.

Missing from Steve’s report and his binder are Portsmouth Times articles from

May 26th and May 27th of 1936 when assessors from the National Guard arrived in New

Boston to determine whether federal assistance was needed to keep the peace.45

Additional documentation of the strike in Steve’s binder presents a peaceful scene of solidarity as women are shown bringing soup to striking workers. Again, the notion of

New Boston solidarity, charity, and kindness are at the fore of the surviving image, and a number of men and women are shown smiling. While folklorists often work in the reverse, using oral histories to complicate and supplement official reports found in newspapers, I find myself doing the opposite by noting the absence of particular official accounts in Steve’s collection. Official reports and oral histories of the strike are absent from his documentation, perhaps because union work is a contentious topic in the area, with some people claiming that Portsmouth’s reputation as a tough union town scared

44 Steve describes this incident briefly and vaguely, not mentioning that the strikebreaker was likely killed by a local from New Boston—again, displacing blame. 45 I’m not suggesting that he omitted articles on purpose. There are plenty of reasons why these articles might be missing in his binder, and I haven’t yet followed up with him about it. One reason may be that photocopies of newspapers of the report held at the library are rather poor and have streaks running across them, so that they are quite difficult to read. Photocopies of the local newspaper are available in the History and Genealogy Room at the Portsmouth Public Library. 71

away businesses. This tension is one reason why Steve may have aimed to paint a more neutral description of the strike that focused on the outsider thugs rather than the mill owners or local strikers. I’ve heard very little about these strikes over the course of about a year of fieldwork, and I suspect that continuing conversations with Steve and surviving steel workers are necessary to gain a fuller picture of the discourse surrounding them.46

While the steel industry plays a prominent role in public landscape and memory, the strike and legible records of its occurrence are difficult to come by. Further, differing interpretations of the role of unions in the community, I sense, make this a contentious topic that is not openly shared with outsiders.

The New Boston Community Center decorates its hallways with images, articles, and objects of the steel industry and boasts a 3-dimensional mural of the factory; in

Portsmouth, the steel industry is commemorated with an image of a ladle pouring fiery hot iron with the dates 1870-1980 written alongside it as well as a three-panel mural dedicated to the area’s industrial history. The grandeur of the process, rather than the soot it produced or the 1936 strike, is the object of commemorating attention. It is the image of the city projected to the tourist and the outsider.

46 In May 2015 I was able to speak with Dr. Andrew Feight, Associate Professor of History at Shawnee State University and creator of the Scioto Historical app, who is currently working on a series of articles for the website/app about class struggles in Portsmouth. An article about the 1936 strike is due out in June 2015. 72

“Everything was Mill”: Driving Around with Steve Jenkins

After our interview, Steve brought his blue Jeep around to the front of the house and we went on a driving tour of the old New Boston mill site.47 During our interview,

Steve explained that the village of New Boston (which occasionally became a city whenever its population rose above 5,000 people) was quite literally built up around the steel mill, stretching the length of the facility. The steep hills to the north and the river to the south defined village limits in the remaining directions:

Two-and-a-half miles that way, and about 2 miles that way… it’s not a very big

town…we got the hills that you can’t build on—they’re straight up and down—

we got the river that stops you, Portsmouth like I said built a horseshoe around us,

and for some reason our founding fathers didn’t want to go any farther than the

end of the mill. (Steve Jenkins, April 27, 2014)

Though there have been multiple efforts to incorporate New Boston into Portsmouth, at first for the mill’s contribution to the tax base and later to increase the size of Portsmouth to leverage economic assistance, the village has maintained its independence and

47 It’s a strange thing to talk about and to imagine what used to be. I remember that shortly after I arrived at graduate school in 2007 the housing market bubble burst in California. Over the next couple of years, my dad sent me photographs of the shopping market down on Haven Avenue that my friends and I used to walk to on a fairly regular basis throughout junior high and high school. He texted or emailed me images of Longs Drug Store, now empty and with a “for sale” sign in the window, where we used to rent videos for the weekend. The Chinese restaurant that was always on the corner met the same fate, and the Blockbuster that was right across from it was demolished and turned into a gas station. The Burger King managed to stay intact. He took pictures of all of it and shared them with me. I remember feeling perplexed and saddened when I received them, and I didn’t know why he wanted to document this process. Then when Borders Books and Music bankrupted, my dad went to the location my husband and I had worked at and took pictures of it throughout its transition (the escalating blowout sales (25% off, 40% off, 75% off), the closing, and then later its reincarnation as a seasonal Halloween store). When we left Steve’s house to see where the old mill was, I thought about my dad’s pictures and his desire to document the changes he saw in our city. 73

continued to provide city amenities for its residents. This independence is a source of pride in New Boston, and especially for Steve.

Steve’s tour wasn’t about loss as much as it was a matter-of-fact explanation of what was then and what is now. Our driving tour was a geographically and temporally layered explanation of “re-placing,” of how old company houses were torn down and the lot was turned into a city park; how old cement mill walls still stand in a few places, including the WalMart parking lot; how the mill’s main offices now house Daymar

College; how the only operational building from the old mill was, as Steve described it,

“re-skinned” with aluminum exterior. In some instances parts of the mill have ceased to exist outside of memory and photographic documentation; in others they leave physical traces out of necessity or are repurposed throughout the city. People still live in the eight company apartment buildings from the 1930s, but now they look out over a strip mall with a WalMart. Though rust belt scholars have tended to focus on industrial ruins and relics—images of rusted gears, broke-down buildings with shattered windows, fenced-off spaces—Steve’s tour, for the most part, focused on repurposing, renovation, continued use, and re-corporatization. When I asked him if it was weird not seeing the mill anymore he replied, “It was for a while, but I’m used to it now.”

Steve’s tour wasn’t particularly nostalgic or emotional about the mill and the vanishing industrial landscape. In fact, earlier when we were talking in his office he spoke about how much the mill polluted the village, saying “Steel mills are very dirty, I mean, just by their nature they’re dirty. So soot and stuff was coming out and people were puttin’ up with it because it was money [laughs], you know. You could smell the

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mill, you could taste it.” Unlike public valorizations of the mill in commemorative murals, Steve discusses the environmental and bodily impact the mill had on the area and its residents. Here, Steve acknowledges the tradeoff the people of New Boston made in their daily lives to be able to make a living. Though the community had a stable source of work and tax revenue for a little over a century, their environment and physical wellbeing were compromised.

Vestiges of the mills exist in various stages throughout New Boston as well.

Behind the WalMart shopping center, for instance, lie the ruins of the blast furnace section of the steel mill. Over the years parts of the mill have been slowly removed from the space, but a smokestack, a brick furnace, various industrial scraps, and toxic contaminants remain. Though the landscape has changed quite a bit, control of the city by large corporations has not. WalMart, Family Dollar, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Golden

Corral and other chain stores pepper the New Boston landscape, replacing the mill and many of the corporate houses that used to sit directly across from it.

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Figure 2: Mill smokestack visible behind the new shopping center.

Life after the mills is characterized by demolition, reclamation, and rebuilding.

During the thirty-plus years the mill was out of commission, government officials had to

figure out what to do with a deteriorating factory. The “Coming Unstacked” article

pointed out that Southern Ohio Port Authority (SOPA) had plans to demolish the stack

later in the year to “make way for new industry to come in to the village,” and that the

raze date was pushed forward because it was compromised after a winter ice storm and

lightning strikes (Hickle A2). Two of the interviewees for the short article expressed

relief at witnessing the demolition. Resident Walt Imes commented that he had “lived in

a company owned house in the shadow of the mill…We grew up in the shadow of it, and

we wanted to see it come down” (Hickle A1). SOPA Director and former mill worker

Bob Walton was hopeful at the demolition ceremony, claiming that the site “became an

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endangerment to the community when it was unoccupied, so I feel good that it is coming down now. The community will look better now and be safer” (Hickle A2). Once a mill closes it can become a liability; it shifts from a site of production to a cleanup site. A July

9, 1995 Portsmouth Daily Times article titled, “What Remains after Wrecking Ball” details the debris, pollution, and graffiti that remained at the mill site for years after it closed and the arduous process the community went through to clean it up. Teens played and partied at the abandoned site, not realizing that the soil contained PCB and asbestos.

One young woman even broke her back walking the “Stairway to Heaven,” a leftover conveyor belt connecting a dock and tower.

Conclusion

Time, space, memory, and commemoration are complicated facets of life in post- industrial Appalachian Ohio. The history of steel production in New Boston will always be a part of its present, and now, some thirty-five years after the mills closed, the impact of that history is poignantly experienced through reclamation, rebuilding, and the compiling of historical documents and memories. Steve Jenkins shows us that moments of rupture can prompt moments of reflection, time to sit back and try to understand.

Steve’s binder shows us how reflection entails sense-making as well as presentation, as they form a moral geography of his local landscape in his own home office.

Relationships to work, education, and place change drastically when a village like

New Boston shifts from a mill anchor economy that employs hundreds of people to retail stores that hire only a handful at a time. Public commemorations and histories of steel

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production in the area, perhaps because of the mixed political stances of residents, describe shutdowns in ways that avoid tarnishing the legacy of steel (their source of heritage tourism) or bringing too much attention to union activity that might make it difficult to attract new business. Young people growing up in these memory-burdened landscapes often find themselves bored, without options, and cycling through the same activities until they are old enough to drive out of town for the weekend. Post-secondary education is an important way for young people to get away from small town (or

“country”) life because it promises a successful life elsewhere. But, as we will see in this next chapter, those who attend college outside the region have to figure out how to redefine themselves both in college and home spaces.

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Chapter 2: Ambivalence on Route 23: Personal Experience Narratives of

Appalachian Ohio Students attending Ohio State University

I had been living in for a number of years before I realized that Racine and Kenosha are part of the ‘rust belt’—that great swath of middle America razed by the

decline of the rubber, steel, and automobile industries. This understanding came to me

slowly, not through news stories or scholarly articles, but from my visits home.

–Kathryn Marie Dudley, The End of the Line: Lost Jobs, New Lives in Postindustrial America

In her script for the Appalachian Project presentation at the 2013 annual meeting of the Appalachian Studies Association, Jana, a member of the team, explained how she worked to leave home: “I got a perfect GPA, was Valedictorian and president of nearly everything, all to help me on the road to anywhere else. The scholarship to Ohio State helped seal the deal for my new future. All I needed was to buy some dorm room posters, move the three hours away, and start living the good life.” Taking pride in the way that they had been able to “get out” of their home cities—through their intellectual capabilities, strong work ethic, or sheer determination—was a hallmark of the personal experience narratives I had heard from many students who had moved to Columbus from

Appalachian Ohio. Students also talked about feeling guilty for not making enough trips home, expressed wonder at the natural beauty of the region, and grappled with the complex emotions that stem from having grown up in places with limited opportunities. 79

Conversations in multiple contexts reiterated the personal, familial, and community tensions that arise when smart young people want to leave a region that relies upon community resources.

These students become expert travelers, traversing the distance between their old and new homes. They become simultaneous insiders and outsiders in both places, and constantly have to negotiate themselves in relation to their surroundings. During one of our county visits, Dave asked everyone in the car, “How does a hillbilly find his cousin in the woods?” We asked how, to which he replied, “pretty hot!” Dave’s joke about the stereotype of engaging in incestuous relationships—told to a mixed group of both insiders and outsiders on the way to an Appalachian Ohio county—exemplifies the ways in which students continually negotiate the spaces they inhabit. Hillbilly jokes, poverty jokes, and Ohio Valley jokes, told in mixed company anxiously engage stereotype and experience in an effort to address difference.48

Comments and jokes made by Appalachian Ohio youth attending college outside of the region can be unsettling. On the surface, at least, they reiterate mainstream ideas about Appalachian culture, country/rural life, and the threats of brain drain on post- industrial Appalachian communities. Students say that life back home is boring because there is nothing to do, that their teachers and counselors were inadequate, and that they either would not or could not return because the region lacks jobs that attract educated professionals (outside of relatively narrow local options). These reflections are but one piece of a larger story of post-industrial Appalachian Ohio, a place hard hit by

48 Though I don’t have enough information or space to explore this topic further, I’m quite interested in these types of jokes and the contexts in which they’re told in Appalachian Ohio as an area of further research. 80

deindustrialization and globalization in the mid-to-late twentieth century. Stories about staying home, for instance, need much further exploration.

Throughout this chapter, I ask how students position themselves in relation to their homes once they started college in Columbus. It so happened that I spoke to many of them during their junior and senior years, an important moment in their lives when they were considering their futures in relation to their pasts. This chapter considers not only what the students say about home, but also how they position themselves in relation to their own stories. Ambivalence (or mixed/conflicting feelings) was a common reaction toward home. Though ambivalence toward home and family is not a unique experience for this age group, theirs was expressed in specific, patterned ways that reflected local and national attitudes toward Appalachian Ohio cities as well as the ways in which students felt they ought to construct themselves in relation to such places. Students’ ambivalent personal experience narratives about home are complex, situated negotiations of self that reflect the impact of the global economy and national images of

Appalachian/country life on everyday senses of self. Rejections of place functions as a necessary distancing from a home that is impossible to return to without the stigma of failure and to which continued belonging is possible only by habitually traversing the long, worn road home.

In analyzing the reflections of Appalachian Ohio youth on their homes from the perspective of college, I ask what home means to them. What discourses and material circumstances have shaped their opinions of home and their relationship to it? And what

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impacts do these relationships have for the sustainability of Appalachian Ohio communities?

The sections that follow are organized by trends I noticed throughout the students’ interviews. For the most part, I follow students through the trends, though some students show up in only one or two of the sections to illustrate the trend. These are by no means exhaustive or natural categories; they are groupings that I noticed among many others that were selected based on their significance and prevalence in my dissertation interview corpus as well as their connection to other trends I noticed in The Appalachian Project data. While noticing and noting trends, I also worked to find tensions within what the students’ experiences and have included them to show how the students’ relationships to home are complex, shifting, and emerge in situated conversations. Telling me about their home lives is different than reminiscing with friends, running into a neighbor at the grocery store, getting to know a new roommate, or writing a personal statement. Different genres of communication in different spaces and at different times yield different responses, and what I have collected and presented here is one specific communicative context among many. And yet, what the students said about home present a significant experience of students at Ohio State who are from Appalachian Ohio.

Students narrated complex and sometimes conflicting relationships toward their homes and families. In particular, students had difficulty connecting the values they were brought up with to those that they learned in college. Even while living in their home communities, they often felt different than their peers and were criticized for not being

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humble. Others, however, such as Brad, were highly encouraged to attend college and even used student loans to support his family.

Talking With the Students

The reflections that follow were collected in 2012 and 2014 with students who were members of The Appalachian Project during the respective years. Individual interviews were conducted in my office at the Center for Folklore Studies, at first in 2012 in Dulles

Hall and then in 2014 in at Ohio State University. My interview with Dave was the only one that was conducted outside of my office; we met at Thompson Library, also at Ohio State. The students and I had worked on the Appalachian Project together for different periods of time. Anne, for instance, had only come on one site visit whereas Jule had been with the project for over three years when we conducted her exit interview.

Jule, Wren, and Dana were employed by The Appalachian Project during the 2013-2014 school year (we had received a $15k grant from the Governor’s Office of Appalachia) and spent numerous hours facilitating the activities of the project in the Center for

Folklore Studies. So I was also their supervisor for about a year.

From the start, all of the students knew that I was interested in hearing about their experiences growing up in Appalachian Ohio and coming to school at Ohio State, and all of them were extremely gracious and supportive of my research throughout our time together. The students I interviewed are my friends, people I respect and whose company

I enjoy. Sometimes I would consider myself one of the many mentors in their lives, as I often found myself serving as a job reference; proofreading applications for jobs,

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graduate school, and law school; giving informal advice about life things like how to dress at an academic conference; and generally listening to them talk about how school and their lives were going.

I also spent a lot of time riding around in cars with them. During our site visits, we’d drive between one and three hours to and from the counties where we conducted research, so it gave us plenty of time to get to know one another in an informal setting.

What I found most interesting about these drives was the way that stories and jokes would emerge as we approached Appalachian Ohio counties. Some would tell hillbilly jokes or talk about hillbilly-fixing things, while others would comment on how familiar the landscape looked or tell childhood stories. When I first started attending site visits with the project in 2011, I thought I would write about this phenomenon, but I never worked up the courage to record in the car, even when I packed an Edirol a couple of times. It felt like the recorder would compromise our candor. The car was a safe space where we could speak our minds. Patty, the creator of the project and co-director, very much facilitated this atmosphere; her own candor and capacity to “be real” make us feel like it was safe to share what we felt and thought.

This openness, though, allowed for a few of the students to make remarks and jokes about the region that offended me at first. These comments made me feel uncomfortable, and for some reason they always seemed to emerge in the liminal space of the road. As a graduate student who was learning about the politics of representation, I was keenly aware of how the remarks and jokes played into harmful stereotypes of Appalachians that affected their material circumstances. I played with the idea of saying something to them

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and devising a plan to talk more critically about representations of Appalachians. But as I thought more about it, I wondered first what the hell I knew about growing up in the region and how I’d talk about it if I were them. Secondly, I wondered if the space of the car was one where the anxieties of going home were able to be worked out through humor and relating of personal experience. The jokes and stories were expressions of their critical positionings, which was exactly what I was interested in learning about.

They distanced themselves from the “hillbilly” experience by criticizing it, but, at the same time, were showing their intimate knowledge of the experience and familiarity with

Appalachian stereotypes. They were using humor to wrestle with the push-and-pull of being from a place they were socially expected to want to leave behind.

The road was a space for the students to construct themselves as members of multiple groups and places: on the one hand, they showed intimate knowledge of their home cultures and the ways in which the region is perceived; on the other hand, they distanced themselves from their home cultures by critiquing stereotypes through humor.

Looking back, as a mixed group of Appalachian Ohioans and non-Appalachian Ohioans, it wasn’t surprising that the students related to one another on the level of stereotype.

Even those who shared a regional identity came from different counties and didn’t share local forms of in-group joking as a reference. All of us related to one another based on varying personal experiences and common knowledge of the perceptions about the region.

Since I wasn’t brave enough to record car stories—or, rather, that the car rides required not to be recorded—I interviewed the students in my office, often feeling

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awkward because we knew each other well enough that turning on the recorder felt like bringing an unknowing stranger into the conversation. Eventually it faded into the background, but the starts were always a little choppy for that reason.

The students I interviewed came from various cities and towns across the 32 counties of Ohio.49 Each county has its own geographic context, economic history, and relationships to surrounding areas. Brown County, for instance, is a heavy agriculture area with easy commuter access to the Greater Cincinnati area. Jefferson County, however, a heavy industrial area, is located on the West Virginia border and has commuting connections to other industrial areas such as Pittsburgh and Wheeling. As we will see later on in this chapter, the agricultural economy in Brown County provides a number of youth with a valued career trajectory that allows high school graduates to remain in the area. Counties like Scioto, where I did my fieldwork for chapters 1 and 3, that were previously industrialized are now more service-oriented areas in their post- industrial phase, with careers primarily in educational and medical service jobs.

Charting Ambivalence

Several categories of significance emerged throughout my time with the students that became clearer throughout the interview reviewing and transcribing process. The best way I can describe the umbrella under which the categories fit is the ambivalence of being from a place to which you’ll probably never (want to) return. In all the discussions, various emotions and positionings arise in relation to this core feeling of being from

49 I intentionally do not mentioning which county each of the students are from in order to protect their privacy and to maintain the integrity of their pseudonyms. 86

somewhere to which one won’t/can’t return. Not only can none of us really “return home”—in the sense of reliving the memories that we eventually construct of the past— but for these students, returning home is antithetical to how they have come to understand themselves (at least in the moment at which I interviewed them). 50 The space of home is one that they describe as being of their past but not necessarily of themselves in the present. They talk about not fitting in, being outcasts, being different. They talk about not being what the place is or wanting to distance themselves from what it does to people.

They describe permanent return as failure.

The economic realities support their concerns, as there are few skilled jobs outside of the medical and educational fields. One students’ response to a survey conducted by the Appalachian Faculty Learning Community at Ohio University put it quite succinctly: “Appalachians don’t want to be converted into non-Appalachians, and that is unfortunately what education does to them because there is no use for an education in this depressed region of the country” (Denham 3). For a number of students from

Appalachian Ohio, getting a degree in a field that doesn’t relate to a job back home necessarily means having to leave the county or the region.

However, “getting out” stories coexist alongside “staying” stories, as students narrate the experiences of friends who still live in their home counties. Additionally, a year or so after having conducted the bulk of my interviews, two other students associated with the Appalachian Project that I did not get to interview informally expressed interest in their home communities and the possibility of returning home. One

50 As we will see in the next paragraph and later in the conclusion, attitudes toward home and the realities of some of the students’ circumstances affected their choices and abilities to leave the region. 87

was a sophomore who in returning home for holidays realized the value of her home culture. The second was a freshman in 2013 and had always planned on returning home to become a political leader in Meigs County. He also had a girlfriend back home that likely kept him more connected and returning more frequently. Still, others return out of necessity. Wren, for instance, was adamant about not going back home but was unemployed after completing her undergraduate degree and had to move back in with her parents. She was seeking employment outside of her home county in 2013 and eventually commuted to work outside the county, but her circumstance illustrates how the desire to leave can be challenged or hampered by material or other circumstances.

“On the Road to Anywhere Else”: Exceptionality at Home

The students I spoke with talked about how they did not fit in—for some reason or another—at home. Each story exemplifies this feeling of intellectual, moral, and emotional distance from their peers, families, and/or communities that they experienced even before the physical distance of college. Whether they identified as outcasts, extraordinarily intelligent students, more empathetic and liberal, or a mixture of these features, they characterized themselves as people set apart in some significant way that eventually made them to want to leave home.

While experiencing issues at home, Jana found that school was a place that she excelled and received positive feedback. In this extended quote, Jana explains how she did not feel understood while she was growing up and connects this feeling explicitly to

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her being interested in excelling at school. In particular, she notes how excelling in school made her an outcast in her family.

It’s hard. ‘Mean, it’s kind of interesting because that [family] really has

been the driving point of me going to college. I really think that, I don’t

know, I’ve always been a little bit more ahead than, not now, not now, not

even in middle school, but when I was younger I was always a little bit

ahead of like my classmates. I was also older than a lot of them…I think I

tried extra hard to keep it going. Like, ‘oh hey, I’m kinda smart’ and I had

nobody to tell me, my parents never really were like ‘oh you’re doing a

great job, you’re so great or, you ARE smart, wow you got a hundred

[percent].’ It was like, I always did it on my own and I, it was my own

positive reinforcement in life was like getting that ‘A’ on the test or

something.

I always felt kind of like the outcast of my family. I remember going

through a huge teenage rebellion phase and gauging my ears really big and

getting secret tattoos and piercings and it was like, I feel like, I really did

those things. I was valedictorian when I was doing that stuff. I was still

doing my thing; I wasn’t doing drugs or alcohol or anything. I always felt

like that. I am different than everybody around me. They don’t understand

me. My family mostly—just my family. My family doesn’t understand

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me. I’m the outcast. I’m like whatever. Just for wanting to go to school.

It’s just the weirdest thing.

I’ve had to raise myself to be the kind of person I wanted to be. That is

why school was so important to me too is because I didn’t feel like such

an outcast at school necessarily…I do always remember feeling different

than like, feeling like my parents never understand me or never cared. It’s

been a really long journey with school and kind of just finding myself and

being this person that I want to be. Kind of like letting go both of the guilt

that I have of being somebody and being just this person I didn’t like. It’s

hard to have all of these things and have this pressure on myself to be

something better, and to be something better not just status-wise. I don’t

even want this huge paying job; I want just to be educated and help people

in my job. I don’t even care about being a doctor or something great, but

it’s never been about the money or anything. It’s just been this personal

thing I think since I was a kid.

Jana positions herself outside of the scope of normalcy and praise in her family, and describes how she motivated herself by cultivating her own sense of self-worth and using the academic reward system as motivation to pursue her passion. Family rewards were not aligned with academic rewards, as her expectations for her parents and siblings to note how she was good at school or received 100% on a test were not fulfilled. She describes having to build herself to be the kind of person she wanted (and wants) to be

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and the guilt that comes along with “being somebody.” School was the space where Jana felt important and accomplished. She didn’t say she felt understood in school though, and in our informal conversations about her experience at Ohio State she said she felt alienated from her wealthier roommates who did not have to hold a job during their undergraduate years, always had money to pay for things, and didn’t seem to understand

Jana’s relationship to home.

Brad also describes himself as an intelligent person, but he emphasizes how he did not have to try very hard in school. Unlike Jana, who chased the ‘A,’ was “president of everything,” and became valedictorian, Brad describes himself as someone innately gifted but unchallenged in school, and thus unmotivated to do much more than attend class. One of the stories Brad tells about his high school education takes place during his senior year in physics/chemistry class. The teacher had been awarded a new SMART board for the classroom but wasn’t making good use of it. One day (which wasn’t terribly different from the others), the teacher sat at his desk playing on his computer while the students entertained themselves by linking together 80 dry erase markers. The superintendent from the high school walked in with a reporter from the Ironton Tribune to do a story about the new SMART boards. Needless to say, the situation wasn’t looking good, and the superintendent asked the students what they were doing in class that day.

Brad sprung to the rescue saying,

We’re doing a physics experiment. We’re taking into account the potential

kinetic energy and we’re going to take this washer and put it on the end

and watch it go down our little pipeline, taking into account the friction

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coefficient. (Presentation at the 2013 annual meeting of the Appalachian

Studies Association)

He explains how he was “just throwing out all these words I had heard at some point during my high school career. And [the Superintendent] said, ‘Oh, ok. That’s really good’.” During our one-on-one interview, Brad said,

I remember my teacher telling me that I could have been our valedictorian

if I had actually put in some kind of effort, but I just didn’t have to. The

classes were too easy. When all the other kids have to get something

explained to them three or four times and I hear it the first time or the

second time and I’m good to go, there’s just no motivation, really, to

study.

Brad is the unassuming, intelligent hero of his chemistry story. While even his teacher is stunned into silence when the superintendent walks in, Brad is clever enough to use his actual knowledge of the subject to fool the authority figure. He constructs himself as someone who is intelligent enough to get good grades, but can’t to be bogged down by the mediocre work it takes to get them in his classes. Brad demonstrates that he isn’t just book smart, he uses his intellect to quickly adapt in challenging situations.

For Dana, growing up in her county meant defining her identity against her mother, who also grew up and currently resides there. It also meant feeling like her liberal “equalist” views were often demeaned and misunderstood. Being pegged as her mother’s kid brought these two issues together because her mother has more conservative

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views than Dana, which makes for a difficult family dynamic itself, let alone trying to establish a liberal identity in a conservative atmosphere.

Trying to be my own person was hard sometimes because there was the

expectation of, oh you’re [X’s] kid and you look a lot like her so therefore

you’re gonna…there was this kind of pressure in my mind of I had to be

her in a way…

Even back in high school and middle school I had a lot of more liberal

views than other people around me. For example, I was often called a

feminist in high school and that was meant to kind of be an insult. I was a

tomboy—most of the time I was tougher than most boys and I’d always be

that girl going, oh, guy can do this why can’t I? Basically had that equal

footing. And they’re like, oh, Dana, you’re such a feminist. You know,

kind of like, oh, brush me off and really target that as more of an insult.

And that was just amongst my own peers, much less older people…

Growing up I didn’t necessarily [feel] like I belonged, I guess. I could

blend in and be one of the crowd if I needed to, which I did the majority of

the time, and you know if you look, on the outside looking in I’m really

not that different, but on the inside I’m just different enough to where it

doesn’t feel like where I’m supposed to be, if that makes sense…

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It was more of a gut feeling I’ve always had my whole life of where I,

that’s not where I was supposed to be. I didn’t belong…I never necessarily

felt myself. Basically the only year that I felt I was being me was my

senior year. I feel like part of that was because I knew I was going to go

away to college that I just didn’t care, you know. I’m leaving in a year,

why not? I had more guts to kind of more speak out about how I felt about

life.

For Dana, separating herself out from her mother and being able to be true to her liberal values were very important aspects of feeling comfortable and being herself. Dana’s mother’s conservative views made that process more difficult, and likely all the more important.

Each of the students’ stories illustrate how they struggled or sought out ways to feel comfortable and valuable in their communities. Jana found that school was a place she felt validated by getting good grads and being involved in extracurricular activities.

For Brad, outsmarting his teacher and the superintendent with his quick wit and getting by in school without trying is a special point of pride. And Dana struggled to get out from behind her mother’s shadow so that she could be herself and openly talk about her liberal views.

“Wherever I’m Happiest”: Constructing Comfort & Belonging

When I asked Jana how she defines home she paused for a long time and then said, “Honestly, I think it’s just a word. I don’t feel comfortable when I go back.” She

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explained that things are always the same at her dad’s house, the place she calls home and the place she’d lived in since she was in 8th grade when her parents divorced. When she visits home Jana doesn’t knock on the door, but she does ask before eating anything out of the pantry; there’s a certain level of familiarity mixed with the politeness of being a guest. She says she doesn’t experience her home county or her father’s house as more than just a word, and the hives she gets when she goes home are a testament to just how uncomfortable she is in that space, so when she came to Columbus, Jana tried to make a space for herself where she felt comfortable.

I don’t think I have a very strong association with home. I think that that’s

why when I moved to Columbus. I have so much stuff I truly have so

many things to decorate and to pull things together and candles and stuff.

When I finally got my first apartment I wanted it to be home and so—

there’s so much that I wanted to do here and I don’t spend money I just

have stuff or accumulate things. But it’s important to me to be, I wanted it

to be cozy in here. So I think I tried to make home mean something to me

now because it’s always probably just been a word.

For Jana, making home comfortable is about coziness and creating an atmosphere that reflects her taste. Jana talked about liking to be able to watch the TV shows she likes and arranging the room in a way that suits her, so being comfortable is also about expressing her autonomy in a domestic space and having the ability to have things the way she likes them. When she visits home, she has to live in a space created and governed by others and, as a guest in that space, has to accommodate her family’s life rhythm.

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When I asked Dave where he called home and how he would describe it, he said,

I would call Columbus home, but then that would make me feel bad,

because my family is from [X]. But, in my GPS, home is Columbus. I’m

definitely more attached to Columbus than I am to [X] or [Y (neighboring

city)]. But it does make me feel—I actually just had this discussion last

week ‘cause I was coming to Columbus, I think it was a month ago, I

think, I was coming home and I had Columbus in my GPS and I was like,

I feel really bad that that’s home in my GPS, but this is where I was

happiest so that’s where I consider home. I think that’s how I define it—

wherever I’m happiest.

Cassie: So what makes you happy in Columbus?

Dave: This sounds mean, but I can’t stand being around stupid people

[laughs], and back home that’s pretty much all there is. So, the intelligent

people—there’s a huge brain drain. That’s another thing I’ve done

research on…So, once the mills closed, I mean, there’s been a huge brain

drain ‘cause nobody that has any real marketable skills is going to be

staying in the area. And with the fracking now in the area that might

change. Maybe there’ll be more engineers that would stay, but people with

skills that are intelligent enough to go out and get good jobs, they’re not

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going to stay there. So when I go home the only people I associate with

are people that I’m just like…how are you a person? Which is really mean

but it’s true.

Here in Columbus there was a community that I could get involved with

of kind of more intelligent people, people who are more concerned with

things that matter. So people back home are just concerned with where

they’re gonna get, a lot of them are just concerned about where they’re

gonna get more beer or more pot, you know, or prescription drugs or

something. So they’re not really concerned about things that actually

matter. And that’s what I like to be around.

Dave defines home in a couple of interesting ways, as he explains how programming

Columbus as “home” in his GPS signifies the intellectual connection that he seeks for fulfillment. The geographical positioning system maps his trajectory to the place to which he feels most connected. Happiness, as Dave describes it, is being able to talk to people about “things that actually matter,” which he contrasts with the way he describes people in his village who “are just concerned about where they’re gonna get more beer or more pot…or prescription drugs or something.” Though Dave doesn’t describe which things

“actually matter,” he makes it clear that what some folks in his village are concerned about do not fit into his conception of actually mattering things. Dave describes

Columbus as a space where intellectuals reside, whereas he constructs his home as a

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place affected by brain drain, a place that all the intelligent people would leave behind.

People with marketable skills, like engineers, he says, will seek employment elsewhere.

“They think that I forget where I came from”: Negotiating Value in Stories about Visiting

Home

Early on in my conversation with Jana I asked her what came to mind when she thought of her home county—a rather vague question that she kindly took in a more concrete direction. Her answer is one that is indicative of other students’ responses: relying on the knowledge of her personal experience, feeling conflicted about the place that she grew up in, the people she grew up with, and the way that they had all changed over time.

When I think of [my home county] I think of my own situation and my

per-, when I think of home I think of what my home was like, like the

house that I lived in was, I don’t always necessarily look back and think

about [it]. I do know that I don’t necessarily keep in touch with the people

that are there anymore. Um, I know that when I go there, every time I go

there I get hives [laughs]; I get freaked out. I mean, truly, every time I go

back I hear of somebody I know addicted to some new drug that I’ve

probably never even heard of or this person is pregnant. I actually haven’t

had too many of my friends get pregnant. I think only one of my close

friends that lives there has a child. Um…but it’s sad. I mean some of the

people I grew up with like contenders to be valedictorian with me are

don’t even speak articulately anymore and they’re just in a fast food

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restaurant or something and with children. It’s like they completely forgot

about, I mean their dreams or aspirations and things like that. And that’s

kind of another hard thing is when I do go back I feel like my friends think

that I think that I’m better than them or something. So I, it’s almost like I

just sound like a hypocrite right there. I’m saying that they almost forget

where they come from or whatever but they think that I forget where I

came from kind of. Because I’m educated or whatever.

The scope of experience in Jana’s narration expands and contracts as she reflects on growing up, leaving, and returning to the county. Though she says she relies upon her

“own situation” as opposed to generalizing about the village as a whole, Jana also pulls from stories circulating around the village (and perhaps in the media and more general discourses of places like where she grew up) to fill in the picture of life in the county.

In the beginning of Jana’s answer to the question, she restricts the scope of her answer to her “own situation,” saying that she is only speaking about her personal experience. She explains that she thinks about what her own home was like since she doesn’t think about the city itself very frequently, as she is no longer closely connected to those who live there. Jana then elaborates about why she is distanced from the place she grew up, revealing that she experiences severe anxiety when she visits. Next, she tells me that the source of her anxiety is about receiving difficult news about the lives of people in the area, specifically that people are on drugs or pregnant. Though earlier she limited her answer to “her own situation,” here Jana expands the scope of her knowledge beyond the personal to talk about the lives of those she doesn’t “necessarily keep in touch

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with...anymore.” She engages knowledge about her home (and the Appalachian region more generally) that exists in national as well as local discourse.51

When she says that she doesn’t have many friends that have become pregnant,

Jana reinforces that she is referencing local trends that she knows about secondhand rather than her own personal experience, she positions herself at a distance from the very activity that causes anxiety since she is not close with many people and knows of such activity only through others. However, the news itself affects her enough to cause a physical reaction and a strong reluctance to visit home. The last section of her response returns to the personal to illustrate her point. She pits being a contender for valedictorian against working a fast-food job and having a child at a young age, labeling the latter as forgetting one’s “dreams or aspirations.” Forgetting also extends to the realm of language, as Jana comments on how her friend doesn’t “even speak articulately anymore.”

In the last section of Jana’s quote, she directly addresses the distance she has articulated between her life, the life of her classmate, and her home town. She expresses a critical reflection from elsewhere as she feels self-conscious about how her friends back home think she thinks about herself in relation to them: she is concerned that they think she thinks she’s better than them. The ways he views her old friends and the way she thinks they view her relate back to a question about what it means to stay true to “where you came from.” Jana raises question about the role of education in the region and

51 Portsmouth, Ohio, for instance, where I carried out my fieldwork, was featured in a 2011 New York Times article about OxyContin abuse in Appalachia. Then, in December 2012, WOSU’s All Sides with Ann Fisher explored “The Intersection of Poverty & Drugs in Appalachia” with a focus on Appalachian Ohio.

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whether going on for college is a way to stay true to where you came from or if it eventually distances her from her home.

Concepts of remembering and forgetting play out in interesting ways in Jana’s discussion of seeing people when she goes home. Remembering and forgetting are framed in terms of value, but not in terms of recollection. Remembering in this case stems from value and evaluation of remembering or forgetting and is stated as a matter of perspective. Jana sees her high school friend working at a fast food restaurant, hears her speak, and evaluates the friend to have forgotten the values that made her a contender for valedictorian. Here Jana shows that she values a college trajectory where a young person graduates high school, attends college, and has children later on in life after some kind of career success has been achieved. Jana also works to see herself from the eyes of others back home that she believes may perceive her as arrogant because she is educated. Jana, then, perceives people at home judging her behavior against the value of humility.

This tension between education and humility came up in other conversations with students. There was a sense that “getting educated” distanced one from one’s family and community because of the transformation associated with a college degree. Recall, for instance, the quote from the Ohio University survey about parents’ reluctance to send their students to college. A staff member at Ohio State from Minford, Scioto County,

Ohio once remarked informally to me that she would always downplay her achievements in high school by mentioning the things she was not good at alongside the things she excelled at. For example, if she got an “A” on a test she would also note that her friends

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were good at things that she wasn’t, like sports. “Bragging on oneself” was discouraged behavior.

I asked Jana how people respond to her having gone to college, and she replied,

With my friends it’s generally that…we don’t talk about me, we talk about

them. They never ask me like what did you major in, how is Columbus,

what do you do there? … Um, but, and with my family, the way that it

comes out with them is that like my sisters don’t really talk to me or my

parents don’t really talk to me about me either. My sisters don’t really talk

to me at all…going to school has been what I have just always want—it’s

been like my passion, on the inside, and so when I went and did all these

things it was almost like shocking to my family that I was just going to up

and leave and go to school and that was so important to me. They couldn’t

understand that I was doing something that made me happy. They didn’t

understand the idea of pursuing your happiness. It’s like, ‘well,

Youngstown State you could get a free ride there.’ Well I don’t want to go

to Youngstown State. They don’t even have the program that I want. And

I don’t want to live with my parents. It just felt like no one really ever

understood and it’s like I was viewed upon negatively for not hearing

them out or, things like that.

A discussion with Dave about the frequency of his visits home brings up similar notions of guilt related to the proximity between home and Ohio State, ways of communicating care and maintaining relationships, differences between his and his

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parents’ expectations about obtaining and education, and community values about education.

Cassie: What brings you back to [your home village] every six weeks?

Dave: I just feel bad. So, um, I don’t, I’m really not happy when I go back

but I still feel that I have this sense that, I feel guilty, you know. I know

my parents probably think I think I’m too good for them or something.

That came back to when I was a senior in high school applying to

colleges. I wanted to apply to all these really good schools, I did apply to

all these really good schools and I got into them and I wanted to go and

my dad specifically told me once…he said, what you think you’re too

good for, you think you’re too good for us? You know, like, I wanted to

go to a school he thought was just for rich kids, and he said explicitly one

time, “Do you think you’re too good for us or something?” And I feel bad

because I don’t think I’m too good for them. I mean I’m not particularly

happy when I go back there, that’s why I don’t visit that much and I value

education more than most people in that community, but I don’t think I’m

too good for them. I just have different values.

So when I go back because I feel guilty because I think, I think that they

feel like they‘re getting left behind or forgotten about. So, my family

there’s no way to express, like I’m not, I can’t just say to them hey I miss

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you guys or something, ‘cause we, you know, my family doesn’t

communicate like that. So my way of showing that I’m still thinking about

them is by visiting once in a while and having dinner with them or

something.

Like Jana, Dave expresses a crucial disconnect between the ways he and his family evaluate educational institutions. His father explicitly values a local, working- class education and pits prestige institutions against their family’s values, which are closely tied to location and income level. Dave, on the other hand, sees prestige institutions as opportunities for unique development toward specific career choices, such as being trained in a top program in economics. For Dave’s father, choosing the prestige institution also means choosing to physically and ideologically separate from the family in a meaningful way. Dave agrees with this as well—he says that he values education more than others in the community and states that his values are indeed different from others at home—but wants to remove the hierarchical associations from the discussion.

Specialty education, Dave argues here, is important and is the product of and results in different values, but these values can exist on an equal plane. (Of course, in “Wherever

I’m Happiest,” we saw Dave expressing hierarchical evaluations of education with regard to what types of people he wants to surround himself with and what kind of people live in and move to his home town.) Jana and Dave experience tensions between the values of education and humility are such that their desire for higher education (for Dave, specifically attending a prestige school) is perceived as a threat to being humble and staying connected to family and community values. Education is perceived as having the

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potential (and likelihood) to create ideological, cultural, and physical distance between students and their home communities.

Dave shows that he is still connected to his family by visiting at least every six weeks. Visiting regularly shows that he still thinks about, misses, and cares about his family. The obligation Dave feels stems from guilt, a specific kind of obligation to his family that he tempers so that they don’t feel “like they‘re getting left behind or forgotten about.” Here Dave positions himself ahead of his family: he has done the leaving, presumably to a more valuable space, and they may feel left behind by him, and they have the potential to be forgotten about as he is off doing better things. Dave characterizes himself as being mobile and having agency while his family is characterized as permanent and longing for his approval and attention.

While in school, students who show promise are told by their guidance counselors to “get out” so they can make something of themselves. Students who identify as smart talk with each other and share resources for applying to and paying for college. When those whoo “got out” return to visit, however, they are expected not to talk about having gotten out, and are not often encouraged to talk about their new experiences in college.

Though the “get out” message is prominent in the region, students’ accounts of their regional exit, and the attendant guilt and ambivalence they feel about intellectual and moral distances when visiting home, reveal that talking about having “gotten out” is unacceptable because it is an offensive position that violates cultural norms of humility and a close-knit family. Talk about alienation from home, friends, and family is more acceptable in the university space where it can garner empathy and institutional support

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because it taps into the “education as transformation” story and the types of narratives that are valued in the minority scholarship application process.

Keeping Ties

Close ties are at the crux of the ambivalence that students feel about home and wherever else they find themselves, and visits home are the physical embodiment of continued commitment to family and community. In the sections above, Jana and Dave describe how visiting home presents a significant and uneasy tension in values, and yet they have an internal clock that lets them know when they have been away too long.

Keeping close ties to home—through regular visits or other means of communication and exchange—maintains the aspect of their being that draws them back over and over again.

Anne, who was a senior at Ohio State when I interviewed her, told a markedly different story about her relationship to home. Talking about her visits home, Anne describes how she feels she can move comfortably between Columbus and her home city.

Cassie: Where do you feel most comfortable?

Anne: I don’t know. I think I feel pretty comfortable in both places. But

maybe kind of feel like I’ve outgrown [my home city], you know, a little

bit. I feel distanced from it, I think, definitely. I don’t feel like I go home

and it’s like oh, Anne…is home from the big city you know. It’s kind of

more like everyone that I was friends with and grew up with have, they’re

in college now so the high school kids I don’t know as much and the

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people working at the grocery stores and stuff that were working there

when I went back freshman and sophomore year I don’t know them

anymore and it’s kind of a new wave, like my sister she’s like four years

younger than me. Her age group is kind of running all the fast food

restaurants and stuff. That’s kind of weird, so while I do go back and I

know everyone at the same time there’s a lot that I don’t know and it’s,

it’s weird. I don’t know. I definitely feel comfortable at home but mostly

when I’m around my family and I feel comfortable just like kind of

picking up that old identity a little bit. I don’t know. I guess maybe more

comfortable here just because its where my daily life is, but it’s always

comfortable to go back to what’s familiar too, I think. Maybe both

[laughs]. I guess that’s the answer.

Anne describes how she negotiates continuity and change when she returns home. She says that she feels most comfortable in Columbus as well as “picking up that old identity a little bit.” She maintains a connection to life at home through her sister, who is part of the “new wave” of young people who fill the roles she and her classmates used to occupy. Anne expresses that she feels distanced from her home town because the childhood experiences and relationships she was used to experiencing in that space have changed.52

Jule noted that people from her home city often kept close ties to home even if they didn’t live there anymore, saying,

52 Anne’s ability to traverse spaces can also be attributed to the fact that she conducted research in the region and developed a critical perspective on regional politics. 107

I think there’s definitely a mix [of people in her age group that either

decided to leave or stay] but in my class even the people that have gone

away are still really closely tied to the community or haven’t gone that far.

There are a lot of people…from my hometown that are in Columbus now.

I could throw a rock and find someone from [X]. If you leave you don’t go

that far and then everybody always keeps their close ties with someone

from home. I have two girls that graduated with me from high school and

they go to WVU and they’re best friends and they live together and they

have other roommates, but they’re best friends. So it’s just kind of like

that: you keep your close ties even if you kind of go off. And there aren’t

many people who break it completely.

Even for those who no longer live in the region itself, staying connected—not breaking the connection to place and people—is important and often maintained.

Dead-End Stories

All the students I spoke with had at least one, if not multiple, “dead-end stories,” stories about people who “just” stayed home. These stories were examples of what happens when you don’t “get out.” Returning to Jana’s comment about her friend who was a contender to be valedictorian, there’s a sense of degeneration, of having slipped back, in her statement. Those who stayed behind “don’t even speak articulately anymore” and “completely forgot about…their dreams or aspirations.” Staying home is not only a dead-end, it’s a space where one’s intellect and hope actively disintegrates.

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Dave struggles with the ways in which the lives of those who stayed in his home community both reflect and conflict with his values:

I also have a lot of friends who stayed there and now that they’re kind of

growing up they’re like ‘this is not how I wanted my life to go’ and I

realized that could have been, that easily could have been me. Now they’re

working at the movie theaters and they’re still working at movie theaters

and stuff. I was just really lucky. So, I don’t know. I’m thank—I’m happy

I grew up there, I wish my parents and my grandparents weren’t still in

that area but I’m glad that I grew up there because now I can go out and

move around and still, I don’t know. It gave me a sense of identity kind of

I guess because I know people where I’m from are really hard working

and stuff and that gave me a, that’s why I think I’m so hard working is that

instilled in me the values of some good some bad so, I’m really stoic but

I’m really hard working. I mean, just kind of who I am. A lot of who I am

is because of where I’m from.

…

If there was a thriving economy in that area, that area would no longer

have the same character because a lot of its character is derived from the

fact that it’s so challenging to live there… If I could have a job where I

would have the same pay if I lived in Pittsburgh or if I lived in [X] but [X]

was still the same, I probably wouldn’t because there’s literally nothing to

do and if I had kids they’d be going through a really terrible school

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system. If there was a thriving economy and [X] kind of changed…I don’t

think I would want to go back there primarily because of the school

system. I went through the school system; I know its not good. I don’t’

want my kids going through that school system…If I could make some

sacrifices to go back, no, I wouldn’t, because I wouldn’t even go back if I

had the same pay. So I don’t think I’d go back. I don’t see myself ever

returning except for visits.

Dave attributes his success to the “character” and work ethic of his home and family. He expresses ambivalence about the values he gained from the place he grew up, though, saying that the place “instilled in me the values of some good some bad so.” Dave attributes the “character” and values of the village to “the fact that it’s so challenging to live there,” and also wishes that his family didn’t want to/have to live there anymore. The same structural challenges that require a resilient character, which is itself valued by the community suffering the challenges, also put pressure on residents to leave. These positive values associated with the place don’t come up, though, when talking about young people who had to or chose to stay in the village. They are not described as resilient or strong, but rather as not having made it in some way: having failed, having regressed, or being too deeply rooted in local culture. Since there are few career opportunities outside of education and the medical field, a number of young people work low-paying service jobs, which is used as further evidence of failure.

Of the people who stayed in his home town, Dave describes how the geography itself—not individual students—limited their life chances; the geography itself is

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described as a deterrent to success. He begins by talking about older residents in the area who experienced the town as a productive steel town and experienced deindustrialization firsthand. He then then moves on to talk about his classmates’ post-industrialization experiences:

The thing is, when they grew up that area was good, so I think they

probably still have lingering perceptions of the area that are no longer

accurate. And that makes them value it more than they probably should. I

think that’s probably the main thing they just honestly, they don’t see that

this is, you’re not going to get anywhere if you stick around and you’re

somebody my age, as evidenced by all the kids in my class that are still

doing nothing with their lives. And they’re not dumb kids, they’re smart

kids, but they just they never did anything because they tried to stick

around in the area. And they’re in their fourth year of community college

and they don’t see an end. They’re not getting anywhere.

Dave shifts away from the idea that the students themselves are to blame for their circumstances, and moves toward a critique of circumstances and opportunities. The kids are smart, he explains, but they “tried to stick around” and got caught in the community college circuit and aren’t “getting anywhere.”

Even if you have a decent job and a nice apartment in town, there is still a stigma attached to staying in one’s home county that detracts from one’s accomplishments. Jule explained to me that one of her friends dropped out of Ohio State because he didn’t make many friends and went back home to get a job in the fracking industry. He and his

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roommate have a nice apartment together, Jule said: “It’s a really nice set up but, you know, at the end of the day, for me, it’s on route 7 in [my county], so, it’s, you know, a give and a take. Yeah, it’s an awesome apartment, but this is where you live.” The value of a well-paying job and an apartment decrease significantly because they’re located in her home city. This is interesting, of course, since, as Dave and others have commented above, getting a well-paying job and having a nice place is a significant accomplishment in Appalachian Ohio because they’re so difficult to come by. The values associated with the struggle to achieve at home are eclipsed by the devaluation of the place itself.

Anne, on the other hand, discusses farming culture and close-knit families as a reason to stay home, which is quite different from the types of lives that Dave and Jule describe, reflecting how different local economies shape regional culture. While Jule and

Dave come from former steel towns, Anne comes from a heavy farming area that is also the wealthiest of the Appalachian Ohio counties and situated within commuting distance of a large city, so the area has more diversified economic opportunities than some of the other counties that other students come from.

Cassie: Do you see your trajectory as being similar or different from

people you grew up with?

Anne: I’ve thought about this a lot because Columbus isn’t really that far

from [the county I grew up in], but at the same time I am the only one that

went to OSU, one of the bigger schools in Ohio, and further pretty much

than anyone else, which is kind of strange. I don’t know, I would have

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thought that a lot more people would have went away for college. I think

maybe I aimed a little differently than other people did. A lot of people,

especially my friends that did grow up farming and stuff. I was close to

my family. I’m very close to my family but they were close in a different

sense, I would say. I always knew I wanted to go a little bit further away

and I wasn’t, I didn’t have those farming roots really, which I really think

a lot of people like that’s what kept them at home was just that lifestyle.

Even though we went to the same school and grew up in the same place its

kind of a different experience there. I was comfortable leaving home and

going back and knowing I would go back, but I think a lot of people just

really wanted to stay closer to their families.

Anne describes staying home as a choice to “stay closer to [family]” rather than an inability to get out of the area. She explains that she is close to her family, but that those who stayed home “were close in a different sense” because they didn’t feel as comfortable as she did leaving home. Unlike the dead-end stories that Jana, Jule, and

Dave tell about those who stayed home in their counties, Anne’s claim is that students who stayed in her village have the same family values that she does but experience them to a different degree. Unlike the post-industrial counties, Brown County has a strong farming culture that requires healthy young people for the labor pool and provides jobs for them in the area, often on family farms.

When I visited Brown County during the spring 2014 Ohio State Economic

Access Initiative service trip, multiple students throughout all grades mentioned that they

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would not need a college education because they were going to work on a farm or in a local agricultural business. Simply put, the options are just different in Brown County than they are in post-industrial Appalachian Ohio counties, and this is likely the reason why those who stay home in these areas have markedly different experiences from students like Jana, Jule, and Dave’s. While students from Bown County characterize staying home as a commitment to family and lifestyle, the others describe it as a lack of ambition and backsliding that are common of their home places.

Conclusion

The Ohio State University students I spoke with had ambivalent relationships toward home because from quite early on their success was predicated on their keeping a distance from home. Their moral geography had (and still does have) clearly defined spaces of value. Home spaces combine limited options with demands of humility while the university space combines expanding options with new discourses of value that are often in conflict with home values. Traversing the road between college and home then, is a critical practice of “keeping ties” that continually asserts students’ desire, willingness, or obligation to bridge their two worlds.

Small post-industrial cities in Appalachian Ohio have limited economic options for young college graduates, and, as Dave pointed out, even if there were jobs for them, there are other barriers for potential returners, such as a poor education system. Coming from a culture and region that values place and family complicates the ways that students are able to succeed elsewhere. Students deal with these dual commitments to educational

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success and family values by “keeping ties,” even though doing so can be painful, tense, and alienating at times. Anne’s ability to go back and forth relatively easily was an exception, as most of the students found code switching rather difficult. Analyzing the students’ reflections made me wonder what economic and discursive changes would need to take place to make staying/returning possible and, even more importantly, a point of pride.

The following chapter investigates the ways that residents in southern Ohio work to recuperate that pride of community and place—how they try to reconfigure their reflections from elsewhere.

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Chapter 3: Public Display and Commemoration in Portsmouth, Ohio

And in a world of ever-growing ephemerality and superficiality, our authenticity is an

asset. –Richey Piiparinen and Anne Trubek, “Introduction,” Rust Belt Chic

In the early 1990s, a handful of residents in a small, post-industrial river city in southern Ohio managed to raise enough money to start a mural project that would eventually grow to be over 60 paintings stretching over 2,000 feet throughout the city.

Fifty-six of these murals are painted on a 20-foot-tall floodwall along the Ohio River.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built the wall between 1940-1950 to protect the city after multiple floods had devastated it since the late 1790s (Horr, McClellan & Dafford vi). In 2015, more murals are still being discussed, planned, and imagined, while others are being revisited and touched-up. Portsmouth, Ohio, like a number of other post- industrial cities, rose to industrial prominence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, only to be devastated by disinvestment and deindustrialization during the latter half of the

20th century. The way that people talk about this process and its effects in Portsmouth

(and throughout Appalachian Ohio) is to split experience into two: “when the mills were still around” and “after the mills closed.” Often this rupture is located in the 1970s and

1980s. The rupture rippled through the generations, and today people reflect on the present by relating it to the time “when the mills were still around.” When asked about

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young people’s aspirations to attend college, they’re answers are articulated in terms of work ethic, as people say that kids these days just don’t work as hard as their parents and grandparents used to. When you ask why the steel mills closed, everyone says that the companies moved overseas; there’s not much talk (besides implicitly) about the labor strikes, the Tennessee Valley Authority in the South, the Sun Belt, governmental policies, or corporate greed—or, at least, they did not talk to me about the process in those terms.

Portsmouth residents face a significantly different environment than they did a century ago. Middle-aged adults say that young people have to get an education to “make something” of themselves, and everyone knows that if someone is successful at that they’re not likely to come back. With the young itching to get out and the older folks coming back to retire, places like these rely upon and harness the energies of those who stick around as well as those who pass through. Residents have to find something special that reflects the local in order to attract the visitor. James Connolly observes in the introduction to After the Factory: Reinventing America’s Industrial Small Cities (2010),

“Every smaller post-industrial city faces this same challenge—to remake itself into something new” (11). In Portsmouth, the Floodwall Murals are a forum for constructing both the past and the present through a combination of art, history, and community engagement. Individual mural panels combine to create a collective story of the

Portsmouth area that I argue responds to the moment of deindustrialization in the 1980s and a desire for extended history, memory, and coherence in the present.

When we think of murals in the United States, our minds typically go to those painted under the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration during the

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Great Depression. One might also think of a host of culturally diverse urban centers such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, , or , where various minority groups have had to demand recognition through representation. Internationally, the Mexican murals of the 1920s and the highly politicized images of the ongoing conflict between religious groups in Ireland come to mind, as well as Diego Rivera’s work at the Detroit Institute of Art. When we think of murals, we often think of highly- visible, politically charged spaces where racial, ethnic, religious, political, historical and geographic struggles are displayed in local contexts with an eye toward bringing attention to some critical issue. Speaking of murals in Ireland, for example, Jack Santino says,

“The frequency of public symbolic display is due in part to the ongoing need for such displays in a context of contestation; in such a context, symbols are not merely displayed or enacted, they are used: to assert territoriality and identity, to welcome or warn, and frequently, to offend” (40). Murals speak to the need for recognition of identity and historical processes; they articulate desires. Murals, we presume, exist in places, spaces, and contexts in which conflict is inevitable, places where public art is contested precisely because it is controversial. Small, predominately-White post-industrial cities in

Appalachian Ohio are less frequently thought of as places where murals flourish. And yet

Portsmouth strives to be “mural city.”

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2,000 Years of History, 2,000 Feet of Art: The Portsmouth Floodwall Murals

Standing 20 feet high and stretching over 2,000 feet long, the Portsmouth

Floodwall Murals transformed a large, gray concrete wall into a celebration of the city’s history. The tagline for the murals, “2,000 years of history, 2,000 feet of art” emphasizes the vastness of time and space the mural project covers. Stretching from east to west, the

56 images on the floodwall are arranged (almost entirely) chronologically, starting with the ancient Adena and Hopewell cultures, whose descendants, the Shawnee, inhabited the area for several centuries before being forcibly removed in the 18th century. The original settlement of Alexandria, located just to the west of Portsmouth, is depicted, as well as the flood that destroyed it and encouraged residents to relocate to the city’s current location. Henry Massie’s plan for the city and the early founders in the 1800s are shown alongside the founding industries of the area, as well as a mural dedicated to the Erie

Canal. Next are murals showing Portsmouth’s men fighting in the battle of Gettysburg, the 16 founding churches in the city that still stand today, and the old train station and market square.

Portsmouth 1903, a view of the city from the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, boasts four full panels that show the growing city at the turn of the century. Murals depicting life in Portsmouth in the 20th century include industries such as shoe and shoelace manufacturing, steel production, gray iron casting, and uranium enrichment; entertainment landmarks such as Millbrook Park and Chillicothe Street; major local figures such as Roy Rogers, Clarence Carter, Carl Ackerman, , and

Shakespearean actress, Julia Marlowe; local sports events and figures, such as the

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Portsmouth Shoe-Steels, the Portsmouth Spartans, Branch Rickey, and an homage to local baseball stars (who are invited back each year for the annual fundraising banquet); transportation innovations such as streetcars, the Greyhound bus station, and railroads; and murals commemorating government square, the 1937 flood (which prompted the building of the current floodwall), Kentuckians across the river, early education in

Portsmouth and the Shawnee State University expansion, medical history, the armed forces, the Portsmouth Motorcycle Club, and Portsmouth’s sister cities, Corby, England,

Orizaba, Mexico, and Zittau, Germany.

A few murals, such as the one dedicated to organized labor, “Tour of the Scioto

River Valley,” and the Kroger mural, dot the city landscape beyond the floodwall itself.

Recently, individual organizations and companies have requested to have murals painted on their buildings. When I began writing this dissertation in 2013, the Norfolk Western

Railway and Porstmouth Public Library murals, each located on either side of the Scioto

County Visitor’s Bureau, had just been completed, and during my research I heard talk of plans for at least 3 more. When murals are your thing, it’s hard not view every wall as a blank canvas.

Portsmouth Murals Inc.

Portsmouth Murals Incorporated (PMI), the non-profit organization that governs the mural project in the city, is primarily comprised of established older male community members. The board meets to propose future murals;, discuss preparation for and implementation of new murals, as well as upkeep of existing murals. While, as members

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of the community, PMI board members are constantly receiving feedback and recommendations for the murals project from other residents through informal conversations, the vision and implementation of the project is carried out by the board. 53

Unfortunately, I was not able to spend time with the board beyond my interactions with Bob Morton, the current president, so I do not know about their selection process or the inner workings of the board process. What I could gather from various informal conversations, however, is that young people are not involved with or invested in the murals project. The few I spoke with, despite living or attending school in the area, did not visit the murals very often or knew little about them. (One exception to this was an upper-level student at Shawnee State University who works for a local non-profit that was spearheading an effort to put on a festival in honor of the murals.) Though the murals project is explicitly geared toward building community and establishing economic sustainability for the city, very few community members actually have the ability to provide formal input or feedback on the project or have decision-making power. Further, to my knowledge, succession planning by way of incorporating young residents in the leadership structure is non-existent.My discussion of the Portsmouth “community” in this chapter, then, speaks mainly to the ways that PMI board members conceive of the community’s desires and needs.

53 Later, in the section on Mural Compliments, we see can see efforts to democratize aspects and processes of public display in the city. 121

Beginnings

Getting the murals project started was no easy task. Bob Morton, president of

Porstmouth Murals Inc. (PMI), local historian, and former AAA motor coach tour guide and club president, wrote about the history of the murals in two separate editions of AAA

Today in 1996, one in winter and the other in summer. Bob explains in the first installment of the murals feature how Dr. Louis R. Chaboudy and his wife, Ava, were on a motor coach tour of the Wheeling, WV and Steubenville, OH area in winter of 1992 when they saw the Steubenville murals. “When the group toured the murals in

Steubenville Dr. Chaboudy recalls remarking to Ava, ‘The floodwall in Portsmouth would be a good place for murals and they would fix something that has been an eyesore for over 50 years’” (Morton 4). Pooling together the artistic talents of muralist Robert

Dafford (who, in signing on, committed to the life of the project), a AAA seed loan, donations from members of the small mural committee, 501-3C tax exempt status from the Portsmouth Area Community Exhibits, and consultation services from Louise Snider

(the Executive Director of the Downtown Business Association in Steubenville), the mural project became a reality (Morton 5). Local business owners and corporate chains pitched in to provide Dafford lodging and meals during his summer residencies (Morton

7). That same year, Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, Vern Riffe, committed $115,000 over the course two years for the mural project. Numerous small donations from locals and heftier sums from fundraisers, such as revenue from the sale of mural calendars sold at Kroger (which raised $30,134), kept the project going. Bob’s

1996 spring article estimated the total cost of the murals project to be around $370,000.

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Today, PMI maintains the murals project by hosting a fundraising reception each year with famous baseball players from the city. They raise about $20,000 annually for mural maintenance and future projects.

PMI’s plan was to turn the floodwall “eyesore” into a work of art that the community could enjoy, but the idea for the murals was first met with rejection and criticism. Both Morton and Dafford commented on the lack of support for the project at the outset. Bob, for instance, mentioned that they had so few trustees at the beginning of the project that the founding members had to include their wives among the list of members. Their names are included on the dedication panel at the far west end of the wall. The unwieldiness of the project sounds to have been part of the issue, and along with that, skepticism about whether the commissioned artist would have the consistency and skill to execute such a large-scale project. During our driving tour, Bob explained,

“We had a lot of letters to the editor, why you wasting that money and that kind of stuff.

But when Dafford did this mural here, it was the first one he did, and that’s Portsmouth looking at, uh, from the Kentucky side of Portsmouth, before the floodwall…once he did that mural then all the criticism stopped. But before that we had lots of criticism.”

Dafford added that resistance was rooted in residents’ skepticism not only about his artistic abilities but also unfamiliarity with being depicted in public art:

Cassie: I think Bob had mentioned that some people weren’t very

supportive of the murals when you guys first started.

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Robert: Oh, not at all. No, they thought that it was a stupid idea to paint stuff on the floodwall. Course, they were imagining some amateurish, typical kind of stuff…they didn’t realize we were gonna be doing a much higher quality, high-level project. And they certainly didn't imagine they would be seeing themselves being depicted well or even nobly. You know?

Cassie: Yeah.

Robert: Because it is not a culture that has ever seen themselves. In

England, Germany, or France, you walk around their cities and you go in the city hall or restaurants, libraries, anywhere you go there are big paintings of their history: who we are, what we were, we did this, we did that. And our culture here, our American culture…most of us in America only see things like that in history books…‘oh, look, they’re so important, they’re in paintings. We’re not in paintings so we must not be important.’

And just in that one aspect the visual recognition of self-culture, I felt like providing that, providing a reaction in the populous of the effect that,

‘whoa, well look at us, we are important. We’re up there in the nice big paintings, therefore we must be more important than we thought we were.

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Dafford argues that the community had not experienced a large-scale reflection of themselves in other forms prior to the mural project and so had not conceived of their city history as worthy of public record.

Robert Dafford, an internationally-known muralist from Lafayette, Louisiana, painted each of the murals commissioned by PMI. Dafford describes himself as a historically-oriented artist-activist who works toward a “comprehensively organized program of local history murals as tourism attractions” (robertdaffordmurals.com). His website explains that “[s]ince 1988 he has worked extensively in the Ohio River [V]alley, mostly in smaller cities revitalizing their old downtowns, with several interconnected goals in mind—historic preservation, education, and economic development.” In addition to Portsmouth, Dafford has ongoing mural projects in Paducah, KY (where a citywide artists-in-residence revitalization program is currently under way54); Maysville and

Covington, KY; Jeffersonville, IN; and Point Pleasant, WV. Robert is intentional about using art to restore pride in the communities he paints for and believes that seeing one’s community (his)story writ large has a powerful impact on sense of place. He spends a lot of time combing through personal and archival collections for inspiration and frequently incorporates residents’ and family members’ faces in the murals.

When I asked him to explain his self-described style of “painterly historical realism,” Robert explained how he uses scale, history, and realism to evoke moments of

“enchantment” during which people are open to receiving positive messages about themselves.

54 See Noah Adams’ “In Paducah, Artists Create Something from Nothing” on National Public Radio. 125

My goal…has always been to make the illusion of a real space. I have a

personal it’s almost a metaphysical belief that when the painting is good

enough to be a visionary good enough to fool your eyes and brain into

thinking this thing you’re in front of is an actual space or an actual object,

in those few moments you’re fooled, for those few moments you’re

fooled, and when you are generally people are very are delighted by that

experience, it’s a very positive thing. They go, ‘whoa, look at that! It’s so

real I thought I could walk in there for a minute.’ You know, when it’s

that real they’re fooled. They’re delighted to discover that they’ve been

enchanted into the scene…In that moment your guard is down, you’re

open to whatever might be in that picture and if it’s a positive depiction of

your family and your people and your friends, well that’s gonna transmit.

If it’s just in the basic tenor of the painting itself that it’s positive and that

it’s generating inspiration, that inspiration has a moment, you’ve got those

moments where that [inaudible] you feel good. It transmits something and

that is what I’m up to. Transferring good vibes. You know [chuckling].

That’s one of the reasons that I do what I do. That’s one of the things that

I’m up to.

Years earlier, in an interview for Our Ohio in 2007, Robert talked about shifting toward this kind of work: “I wanted to be a celebrity art star but after doing this work, I’ve discovered that I have the ability to translate a community’s feelings and history into

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something you can stand in front of and feel. Somehow feelings are transmitted into these paintings” (Graves 28).

Robert describes his artwork in small cities like Portsmouth as the transmission of

“good vibes” and talks about inspiring individual and community self-confidence.

Interestingly, the style, scale, and location of the murals project have a dual function for the community: on one hand, they construct a history of people and place that encourages positive identification; on the other hand, they project a historical identity of the area that is geared toward attracting tourists. Acting as a mirror that constructs history and identity, the murals reflect Portsmouth back to itself as well as to others. Public history and the articulation of identity became more relevant and necessary for the residents of

Portsmouth once they were no longer automatically supplied by the factories.

Constructing a History of Portsmouth: Temporality, Spatiality, and Place

A critical component of the murals project is how it constructs time and takes up space, how affordances and constraints shape what can be said and what is being said about this place. Unlike the post-industrial narrative that locates the beginning of

Portsmouth’s decline around the 1980s, the Portsmouth Floodwall Murals depict a far- reaching and continuing (potentially endless) history—one that predates and postdates the industrial economy. In terms of imaginative possibility, the city is an open canvas; in reality, however, the power to bring such imaginings to fruition are much more limited.

Imaginatively, large concrete walls and building sides open up spaces to consider the types of things one would want to display there. Further, since the images depict moments of history that reach as far back as 1,000AD, the panels extend the visual and

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imaginative historical record of the area far beyond the recent economic crisis, chronicling multiple experiences of destruction (Native American removals, the original settlement in Alexandria, the 1937 flood) and offering evidence of overcoming and rebuilding. Crises themselves are not represented as such: Native Americans are portrayed peacefully leaving the area and the mills are shown in their heyday of operation. Instead, Tecumseh’s spirit lingers in the clouds as he looks west in 1810

House, and industries are marked with the year of their existence, such as the header,

“Steel Production, 1870-1980,” in Steel Industry. 55

Figure 3: 1810 House. Photo by the author.

55 While I don’t explore the ways that the construction of mural images obscure conflict in this dissertation, I am interested in delving deeper into this question in future research. During my fieldwork I was able to get access to a basic understanding of the murals project and some of the open conflicts over decision- making in the muraling process, but longer and deeper involvement with the murals committee and other residents would be necessary to get insight into the types of conversations that went on, for instance, during the construction of 1810 House. I return to concepts of conflict in the murals in the conclusion of this chapter. 128

During our driving tour, current President of PMI, Bob Morton, showed me an open field next to the labor mural (which I didn’t even know existed until he showed me because they are located around the corner from the floodwall) and explained, “I’ve been wanting to buy this plot of land here and do a little park. And then we could use those walls for murals” (Interview with Bob Morton, August 3, 2013).

Figure 4: Open lot north of Tribute to Organized Labor. Photo by the author.

As we drove further just a little ways to see Tour of Scioto River Valley, Bob said,

“I’m also trying to acquire this little plot of land here [just in front of the mural] to do a park that would prevent anything happening to that land, somebody building a building there. Now this panel is open right here. We hope to do another series of murals to the

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[local] people that are famous for different sports, like professional football players.” In addition to noticing walls for new murals, Bob considers how he can protect the view of the ones that currently exist, making sure they remain easily visible. He noted, for instance, that Tour of Scioto River Valley is visible from the Route 104 exit but would be blocked if a building went up between it and the highway. Imagining a city of murals isn’t just about noticing open walls; it’s also about considering visibility, traffic, and navigating land purchases in ways that will maximize the impact of an investment in images.

Figure 5: View of Tribute to Organized Labor (left) and Tour of the Scioto River Valley (right) murals from Route 104. The open lot to the right is the one that Bob wants to purchase to ensure the view of the mural is not obscured.

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Throughout my fieldwork people associated with PMI actively considered where more murals might be painted and what they would like to see displayed. Imagining, planning, and painting murals is important work for those involved, and, inevitably, the project keeps expanding. The boldest statement of this sort came from Kim Bower,

Executive Director of the Portsmouth-Scioto County Visitor’s Bureau, who said, “if it’s beige and it doesn’t move we’ll paint a mural on it.” At a planning meeting for a festival celebrating the murals, people talked about plans to bring Dafford out to do a collage- style painting near one of the bridges. A local insurance man and small business owner mentioned numerous times how he wanted Robert to paint a mural on the side of his building, and there were talks of another business owner wanting to do the same. Though the possibilities are endless and the realities are limited, the continuing proliferation of talk or murals and of the images themselves throughout the city contributes to a sense of possibility and creation in the city, especially for those involved in planning the murals project.56

Keith Basso, in Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the

Western Apache (1996), shows how landscapes can serve as moral archives and directives for the groups that inhabit them. Basso draws on Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope—“points in the geography of a community where time and space intersect and fuse”—to explain this phenomenon (Bakhtin qtd. in Basso, 62). He writes,

56 Residents are concerned about the long-term sustainability of the project. At one of the mural festival planning meetings, Mandy Hart, Executive Director of the Center for Appalachian Philanthropy, proposed a mural training workshop with Dafford for young local artists so that they could learn his style and be able to touch up older murals and create new ones in the future. 131

one forms the impression that Apaches view the landscape as a repository

of distilled wisdom, a stern but benevolent keeper of tradition, an ever-

vigilant ally in the efforts of individuals and whole communities to

maintain a set of standards for social living that is uniquely and distinctly

their own. In the world that the Western Apaches have constituted for

themselves, features of the landscape have become symbols of and for this

way of living, the symbols of a culture and the enduring moral character of

its people. (62-63)

In Basso’s work with the Western Apache, features of the landscape contained stories with didactic potential, and the group’s lives were in dialogue with the landscape they inhabited.

The Portsmouth Floodwall Murals are also chronotopes: they are a result of, reflection of, and in dialogue with the landscape and the residents of the city. Images present a selective rendering of a public archive of local history, holding up for display those people, events, industries, emergences, remembrances, and connections that were chosen to define Portsmouth as a place. Time and space “intersect and fuse” in the murals because they mediate between the past and the present, physically, visually, imaginatively, and metaphorically. The floodwall that was built to keep river water out

(the same river that made Portsmouth beautiful and prosperous) now takes on a second life as a canvas for public art. The floodwall protects the city at the same time that the murals preserve a legacy and reminds the people who live there and pass through it that

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something significant happened/is happening here. The murals are mediators, selecting what gets in and what stays out, deciding who counts and what exists.

Jack Santino defines “marked culturescapes” as a combination of the ways that people “have shaped the land” over time as well as the “markings left on the environment, both built and natural…the painted walls, curbstones, graffiti, and murals that are ubiquitous in the towns, cities, and even the countryside” (30). Culturescapes are the ways that people and groups designate and mark the landscape in intentional ways. In

Northern Ireland, he argues, public displays are ways of defining the politics of history and space, as areas are designated as Protestant/Loyalist or Catholic/Republican, and historical moments and political figures are depicted differently by each side. For Guisela

Latorre, her work on Chicana/o murals in Los Angeles highlighted the dialectic relationship between muraling traditions in the United States and Mexico whereby a

“relational yet conflictive and oppositional dialogue” emerged as Chicanas/os borrowed from Mexican Indigenism in order to reclaim “a culture and a history traditionally commodified by Western powers of colonization” (13). “Wall paintings,” she says, “had the unique capacity to carve out physical and symbolic spaces for the articulation of identity” (14). Santio and Latorre’s analyses are useful for thinking about the way that murals are struggles to define history, claim territory, and interpret political figures and movements—the ways that murals draw on previous artistic traditions and cultural signifiers in order to make a claim in the present.

Latorre’s use of the concept of dialectics is particularly useful for analyzing the

Portsmouth Floodwall Murals project. The Chicana/o murals she looked at emphasized

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the (often fraught) dialogue between Mexico and the United States with regard to land ownership, political power, and human settlement. The dialogues created by the murals in

Portsmouth also have a spatio-political emphasis but they work in different ways. Rather than an international conversation, dialogues are created between local residents and their community, the murals and the landscape it depicts, and between the city/residents and tourists.

In Steel-Town U.S.A: Work and Memory in Youngstown, working class studies scholars Sherry Lee Linkon and John Russo analyze the cultural landscape of

Youngstown, OH—another post-industrial Appalachian Ohio city—examining how it is both the catalyst and result of conflict and collaboration. Their work focuses on “how representations of work and the loss of work reflect and influence the identities of

Youngstown as a community and the people who live there” (15). In Youngstown, deindustrialization affected the landscape dramatically. Lives and identities that were built upon a strong sense of working-class identity (though that identity also often concealed racial, class, and ethnic tensions) were disrupted by factory closings and demolishing throughout the second half of the 20th century. Linkon and Russo explain that

[w]hen landscapes change, those memories are displaced—not fully

erased, but also not as fully present as they once were. Place is a central

aspect of identity, a source for defining ourselves, in part because places

contain memories, and memories help us to construct our sense of self.

When the places that define us change, we ourselves change, and this is as

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true for communities as it is for individuals. Landscapes contain shared

memories, landmarks that hold significance for many members of the

community, places where people come together and neighborhoods that

include some and exclude others. When physical spaces change, other

kinds of representations may become more important. (17)

While deindustrialization often removes, demolishes, or makes obsolete aspects of local landscapes, projects like the floodwall murals often seek to construct memory, significance and value. Below, I detail some of the aesthetics of the Portsmouth

Floodwall Murals that Dafford and his team use to create that moment of “enchantment” that encourages residents to take pride in themselves, their history, and their home city.

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Ways of Seeing & Techniques of Incorporation: Framing, Mirroring, Reflection, and

Incorporation in the Portsmouth Floodwall Murals

Figure 6: Millbrook Park. Photo by the author.

Framing

Each mural image or series of images has a border around the edge of it, usually marked off by a crease in the floodwall, and each image size is shaped by the grooves of the wall plates themselves. Using these guidelines, Dafford painted variously sized borders for each mural tailored to its particular subject, often including additional framing devices to highlight details within the larger image. Mural frames transition the viewer from lived experience into the image, often by using thematic borders, drawing the viewer into the inner world or moment of the image. Frames activate memories and nostalgia, while the content of the murals deepen the Portsmouth landscape by presenting

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a record of lived experience. Roy Rogers’ mural, for instance, uses wooden poles in the shape of a cattle arch to frame the image of the actor waving from atop his famed horse,

Trigger. Industrial Heritage, which depicts steel production, is framed with two layers of bolted steel beams, and Good Times Remembered depicts images as if they were in an open scrapbook. In each scene the border functions to transport the viewer into the world of the image, to further historicize an inner image, to connect panels in a series with one another, and to provide a frame of interpretation for the viewer. Borders and framings in the murals transition/transport the onlooker from their experienced reality to the historical moment and feeling of the image while also maintaining that the experience of the image itself is also part of the experienced reality.

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Figure 7: Art Deco, Portsmouth, 1939 transition between Portsmouth Shoe Steels and Greyhound Bus Station mural. Also note the little boy playing in the bottom right corner of the bus station mural on the right. Photo by the author.

Figure 8: Close-up of boy peeking out from mural. Photo by author.

Other frames are instructive, such as the transition between Portsmouth Shoe

Steels and Greyhound Bus Station, which use the relationship between people and frames 138

to suggest ways to interact with the images, particularly viewing, touching, discussing, reminiscing, and playing. Figures on the edges of the mural model active modes of interaction structures viewer’s responsibilities toward the images. Two women from the late 1930s hold and lean against the murals on either side of them, chatting leisurely about to the images that flank them. The little boy who playfully and excitedly peers out from the bottom right corner of Greyhound Bus Station entices the viewer to look beyond the frame and jump into the image with him. Sister Cities depicts young people leaning on the frame itself, literalizing the frame’s effect as a device of transportation.

Figure 9: Close-up of Sister Cities. Photo by author.

It’s common for locals and tourists to take photographs in front of murals in ways that blur the line between image and reality. Chillicothe Street is a favorite for this, and

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I’ve seen images of high school students dressed up for prom standing in front of the image so that it looks like they’re a part of the scene.57

Dafford’s use of framing as an artistic and experiential-temporal device in the

Portsmouth Floodwall Murals is significant because of the ways that it symbolically reflects and constructs various orientations for residents and tourists to take in relation to

Portsmouth as a specific place. In this sense, the mural frames simultaneously act as interpretive frames and metacommunicative devices. As an interpretive frame, the borders themselves separate the images from one another and call attention to the ways that the images present a snapshot in the continuous history of Portsmouth. Further, the borders call attention to the images within them as a special type of communication that, as Dafford states, “enchants” the viewer into believing, even if only for a moment, that the past is present.

As metacommunication, the frames serve as mediators between the city, residents, and tourists to articulate the reframing that the murals project itself aims to enact—that of rebranding Portsmouth as tourist destination instead of rust-belt city. Barbara Babcock, in

“The Story in the Story: Metanarration in Folk Narrative,” states that

“[m]etacommunication in narrative performance may be described as any element of communication which calls attention to the speech event as a performance and to the relationship which obtains between the narrator and his audience vis-à-vis the narrative message” (66). Applying her theory of metanarration to the image-based story of

Portsmouth, one can notice the frames calling attention to the individual images, their

57 The local documentary Beyond These Walls also has footage of students taking photos in front of Chillicothe Street. 140

connection to one another, and the ways that they combine to perform an alternative history of the city. Residents and visitors are encouraged to interpret Portsmouth as a site of historical significance by overlaying what is inside the frames onto the landscape.5859

Mirroring & Reflection

Murals that focus on street scenes in Portsmouth and incorporate recognizable aspects of the landscape—such as Market Square, Portsmouth 1903, Government Square, and Chillicothe Street—act as specific kinds of chronotopes that mediate between the past and the present, lending meaning to the city’s features. It is worth noting that each of these street scenes take place before Portsmouth began experiencing economic decline in the 1950s. Text accompanying the Chillicothe Street mural states that those who stand in front of the mural will feel as though they can travel in time:

Stand in front of this mural, find a friend with a camera, and you

immediately become a time-traveler. The three-dimensional effect of

downtown Portsmouth gives you the feeling of being able to walk on

Chillicothe Street during the 1940s. Looking northward from the U.S.

Grant Bridge, you could purchase your ticket for the railroad, complete all

your banking needs, shop in many of the local businesses, and stay at one

of Portsmouth’s finest hotels. Many of these businesses are still open

today. This ‘street scene’ has become a trademark for muralist Robert

58 Given the visionary potential of the murals, it’s interesting that none of them project a future image of the city. All of the murals depict either past or current events. 59 While the murals certainly cultivate nostalgia and an appreciation for the historical significance of the city, it’s not clear whether they inspire any moral obligation to place since deindustrial processes are so obscured. 141

Dafford. He often includes a ‘street scene’ similar to this in cities where he

paints multiple murals. (36)

2,000 Years of History, 2,000 Feet of Art: Portsmouth, Ohio Floodwall Murals, the book sold at the Scioto County Visitor’s Bureau that provides additional information about the floodwall and images, pitches the experience of viewing the murals (either in person or in print) as imaginative, nostalgic travel. The page in the book that transitions the reader from the history of the wall to the mural images themselves states, “the journey begins.”

The words themselves are slanted to the right, directing the eye toward the welcome mural, suggesting forward movement even though the reader will actually travel back in time. Titles of individual murals are lightly shaded behind, underneath, and next to the words “the journey begins,” staggered in depth, lending a feeling of being whisked off by the wind.

In Portsmouth Motorcycle Club, Dafford plays with the reflective surfaces of aviator sunglasses and the shiny wheel of the motorcycle, capturing his position as artist documenting the landscape, but also reversing the gaze back toward the viewer, encouraging self-reflection and making them a subject of his artistry. Archived images of the Portsmouth landscape are depicted in the murals, charging the geography with historical significance. In Portsmouth 1903, the cityscape directly mirrors the landscape it depicts, creating a triangulation of significance between the historical image, the viewer, and the contemporary scene. These triangulated convergences encourage the viewer to frame the visible experience as a snapshot in time in the same way that the mural is, considering her view of the town as just one in a long series of views. In fact, the whole

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mural project is a mirror constructed by PMI to reflect a particular vision of the community back to itself for itself as well as for others.

Figure 10: Portsmouth Motorcycle Club. Photo by the author.

“That’s my center line”: Techniques of Incorporation

In Portsmouth, murals are active (as opposed to passive) features of the local landscape. They are the result of collaboration and invention in at least two stages: first, at the creative stage of composition, and, second, at the viewing stage. They are not passive backgrounds, but rather lively images that engage readers in self-reflection and historicization. Historicizing, framing, mirroring, and incorporation techniques encourage an active relationship of exchange between locals and their visual landscape. In August 143

2013 I took two separate tours of the Portsmouth Floodwall Murals with Bob Morton,

President of Portsmouth Murals Inc. and Kim Bower, the Executive Director of the

Portsmouth-Scioto County Visitor’s Bureau. I wanted to know more about what locals say about the murals. I wanted to understand the role the murals play in the daily lives of residents and how they relate to the larger city landscape.

What I found was that people like to be included in the muraling process. People take pride in being associated in some way with the muralist: calling Robert by his first name, feeding him, or having spoken to him. Kim mentioned that multiple people say that their paces are in the murals, and some actually are. In addition to drawing on local archives for photographs, Dafford works to incorporate residents in his paintings. In some cases, that means using the face of a descendant of a Civil War veteran in the Gettysburg mural; in others, it means creating a fundraiser contest to allow a local elementary school class to name the black and white cat in the corner of the Early Boneyfiddle mural. Kim said, “He’ll throw somebody’s face in. You know, a lot of people, like there’s one here for the steel mill, and it’s like, you can’t believe how many people said, ‘that’s my uncle with the blueprint standing over there with the hat on…’That’s my uncle!’…It’s everybody’s uncle!” Then, when we stopped at another mural she said, “Of course that lady is everybody’s cousin, aunt, and sister.” “Of course, Hank had to tell me, well that’s me on the top one—top guy second from the right. It does kinda look like him. It’s like, okay, Hank!”

Then Kim shared her own story of incorporation:

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What people don’t realize is that back in the 30s, 40s, you know they

didn’t have cars they had brick streets, but they didn’t paint the lines on

the street. They used a yellow brick…But I told Robert, I said…you’ll

never guess, I said, they got yellow brick! At this point he was workin’ on

this [the Chillicothe Street mural]. And he said, “really?” And I said, yes,

kinda like,” and he said “what color?” and he had that palette…so he’s

pattin’ around [with his brush] and he said, “what color is it?” and I said,

“like a dirty Velveeta cheese.” So he’s smackin’ around and he says, “is

that the color?” I said yeah. And he went shew shew shew [sound of brush

strokes] and he said, “you said it needed a center line” and I thought, that’s

my center line!

“You Have to Take the Time to Pause and Look at Each Detail”: Gaps & Resident Tours

Talking with residents about the murals reveals the critical ways that they use them to understand themselves at home and the larger world, and especially how they employ the murals as a strategy to respond to preconceived notions about who they are, what they’ve been up to, and how they should be spending their time. Recently, I interviewed residents for a murals story booth project and learned about how historical and discursive gaps in the murals sequence provide opportunities for residents to ask tourists and passers-by to take a deeper look at the city in order to gain a better appreciation for the history of the area and the efforts of the people who live there.

Stephanie Wright is a resident of Portsmouth that I interviewed at the farmers market on

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October 4, 2014. In this clip, she emphasizes two very interesting and important aspects of the murals: (1) though they provide a wide-sweeping history of the area, the murals elicit historical and experiential gaps that residents and tourists can discuss together, allowing for ongoing dialogue and discovery; (2) through such narration, residents can communicate (and tourists can learn about) what often goes unseen or unknown in the city.

In this first quote, resident Stephanie Wright explains how she used to give historical tours of the city when she worked as a cab driver, showing temporary workers what the city had to offer. Stephanie emphasizes the pride she has for the heritage of her city and the amount of effort put into the murals project.

When I used to work at American Cab Company there would be workers

who would come in from out of town who would do various jobs around

town, construction and different things, and they would want to know

what there was around Portsmouth because they would be from bigger

towns and so they always just thought that this was just a boring town and

there was nothing to do. And I said, oh there’s lots to do. And so I would

tell them about the 1810 house and the Stone House and different things,

and then I said our biggest achievement is our floodwall and the murals.

And so I would, you know, I was supposed to charge for everywhere I

took them but I would pay to take them down there myself. I took it out of

my pay, and I would drive them down by the murals and I would give

them my own little self-guided tour explaining about the history of

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Portsmouth and Scioto County as we drove by, and told them about

Robert Dafford and just everything about the murals that I could think of.

And so that they understood that this was a piece of our history. This was

something that we were extremely proud of. And so that they understood

that Portsmouth isn’t just this little town, little hick town somewhere out,

you know, a little dot on the map at the bottom of Ohio that nobody ever

talks about. That it’s somewhere to be proud of, something that we all can

be proud of. And it’s not just the murals; it’s everything. It’s the history.

So and then I tell them about Krogers, you know, to see those murals. And

by the time they left they understood that Portsmouth is not just that little

dot. It is, it’s a wonderful town, and it’s got a lot of history.

Stephanie’s quote provides a fascinating example of reflections from elsewhere, especially the ways that such reflections engage and attempt to impact local and national economic trends. Right away, she sets the interactive context as an exchange between a long-time resident (herself) and workers from out of town. Her position as a cab driver gives her special insight into the kinds of jobs that non-residents come to Portsmouth to do as well as the ability to show the non-residents what makes the city special to her. In the short paragraph, she mentions three separate times how she believes others perceive the town, saying “they would want to know what there was around Portsmouth because they would be from bigger towns and so they always just thought that this was just a boring town and there was nothing to do” and how she wants out-of-towners to understand that “Portsmouth isn’t just this little town, little hick town somewhere out,

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you know, a little dot on the map at the bottom of Ohio that nobody ever talks about.”

Rather than be reduced to a small, insignificant dot on a map, Stephanie’s out-of-pocket tours represent a monetary and emotional investment in fleshing out place. For Stephanie, the history of the area is crucial to understanding its significance. Portsmouth might not have the same variety of entertainment as other larger cities, she claims, but things have happened there and that means something. The murals serve as a large, public testimony to that history, but it is also her labor and goodwill that even make those messages visible.

In this second quote, she emphasizes how people can’t gain an appreciation for

Portsmouth if they move through it too quickly. Portsmouth, she says, is a place that requires people to slow down and look at the details in order to appreciate it. In both of these clips, we can see Stephanie is pushing back against the economies of attention that reduce Portsmouth to a “small hick town” and how she constructs her home as a place of significance that one can come to appreciate if they just take the time to take a closer look. Here, the murals serve as a conversation starter rather than the focal point of her story and of her conversation with the workers.

Stephanie: If somebody doesn’t take the time to actually look at each

individual mural they miss so much. You can’t just drive by quickly. You

have to take the time to pause and look at each detail so that you

understand how much time and energy and effort and creativity went into

each one of those.

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Cassie: So, it sounds like the murals are kinda like the history of

Portsmouth, too. You hafta slow down and look for it and, and really

engage it. So, is that something that appeals to you?

Stephanie: Yes, yes. I think that everybody should take the time to

understand the history of Portsmouth, not just overlook everything about it

because it’s not just some small little hick town. It’s a wonderful place to

live with a lot of rich heritage.

While some might associate slowing down with being bored (as some of the students mentioned during their interviews), Stephanie here values the way that taking the time to notice the details allows one to understand the emotional and creative labor that goes into the murals, and, arguably, into living in a small post-industrial city. A quick glance at the murals or at Portsmouth allows an outsider to brush off the place and the people that live there, but, she argues, if you slow down and take a closer look you’ll see that people are working creatively to sustain their community.

Though historical gaps in the murals can be the basis of conversation with outsiders, gaps in connectivity between the murals project and local small businesses leaves more to be desired. During a group interview on the same day, locals talked about these gaps in connectivity between the murals and a larger scale economic development plan. Robert Mohl, a local community organizer, commented on how the Beyond These

Walls documentary exaggerates the impact of the murals on the Portsmouth economy,

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perhaps to sell a story that viewers would want to believe.60 Mandy Hart, Executive

Director of the Center for Appalachian Philanthropy, added that while the murals have done a good job of bringing tourists to the area, there is a lack of a comprehensive strategic plan to use the murals as a tool for robust heritage tourism. Both of these comments point to the ways that ordinary residents in small post-industrial cities are called upon to become economic strategists and activists alongside their day jobs.

The grandeur of the murals—their height and realism—attracts tourists from across the world. But Portsmouth residents bank on tourists seeing more than the murals and, in fact, seeing beyond them. However, even when they do see “beyond those walls,”

Robert and Mandy point out that these conversations alone are not enough to significantly impact the city, and that they need collaboration and support on a much larger scale to create significant change. To be sure, the murals project is the opposite of the disinvestment residents experienced at a structural level. Instead of profiting monetarily from the extraction of the area’s resources, the murals took an existing structure and repurposed it to foster local pride by elevating the people and place through historical commemoration. Rather than short-term boom and bust, the murals are a long- term investment in not only economic development of the area, but also the preservation of local history and construction of local pride.

60 Indeed, a local business owner told me off-the-record that she resented the way the documentary emphasized the efforts of the murals project as the major economic generator for the area and said nothing about the work of local business owners to contribute to the growth of the Boneyfiddle District. 150

A Moment for Murals

The length of history that the murals cover and the arrangement of images obscure the economic shifts to which they respond. Or perhaps they categorize the economic shifts as one of the multiple devastations the area has experienced, namely floods. It is significant that the Portsmouth Floodwall Murals were built a little over 10 years after the completion of major factory closings in Portsmouth. After a decade of feeling the impact of the closings, and recognizing the types of economic opportunities that would come to replace the mills, Portsmouth citizens (or at least those involved in

PMI) decided to communicate something about themselves and the place they live. The floodwall itself was dedicated in 1950, 13 years after the 1937 flood. It would be over 40 years before Dr. Chaboudy and his wife Ava would visit Steubenville and decide to commission the Floodwall Murals. The fact that the murals were commissioned closer to the closing of the mills than to the construction of the floodwall itself says something about the need for a message at a particular moment. It may also say something about the needs and affordances of the community during the 1950-1990 period.

Mural Compliments: The Portsmouth Floodwall Stars & Shawnee State University

Banners

In Portsmouth, features of the landscape construct what it means to be a valuable

(and valued) individual in the community and articulate what model citizenship looks like. Wrapping around the back to the side of the floodwall that faces the Ohio River and

Kentucky, there is a long stretch of white stars with locals’ signatures in black in the

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middle. Below the stars are the locals’ names and the arena of distinction. These stars and names are printed in white on a blue background with a red and white stripe below them.

Figure 11: Floodwall Stars located on opposite side of Portsmouth Floodwall Murals and facing the Ohio River and Kentucky in Portsmouth, Ohio. Photo by the author.

The Floodwall Stars offer a different option for commemoration. Unlike the murals, which are chosen and commissioned by PMI, a private board made up of an (older,

White) subset of the city, the Floodwall Stars are nominated and judged by a selected committee of local residents. Each year, local media notify residents that nominations are open, and submissions for the stars are received between January 2 and May 31st.

A four-page packet that can be obtained at the Visitor’s Bureau outlines the nomination procedure, selection committee, selection process, notification process, award ceremony, and criterion and award categories. It also includes the nomination form.

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Eligible nominees are those who are over 18 years old, “have brought recognition or have made outstanding contributions to the quality of life in and/or development of Scioto

County, Ohio or Greenup or Lewis County, Kentucky” (Portsmouth Floodwall Stars nomination packet). Nominees must have either been or currently are residents of Scioto,

Greenup, or Lewis Counties. Nominators are asked to specify the “field of endeavor” to which the nominee contributed, such as arts, business, professional, public affairs, voluntary service, and other. The selection committee chooses up to three inductees each year, and any nominee who was not chosen in the year of their nomination is automatically nominated the following year.

The Floodwall Stars are significant because they open up opportunities for a different range of residents to be recognized for their contributions to the city and because the formal nomination process is open to all residents, including those from

Kentucky.61 The more democratic nomination and selection process makes me wonder about the types of conversations that might have given rise to the Floodwall Stars in the first place.

61 At this point, my knowledge of the Floodwall Stars nomination and judging process is limited to the informational packet I picked up and to a couple small comments during fieldwork. I need to do more research about the diversity of the selection committee and star recipients. 153

Figure 12: Shawnee State University "Stand Out" banner. Photo by the author.

While the floodwall murals trove the history of the city for examples of significance, retroactively assigning and constructing value, Shawnee State University banners project a vision of success that is yet to come and is situated in the potential of its students. Shawnee State’s campus banners and promotional brochures feature a single student with the words “stand out” or “outstanding” next to them in bright letters. For a while, there was a billboard in the same style located on 23 South about 30 minutes out of

Portsmouth. The messages are both prescriptive and descriptive: “stand out” is a command for future action while “outstanding” describes past behavior. Both messages encourage difference in the form of excellence and are aligned with expectations modeled by the Portsmouth Floodwall Murals and Floodwall Stars. They call upon residents and students to think consciously about the ways they represent their community at local, national, and international levels. The banners insist that SSU students imagine

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themselves in significant roles, distinguishing themselves from those around them. Just as with the Floodwall Stars, each student’s banner indicates their field of expertise in some area, such as academics or athletics. Students hold rackets, textbooks or some other emblem of expertise in their hands. The banners are another form of local recognition, this time geared toward college students. Drawing from the ways the city calls upon the baseball stars depicted in the Floodwall Murals, the banners suggest a relationship of reciprocity between the city and those from Portsmouth who rise to prominence.

Conclusion: Celebration and Conflict in Heritage Tourism

Embedded in the Portsmouth landscape, the murals both present a different version of history than residents have seen depicted about themselves since the mills closed as well as obscure the very conflicts and processes that necessitated their creation.

Nuala C. Johnson is critical of the ways that landscapes figure into heritage tourism, claiming that they “come to represent the quintessential mirrors of a culture’s collective past, and their reinvention for tourist consumption fixes them spatially in the historical imagination and helps to ensure their future protection” (188). The ways that the

Portsmouth Floodwall Murals obscure conflict in favor of celebration points to the limitations of their context of display. One might wonder, for instance, why there are no murals commemorating the 1914, 1936, 1956-1957, or 1978 strikes and why the dates on

Steel Industry function as periodization rather than condemnation. Instead, Tribute to

Labor, a panel located just around the corner from the main floodwall, seemingly

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uninterestedly lists the charter date of various occupational unions and features images of men working in their respective fields.62

Figure 13: Close-up of Tribute to Organized Labor. Photo by the author.

Even Civil War, the mural dedicated to the Portsmouth men of First Ohio Light

Artillery, Battery L who fought at the Battle of Gettysburg, lacks any depiction of an opponent, and the local activities of the are depicted in the framing portion—rather than as the centerpiece—of the Civil War mural. This reiterates what Stephanie Wright said in her interview—“you have to take the time to pause and

62 One of the reasons for this, I’m told, is that there’s a strong local sentiment that the unions destroyed Portsmouth by driving away business, as the city developed a reputation for being a tough union area. As I conduct ongoing research in the area, I’d like to find out more about this reputation and sentiment, as it wasn’t brought up in my first couple years of fieldwork. Subduing of labor activism points to the other ways that Portsmouth seeks to recast itself as a peaceful place that appreciates it’s past. 156

look at each detail”—but also points to the ways that conflict is limited, marginalized, and even obscured throughout the murals project. Taking the long view of history, the selective and hyper-visible moral geography of Portsmouth naturalizes historical processes such as the removal of Native American populations, the coming and going of various industries, and the formation and struggle of labor unions in the area.

Interestingly conflict resides in the gaps of the visible moral archive in Portsmouth as well as the informal conversations between long-time residents. Not airing the dirty laundry is an important practice when building a tourist economy based on nostalgia for

“the good old days.”

In “De-, Re-, and Post-Industrialization: Industrial Heritage as Contested

Memorial Terrain,” Michael Frisch examines the roles that various groups play in planning public heritage commemorations, noting that the outcome of such negotiations have important social and economic impacts on the communities they depict. Frisch considers how categories like “rust belt” eventually signaled a “natural and inevitable

‘stage’” of national economics, politics, and history. Ways in which post-industrial spaces are commemorated, then, take on special significance in terms of the ways they engage a narrative of progress that obscures the choices (and responsibilities) of actual companies, their owners and boards.

Such conceptions lend great force to views that sentimentalize the past,

that distance it and its dynamics from contemporary choices and options.

From such a perspective, the traumatic changes of deindustrialization are

both inevitable and irresistible and hence this perspective counsels

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acceptance and transcendence focused on the pastness of the past—

however celebrated and memorialized—and the past-free-ness of the

future. The process gives us the broad and powerful trope of post-

industrialism in all its guises, which opens such an intriguing vista of

unlimited fantasy futures and which privileges discontinuity as the

fundamental node around which history, present, and future are brought

together. (247)

Similarly, Dorothy Noyes has noted how Appalachian “cultural visibility…seems to work in inverse proportion to social visibility and human rights generally” (31). Steve

Jenkins’ “ours just didn’t” comment from Chapter 1 reflects the inevitability that Frisch describes, and the nostalgic tone of the murals, though they selectively tap into a deeper history of place, do it in such an uncomplicated way that they, too, naturalize the order of progress. “Ours just didn’t” signals the inevitability and acceptance of New Boston’s role along the path to progress—a role that assigns nostalgic heritage tourism and WalMarts to post-industrial spaces while the ethics of corporations remain blurry and continue to become more obscured over time. Steve Jenkins’ timeline complicates aspects of inevitability and obscuring, though, in the ways that it attempts to make sense of the history of the New Boston plant. We might ask what role the Portsmouth Floodwall

Murals (and, by extension, the Floodwall Stars, and other landscape features such as the

Shawnee State University banners) are playing in the American imaginary and how the shift to engage an economy of attention through the tourism industry—that reflection from elsewhere—has influenced the shape and content of these images. Similarly,

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looking forward to the following chapter on educational outreach trips conducted in the region, we might ask how positionings in service contexts engage structural inequalities on a personal level in ways that both rely upon and strain empathy.

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Chapter 4: Good Works at Home: Economic Access Initiative College Access Tour

to Brown County, Ohio

From Sunday, March 9, 2014 through Friday, March 14, 2014, eight Ohio State undergraduate students, one college admissions counselor, and I traveled from Columbus to Brown County, Ohio for an “alternative spring break” college access tour sponsored by the Ohio State Economic Access Initiative. Our tour would take us throughout the county, visiting both middle schools and high schools (6th-12th grades) to speak with students about how college was an option for them, how they could find the right fit, and how they could pay for college. I was interested in this opportunity because it provided an opportunity to experience and analyze how Ohio State University educators, administrators, and students initiate outreach in Appalachian Ohio.63

Preparing for the Trip: Pre-meetings as ways of Defining and Enacting Service

In the weeks leading up to the trip, the Brown and Vinton County teams met together as a group three times to define service, consider critical questions affecting the

63 I experienced this Ohio State service initiative from the university perspective as opposed to the community perspective because I am a member of the former and not the latter. Though folklorists typically privilege viewing things from the opposite angle, I feel there is worth in both accepting my actual, lived position in this matter (I am embedded in the fabric of Ohio State since it is the institution at which I work, and it is the institution that sponsored my trip) and exploring what this position means for students who attend such trips and how it relates to the university’s outreach mission. I did not conduct research with the host community and cannot provide insight that aspect of the trip. 160

area we were visiting, learn about the specific counties from extension staff, and go over the logistics of our trips.

Service as Mutual Exchange

Throughout our pre-meeting trips, the group organizer defined service as mutual exchange between equal persons and emphasized that self-reflection was a critical component of work we were doing. Meeting agendas and reading materials reiterated this message using quotes excerpted from texts, popular news articles, and creative writing.

On February 11, 2014, the group discussed the definition of service for the trip.

The meeting agenda included a section called “What is Service?” with two quotes listed underneath:

Mutual exchange: ‘Serving is different from helping. Helping is based on

inequity; it is not a relationship between equals. When you help you use

your own strength to help those of lesser strength…people feel this

inequality. When we help we may inadvertently take away from people

more than we could ever give them; we may diminish their self-esteem,

their sense of worth, integrity and wholeness.’ –Rachel Naomi Remen

Intentions: ‘Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the

wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own

darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion

becomes real when we recognize shared humanity.’ –Pema Chodron

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In these quotes, service is contrasted with “helping,” where helping is based on inequality and service is based on equality and “shared humanity.” Treating those served as if we are helping them, Remen and Chodron argue, diminishes their dignity as persons by assuming and reifying inequality between the helper and the helped.

Brown County, Ohio

At the next training meeting, on February 18, 2014, Beverly, a retired Ohio State

Extension worker from Brown County, led a breakout information session during which she told us what we could expect when we got there. She explained that the county has about 44,381 residents and that the 8.8% of them have a bachelor’s degree or higher

(4.6% have an associate’s degree or higher). More people go on to college—about

66%—but they don’t return to the county afterward so the number of residents who hold a bachelor’s degree is lower than the college-going rate.

Brown County is less than 50 miles from Cincinnati and is just across the river from Mason and Bracken Counties in Kentucky, so a number of people commute outside of Brown County for work and school. A tuition reciprocity agreement between Adams,

Brown, and Clermont Counties in Ohio and Bracken, Lewis, Mason, and Robertson in

Kentucky allows students to attend out-of-state institutions at instate rates. Brown County students attend an array of nearby institutions such as University of Kentucky, Morehead

State, Xavier University, University of Cincinnati, Chatfield College, Southern State

Community College, and University of Cincinnati—Clermont. While Ohio State used to be perceived as being too far away and too big, that perception had been changing since

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some Future Farmers of America students attended Ohio State, found that it wasn’t so bad, and encouraged their friends to attend as well.

The largest employers in Brown County are the school district, the nursing home,

Milacron locations in Cincinnati (Cimcool Americas Headquarters and the Milacron LLC

Head Office),64 and the privately owned hospital.

Beverly described the county as “tight-knit,” and those who get involved in the community are quickly immersed: she said, “if you’re on one committee, you’re probably on eight.” Folks quickly come together to raise money for local causes. The county is largely conservative, though it used to have more Democrats in the past. “Basketball is king” in the area.

Brown County is ranked second in the state for heroin trafficking and drug overdoses; they also have a prescription drug problem. 125 children are in foster care because their parents are on drugs. Though pockets of social services exist in the county, they are poorly connected. Transportation is an issue for low-income residents who need access to the services because public transportation is non-existent and many cannot afford to fix their cars.

Students learned more about the notion of service learning. In terms of student- community engagement, distinctions between “service” and “helping” were once again drawn, where mutual exchange was emphasized as an “openness to learning—sharing experiences with your peers, asking questions, talking to the individuals you meet, asking deeper questions of yourself and your experience” (Training Meeting Agenda, February

64 Milacron specializes in plastics and molding. Milacron Plastics Machinery Americas Headquarters is located in Batavia and has plastics machineries in Mr. Orab and a little further north in Springboro. 163

11, 2014). In this definition of service, the impact on the student is further defined as a process of learning, listening, questioning, and engaging in self- and program-reflection.

Words like “sharing,” “asking,” and “talking” instruct the students to engage in verbal and experiential exchanges while the instruction to ask “deeper questions of yourself and your experience” signal that such exchanges should prompt self-reflection of one’s own position in the world and how it relates to those of others.

The relevance of this process of action, conversation, and self-reflection to the students is further explained in the definition of service-learning provided on the handout, which reads:

Service-learning is a form of experiential education characterized by all of

the following:

 Student participation in an organized service activity  Participation in service activities connected to specific learning outcomes  Participation in service activities that meet identified community needs  Structured time for student reflection and connection of the service experience to learning (quoted from Abes, Jackson & Jones, 2002, original bolding from

handout)

Outcomes for students are emphasized, as the organization of activities and reflection time is geared toward “specific learning outcomes” that “meet identified community needs.”

Prior to reviewing this definition of service, the group discussed assigned readings that we had received at the end of the previous meeting. Students were asked to read one article and to be ready to discuss. The first article came from the education section of The 164

Atlantic from February 2014 and is titled, “The Danger of Telling Poor Kids That

College is the Key to Social Mobility.” Andrew Simmons, the author, argues that underprivileged students are more often encouraged to see college as a tool for economic and social mobility whereas more privileged students are taught to view it as a space for creative exploration. These differences in orientation toward education gear low-income students’ toward moneymaking majors rather than those they are passionate about. This ultimately affects minority completion rates since students are less likely to graduate from majors they aren’t really interested in. Simmons argues, “we need to proactively teach our most marginalized students that honing an intellectually curious frame of mind is as essential to leading an invigorating working life as ambition and work ethic” (3).

Our second reading was William Kirwan’s opinion piece for The Washington

Post titled, “Not College for All, but College for More.” Kirwan’s article is a response to

Robert J. Samuelson’s from a couple weeks prior titled “The Failure of College for All,” which argues that the “college-for-all crusade” has dumbed down education and reduced high school education to college preparedness: college-for-all emphasizes quantity over quality. He argues for increasing technical school and internship training for high school graduates, saying that most jobs in the U.S. do not require a college degree. Kirwan responds by stating that though 100% college attendance is unlikely given the figures for even the countries with highest college attendance, increasing college attendance is necessary for the United States to compete in the global economy, especially in regards to

STEM fields and addressing the world’s challenges.

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The last article was an entry from Wikipedia that described the DeRolph case in

Ohio in which the state’s educational funding system, which was partially based on property taxes, was ruled unconstitutional. Plaintiffs argued that because of the way the funding system was set up, inequalities between wealthier and poorer neighborhoods were resulting in unequal educational opportunities for students across the state. Taken together, the articles raise questions about systemic inequalities in educational contexts that are experienced at the personal level but are supported through various institutions.

The last training meeting was held on February 25, 2014. We reviewed our trip schedules, the talking points for Know How 2 Go, and our suggested packing lists. Next was our team activity about “behavior and messaging.” The group discussed the kinds of messages we wanted to send about college: it’s a way to learn about yourself and your intellectual interests; you’ll broaden your horizons; you need to work hard but you can do it; be passionate; there are many different ways to attend college; and step outside of your comfort zone. Then we discussed how we should represent Ohio State while on the trip and rules of behavior: be professional, mature, and respectful of others’ opinions; be friendly; don’t be afraid to ask for respect; be energetic, positive, and optimistic; be accepting of diversity and be open minded; turn off cell phones and give people your full attention; think about who is around you when you talk; don’t be judgmental; help each other out; step outside of your comfort zone; and tell your own story. Students in the host community, we were told, would inevitably ask if we partied or if Ohio State was a party

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school. We were to respond by saying that some people went to parties on campus and then redirect the conversation.65

Know How 2 Go

During our last pre-trip meeting, we were given orange and grey rectangular cards upon which “Know How 2 Go” was written in white (American Council on Education).

They detailed the four major categories of college access that we would relate to the students when we visited the schools. Step 1: Be a Pain. Step 2: Push Yourself. Step 3:

Find the Right Fit. Step 4: Put Your Hands on Some Cash. There was a brief explanation of what each of these steps meant: (1) ask those around you to support you and write letters of recommendation, (2) challenge yourself by taking tough classes and getting involved at school and in your community, (3) think about the kind of educational environment that you would like and in which you could thrive; (4) apply for scholarships, grants, and loans.

Though we were told to review the steps further before the trip, none of us did.

Doing extra work at the end of the semester is a challenge, but, even more importantly, many of us simply didn’t know what we were supposed to review or really understand what we would be saying to the students. The evening we arrived at our hotel we were given packets with detailed scripts that outlined specific talking points for each of the

Know How 2 Go steps. We were put into groups that were each assigned a step and each of us within our groups was responsible for a talking point listed under the step. For

65 This list was generated by students but directed by the organizers. That is, students were asked how they thought they should represent Ohio State and then facilitators guided and added to students’ answers so that specific points—such as not talking about Ohio State being a party school—were addressed. 167

example, Belle focused on step #4 and was in charge of talking to kids about niche scholarships and funding available to students specifically from Brown County and

Appalachian Ohio.

Access to vs. Success in College

During the last training session, Jack, one of the students on the Vinton County trip, raised an important critique about the goal of our service. He said that he noticed that all of our efforts were geared toward talking to middle schoolers and high schoolers about getting to college rather than what they would do once they got to college. “It just seems incomplete to me, you know,” he said. As we will see later on in this chapter, Jack had other issues with the way that the service trip was designed, and he later planned on creating an Ohio State student organization with the other Vinton County volunteers to redesign the program and continue doing service in Vinton.66 Jack reiterated this same question later during the post-trip reflection meeting, where he questioned the effectiveness of encouraging low-income students from the counties to apply to college when they seemed to have limited chances of admittance or success.

Recent scholarship on college access and success in Appalachian Ohio suggests that students lack the resources rather than the desire to attend college (Crowther, Lykins, and Spohn). Barbara L. Bradbury and Peter C. Mather’s article, “The Integration of First-

Year, First-Generation College Students from Ohio Appalachia,” for instance, noted that the four major factors affecting the nine students they conducted research with were “the

66 When we last spoke at our group reflection, the Vinton County volunteers were drafting a constitution but had not yet started the organization, and there is no student organization listed on the ohiounion.Ohio State.edu webpage that mentions Vinton County as its focus. 168

pull of home, academic adjustment, belonging, and financial realities” (264). When asked how much they thought college costs, sixth graders we spoke to on the Brown County trip replied saying, “more than braces” or a couple hundred (or maybe even thousand) dollars. Though they were pretty far off on their estimations, many of them already knew that they would have to work at McDonalds or another fast food restaurant to pay for it.

Others mentioned that they could join the military as a route to college. Even as early as the sixth grade, we were seeing signs that paying for college—and assessing the risks and rewards of post-secondary education—was on the minds of young people in the region.

Introducing the Students

A total of 8 students, one group leader, and myself attended the Brown County trip; others visited Vinton County during the same week. The students who volunteered for the Brown County Economic Access Initiative trip came from many different racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and geographic backgrounds. I focus here on four of the students that were most verbal during our evening discussions and attended the focus group discussion I hosted a few weeks after the trip. 67 Terri is a middle to upper-middle class student of Chinese heritage who was born and raised in Cincinnati; Joey is a Palestinian student whose family recently moved back to the United States from Jerusalem; Luis’ family is originally from Honduras but he was brought up in the Bronx, New York;

Carmen is a White student from Worthington, one of the wealthier neighborhoods in

67 All students’ names have been changed to pseudonyms. 169

Columbus; and Belle is a low-income White student raised by a single mother in the

Cleveland area who saw many connections between her home and Brown County.

Because each of the students brought such vastly different experiences to the service trip difference played out in various ways for each of them. Belle, one of the students on the Brown County trip, remarked at how the communities we visited looked and felt shockingly similar to her own small city just east of Cleveland while Carmen, who grew up in Worthington, a wealthier suburb of Columbus, felt the host students’ lives were much different from her own. During our pre-trip meetings, Luis was concerned about the extent of diversity in the region and asked about how much interaction students in host communities would have had with people of color. Joey, who was relatively reserved during our trip, told us one evening during reflection that his family moved back to the United States partially because he was continually harassed at checkpoints on his way to school.

While some Buck-I-Serv trips cost hundreds of dollars, this trip was fully paid by the Economic Access Initiative and required only a $100 check (which was not cashed) as a security deposit, which was used as an incentive for students to stay involved. Upon arriving to our hotel on Sunday evening, our group organizers (Luis was one of them) gave us a red Ohio State folder with the words “Undergraduate Admissions and First

Year Experience” written in silver on the front. Inside were the trip schedule, a service learning reflection journal, and a packet outlining the procedures for each presentation.

We would visit a number of the townships during the five days we were there, stopping at various middle schools, high schools, and a technical school.

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My Positioning on the Service Trip

As a staff member of the university and a graduate student, I stood out among other trip attendees. At thirty years old, I was certainly the oldest person in the group besides the Extension host; even the trip leaders and drivers were in their early-to-mid twenties. During the pre-trip meetings when we all went around introducing ourselves, the students expressed interest in me as a PhD candidate and a folklorist, saying these things were “cool.” Throughout the trip our differences waxed and waned: we sang along to popular music in the car, joked around during reflection and meal times, and occasionally the fact that I was using the trip experience for my dissertation became a topic of conversation (they were particularly interested in being able to choose their own

“pseudo names”), and once one of the students accidentally made a comment that revealed just how far away the age of thirty seemed to them. While I think my being there was a comfortable (and enjoyable) experience, we were all aware that I was there to both do and observe the experience.

These students were very sharp and incredibly aware of the dynamics of the trip, often asking critical questions during reflection and sharing additional critiques and readings with one another to help understand the ways that region, economics, differential personal experience, and power were at play not only during but also beyond the week we were in Brown County.

I had never been on a service trip before, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect, and I didn’t have a background in service scholarship, so I didn’t start out with other models to compare the Brown County trip to, nor the critical language of the field to

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engage with during the trip. I was, however, highly aware of the history and politics of educational service in Appalachia through the debates. David Shapiro’s

“Protestant Home Missions and the Institutionalization of Appalachian Otherness” in

Appalachia on Our Mind (1978), David Whisnant’s “’Hit sounds reasonable’: Culture and Social Change at Hindman Settlement School” in All That is Native and Fine (1983), personal and academic reflections on the settlement schools published in the 1990s by

John J. Deaton et al, Harry Robie, and Scott F Rogers, and Jess Stoddart’s Challenge and

Change in Appalachia: The Story of Hindman Settlement School (2002) had together given me a complex vision of the ways that former students and scholars grapple with the intentions, actions, and cultural impact of both short-term and long-term service conducted by cultural outsiders.

Indeed, I was drawn early on in my graduate career to a short story by Harriette

Simpson Arnow titled “The Goat Who Was a Cow,” which used strategic narrative layering to provide a platform for a young girl to critique her settlement teacher’s perceptions of the region while also revealing in-group stereotyping in Appalachia

(Ballard & Chung, 2005). These sources revealed the ways in which education is inextricably tied to culture and how building settlement schools for youth in eastern

Kentucky affected the everyday lives, routines, and relationships of residents in the area.

Settlement women’s intentions, practices, and unintended impacts interacted with

Appalachian Kentucky residents’ desires, notions of themselves, and complex relationship with the nation in a deep and meaningful way that still resonates almost a century later.

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Even more complicated are the debates raised by the work of the settlement schools about who gets to tell the story about the interaction. Whisnant responders in the

1990s and Jess Stoddart, in her defense of the multiple impacts of the settlement women in Kentucky, attempt to complicate what has become the dominant perception of the work (a la Whisnant) as “systematic cultural intervention.” At stake in this debate is previous students’ understanding of their personal experiences having attended the schools, the pitting of these understandings against academic research, and a cultural- historical appreciation for the settlement women’s understanding of themselves and their work in the early 20th century.

Responding to Harry Robie’s claim that settlement women intervened in the local culture, John H. Deaton argued in his response, titled “My Settlement School,”

There was no attempt to substitute an alien culture for that which [sic]was

present. Instead, there was an exchange of the best of both worlds. By

example, the school encouraged better farming methods and stock

management. Local adults taught both the students and the teachers how to

spin, dye, and weave. The students were taught personal hygiene and

manners. They, in turn, introduced their teachers to ballads and singing

games. The existing culture was emphasized and encouraged, not harmed.

(46)

Jane Bishop Hobgood’s response traces her various emotional responses to Robie’s article through a few days’ worth of journal excerpts, shifting from “disbelief and anger” to “retrospection,” “reproach,” and then “regret.” Her regret, she says, is that her own

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children could not enjoy the “myriad gifts that were [hers] for the having, simply by being at Pine Mountain, Berea, and Hindman” (51). Both Deaton and Hobgood work to reclaim the value of the settlement schools through their personal experiences: they work to recuperate the ethic of mutual exchange that was called into question by Robie and

Whisnant when they characterized Pine Mountain’s settlement work as cultural domination.

In terms of applying this background to the Economic Access Initiative service trip, I was skeptical of the project itself and the kinds of positioning it enacted (Ohio

State, as educational institution, training volunteers to talk at young Appalachians about their ability to attend college) but hopeful that my skepticism could be challenged. I wondered if the framing of service combined with students’ critical thinking would generate an exchange that encouraged knowledge, understanding, and compassion to flow in both directions. I wondered if the inequities that the students saw in the schools or in the newspapers could be redirected away from notions of personal failure and cultural deprivation and shift toward histories and memories of long-term systemic injustice.

Moments of Tension in Service

During the trip, a few instances of tension stood out as examples of how community members resisted our notion of service and in which the positioning of service volunteers in relation to the host community was fraught. In the first instance, a young middle school student’s refusal to participate in our group activity challenged any belief that our outreach was unquestionably accepted in the community. In the second

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example, we questioned our authority to speak about the ways that parents could encourage and support their kids’ paths to college, since we had neither the age nor experience to advise them. The last example shows how students closer to us in age easily dismissed our project once we were outnumbered. Each of the examples gives us insight into the ways that critiques can emerge in service contexts.

Throughout this chapter, I examine these moments of tension in service, spaces where host communities critique service and the ways in which volunteers question the project of service itself. I’m particularly interested in the multiple, sometimes-competing discourses at play in Buck-I-Serv alternative spring break trips to Appalachian Ohio.

How do facilitators construct the notion of service in Appalachian Ohio, and how do pre- service texts relate to practice on the ground? In what ways do host community members resist outreach programs, and how do volunteers grapple with the concept of empathy in service contexts?

“I’m Just Gonna Sit on my Fat Ass”

On Wednesday, March 12th we had a full day of back-to-back Know How 2 Go rounds with junior high school and high school students. It was one of the more draining days of the trip because of the amount of times we had to repeat each of our verbal scripts. Everyone’s energy was low, especially after lunch. As the post-lunch group of 7th graders made the round, we noticed a young boy with short dark brown hair who kept sitting outside the conversational circle and leaning back in his chair. He had a scab on his arm he kept scratching at, and would lean his head on his arm that was propped up on

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a nearby table, clearly looking exhausted and annoyed. While he was in my group (and, as I was told later, in other groups) we tried to integrate him into the conversation by asking him questions or directing conversation his way, but he would answer in one word or simply ignore us. He let us know that he was not going to be a part of what we were doing there. When we asked him if he wanted to go to college he said, “No. I’m just gonna sit on my fat ass.” We were perplexed by his response and didn’t really know what to say. During reflection time that evening we discussed the boy’s behavior briefly, mostly conferring with one another about whether he had done the same thing in each group and noting that he wasn’t interested in what we have to say. We didn’t return to the topic again.

Though we barely discussed the boy’s behavior, his open refusal to participate made me think of the settlement schools in Kentucky: here, again, was a reflection from elsewhere: he was deviling us by reflecting back to us what he assumed we thought about kids from his school who didn’t want to go to college.

Parent-Student Night

Early on in the week, we hosted a parent-student night at one of the middle schools. We helped Beverly unload numerous thick tri-fold boards out of her car and placed them on the cafeteria stage. These were informational boards that provided various forms of information about each college or university, such as its location, what majors were offered, how much tuition cost. Other boards were laid flat and provided information about various costs students could expect to pay while in college, such as

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clothing and personal items, invitation and regalia for graduation, tuition and school fees.

Additional boards indicated ways that students could pay for such expenses, such as scholarships, grants, and supplemental income. After a few parents and students showed up, we handed them a sheet of paper so that they could play the College Board Game, which asked them to gather information ranging from the seemingly trivial (“Which college offers equestrian as a study or sport?”) to narrowing down the colleges and universities that appeal to them (“List the website to 4 of your favorite colleges or universities”) and locating barriers to post-secondary education (“List 3 things that will keep a student from attending college”). Student-parent teams also filled out a budget worksheet68 using the board information while also receiving random “chance cards” that either reduced or increased their financial burden.

68 The College Monthly Budget Worksheet included columns for budgeted and actual expenses for the following categories: income, academic expenses, living expenses, and personal expenses. 177

Figure 14: College boards at parent-student night. 2014 Ohio State Alternative Spring Break. Photo by the author.

While the game portion of the evening went rather smoothly, the transition to the next stage, where we split up parents and students to talk to them in small groups about behavioral and economic support for college, felt strained. A little earlier on, those of us who were in the parent group found out that we were not doing our regular Know How 2

Go spiel and were handed three new paper prompts: Parent Involvement Strategies,

Forms of Financial Aid, and the common application for various scholarships offered through the Foundation for Appalachian Ohio. Things got uncomfortable as a couple other students and I went over the Parent Involvement Strategies sheet, which broke down parent involvement into four tiers on a pyramid. From bottom to top they read:

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Level 1: academic encouragement and support from home; Level 2: academic communication with schools; Level 3: participation in school functions; and Level 4: volunteerism and leadership. Each of the points listed under the four levels are written in a directive tone (e.g.: “make sure,” “seek,” “talk”) and had boxes next to them so that parents could check off the involvement strategies they practiced. Level 1 listed strategies such as “frequently tell your children that they can and should go to college,” “ask open- ended rather than yes-no questions to show your children you want to hear about the school day,” “help your children choose role models who show strong work ethic or who have overcome some challenges in life,” “expose your children to a college environment as much as possible by attending evens on a college campus or even just going there for a picnic,” and “talk to your children about careers and how education increases their options.” The parents themselves ranged in their familiarity with post-secondary education: one mother was a non-traditional college student at the time, while one of the fathers had not pursued a college education and came to the parent-student night because his daughter asked him to.

As a 30-year-old woman without children, I felt extremely uncomfortable reading such directives to a group of working-class parents, at least some of whom had not attended college. Given what we knew about poverty rates in the county and the ways that time and resources were quite limited, it was likely that a number of the directives listed under the first level heading could be challenging for the families in attendance.

Such “proactive” practices might be far out of reach for someone struggling to get by.

Going down the list and discussing them with parents (even though we weren’t actually

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checking off the boxes) felt like we were judging them even though we didn’t know anything about their daily lives or even what it was like being a parent. We were just college kids with this packet of papers. Later, during our evening reflection, the students and I talked briefly about the unease we felt in that situation, and Carmen commented that the parents that attended the parent-student night were the ones who knew to bring their kids, but that the people we needed to reach were actually the ones who didn’t know to come or were unable to get there in the first place.

Authority, Peer Group, and Pushback at the Career & Technical School

The group with which many of us had the most tension with was the high school students at the technical school we visited on the second to last day. Instead of working in small groups, as we had with the elementary or junior high school students, and rotating through the Know How 2 Go points, each of us were assigned a classroom at which we would discuss all four of the Know How 2 Go steps. We presented in standard classroom style, with one of us speaking to 20-30 high-school students.69 In addition to offering courses in adult education and career technical training, the school has high school classes for students who are no longer attending traditional high schools in the area.

I walked into a full room of students. Two female teachers invited me in and then moved to the back of the room so that I could do my spiel. I stood at the front podium holding the Know How 2 Go cards in my hand feeling uneasy about the task ahead of me.

The students looked at me and listened for a moment, but they quickly ignored me and

69 In previous classes, the small groups of elementary, junior high, and high school students were about equal with the number of facilitators, with each at about 3-5 per group. 180

picked up the individual conversations they had been having before I arrived. I looked to the teachers at the back of the room to say something, but they just looked at me like it was my job to figure out a way to make them pay attention. Over the course of the next

15-20 minutes, I attempted various strategies to get them to listen to me. I walked through the aisles of desks, often standing right next to a pair of students holding a conversation. They would keep talking as I stood there and would entertain a question I asked them directly but would quickly return to speaking to one another afterward.

When my last bit of patience converted to frustration, I said (somewhat falsely) that the reason I was there talking to them was because my father would have loved to attend college but he thought it was only for wealthy people. He didn’t know about the possibility of applying for financial aid so he never went to college.70 Maybe it was my frustrated, shaky voice that caught their attention, but they were finally quiet. I felt immediately guilty for using my dad’s story to guilt them into listening to me, but there I was doing it anyway. I was frustrated and angry with the way the students ignored me, so

I tapped into an aspect of my own background that would align myself with their experience. But I wasn’t sure if I was entitled to make that alignment because I’ve always felt like my own claim to minority status was (and is) partial and that other people have more claim to it than I do. My parents are the ones who had the difficult experiences: they grew up poor, and my mom was the one who immigrated to the United States from El

Salvador when she was a teenager, not me. My knowledge of real hardship was in my lineage, not in my personal experience. And even though I was truthful in relaying my

70 The story about my dad is true, but that wasn’t why I went on the trip. I was there to observe the trip and to find out how Ohio State conducts service in Appalachian Ohio. 181

father’s story, I said it in a way that suggested that I had something in common with the students when I had been thinking all week about how their lives were much different than mine.

When I reflect on the experience now, especially in relation to the two other examples above, I can appreciate the students’ critique of our authority a little better. I suppose it’s easier to read about such things than to be on the receiving end. As a folklorist I’m delighted by bottom-up criticism, but I certainly wasn’t delighted that day.

What I can appreciate in retrospect is the ways that the students disrupted any belief I could have had that I was important or in control of the situation. They criticized my assumption of authority by making me feel insignificant.

Our intentions, authority, experience, and efficacy were questioned during these moments of tension in service. In the first example, the boy’s insistence that he would not attend college and would instead sit on his ass is a sarcastic response to our message that, given the right tools, he too could go to college. Throwing a simplified degrading stereotype back into our faces should have made us question what we were saying and considered the efficacy of a program that emphasized the individual as the agent of change. On parent night, our experiences authorized us to speak about how our own parents or mentors impacted our routes to college, but then reading off the lists in the packets shifted us into a space that was uneasy because we didn’t know what kinds of barriers parents might be experiencing that would keep them from being able to fulfill the tasks we were suggesting. We realized that we didn’t know enough about their lives to even determine which of those tasks would be unreasonable or insulting to the parents.

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Authority was challenged differently at the technical school where the relevance and efficacy of our message was challenged outright and much more vocally. The students challenged our authority to stand at the head of the classroom and keep their attention, and they challenged our assumption that they wanted to hear what we had to say.

Lessons Learned from Last Day Informalities

On the last day of our trip, we visited Fayetteville High School to do our usual routine for the first of two rounds of student groups: college Jeopardy, Know How 2 Go, and questions. Since the next class had a few students from the previous class and we were all pretty spent by then, we decided to simplify things by standing in a semicircle at the back of the room, telling the students who we were (our majors and research interests) and letting the students ask us questions. It was through this more conversational style that the high school students got to hear more about individual Ohio State students’ areas of research in a meaningful and concrete way. Allowing the students to direct the questions (as opposed to talking at them and then prompting responses) provided a space for them to express who they were and what their interests were. We could then respond with either our personal experiences or by pointing the students to useful resources. One student, after hearing that I was a folklorist, expressed his interest in Chinese folklore and culture, and I’m not sure that student would have had the opportunity to share that in our typical format.

After class was dismissed, the teacher (who was there for both classes) came up to thank us for coming in to speak with his classes. He said that he appreciated both formats,

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but that the second one was significantly better than the first in terms of information conveyed and student engagement. It brought a personal quality to the exchange that was missing from the first format. All of us agreed and were shocked at what had transpired: it had taken us a week to realize the extent of the discrepancy between the concept of mutual exchange we had intended to enact and the types of interactions we were having as we talked through the Know How 2 Go script. More than anything, we were disappointed that we had figured out a better way to approach the students at the very end of our trip to Brown County. Though we had given numerous presentations and had facilitated multiple discussions, this teacher’s feedback was the first we had received

(besides a generous thank you) throughout the whole trip. Now that we were receiving information about what worked, we realized how lacking our experience had been in the area of feedback (beyond students’ responses during our discussions with them).71

Irene King, in her chapter “What We Are About to Do Is Highly Problematic: The

Unpaved Road from Service Trips to Educational Delegations,” argues that, among other practices, the incorporation of community assessment of service, a shift toward locals teaching students, and collaborating with locals on projects that are actually meaningful and currently ongoing, promotes a service trip built on partnership and solidarity rather than one more powerful group ineffectively “helping” a less powerful group (89-92). In her discussion of short-term student service trips to Central America, King emphasizes cooperation and partnership in planning service trips as a necessary step in interrupting international hierarchies:

71 The various criticisms we received were feedback as well, to be sure, but here I am specifically talking about solicited feedback. 184

To create a plan without integral input from the community is to reiterate

patterns of imperialism. If the relationship between U.S. and Central

American citizens is to change, we must step out of the shoes of the ‘one

who knows best’ or the ‘one with access to the most resources’ and try a

different, more vulnerable way of relating. Any ‘good work’ in Central

America is only ‘good’ to the degree that it begins and sustains a

relationship of equality in every aspect of the project and builds in a

constant process of reflection with the community on what is working—

and what is replicating old ways of being that enforce patterns of

dependency. Then, and only then, can we do something good together.

(88)

King suggests that trip leaders meet with community members at the end of the service period to assess impact and exchange between the groups (91). What our small conversation with the teacher taught us was that assessment (beyond congratulatory thanks) was missing from our program and that who gets defined as “community members” when we talk about assessment is crucial to understanding our impact. It was an important misstep not to have asked the adult community members to give us feedback about the usefulness of our presentations. Even more important, we should have asked the students about what they wanted to talk to us about. What did they want to tell us about themselves? What questions did they have for us? What other models of education access trips could we build out of this feedback?

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Post-Trip Reflection: Exploring Empathy, Ambivalence, and Redemption in Service

On March 27, 2014, a week and a half after our trip to Brown and Vinton County,

I asked the Ohio State student volunteers to meet to reflect upon their experiences.

Although we did not assess the junior high and high school students, we did provide an opportunity for the Ohio State students to assess and evaluate their experiences, an occasion that proved helpful for articulating the problems and challenges of connecting with Appalachian Ohio students. During this group discussion, Ohio State students shared their own college experiences in order to express their concerns about the work they did on the service trip.

Nine students showed up for the discussion as well as the trip organizer. After some warm-up questions, I asked the Ohio State students to put themselves in the shoes of the students they had spoken with in the counties we visited. What would it be like for them to have Ohio State students coming and talking with them about going to college?

In response, one of the students from the Vinton County trip initiated a conversation that raised questions about the nature of service and the extent to which one can communicate across difference. The students grappled with the overwhelming economic and cultural cycles that exist in the communities in which they volunteered, wherein students who choose to stay in home counties have limited job opportunities.

Jack (Vinton trip): This is something I sorta struggle with because it was

eye-opening for them while we were there certainly but I get, I don’t know

what kind of impact we had. To look at it really. I’m not the person that

can empathize best with those [inaudible] in Vinton County. I don’t really

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understand where they’re coming from. I’m starting to get an idea from it more and more but I’m really not qualified, for lack of a better word, to be the one to tell them these things. So I don’t know what the reaction was. I have mixed feelings about it.

Lucy (Vinton Trip): Yeah, I agree with you… ‘cause I think on the one hand for some kids I think it might have been beneficial but on the other hand I felt like some kids who had already—I don’t know, they had had

Ohio State students come three or four years in a row, right? So some of them, especially in middle school, plus, they’re middle schoolers, they’re like ‘ugh, why do we have to sit through this’ blah blah blah. And I also just wonder how they might have felt—kinda what you were saying, how does this person from the city, from a completely different background from me really know about my life and my culture here?

Jack: I mean, not just that, I don’t even think we had the right message.

You talk to people in Vinton County and like the adults you know who’ve sort of gone to college and understand what we’re trying to do. They’ll say not everyone’s cut out for college. I don’t want, not I don’t want every single kid in the school to go to college but if a lot of them do it’ll be very difficult for them, they might not succeed there. They may spend a lot of resources getting there that they won’t be able to return on. And I just

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have no way of speaking to that. That’s not the situation I was in. I don’t want to say we were misleading or misguiding, ‘cause I do think we helped a lot of people but it I’m not qualified to talk to these people.

Cassie: What makes you feel unqualified? Is it because your experience is different or is it something else?

Jack: Yeah, it’s my experience is different. I guess that’s at the base of it.

It’s extremely different—not just different. Unworldly different. And I was sort of, first of all I was telling them what I knew which was totally different from what they knew, know what I mean? What my college process was like would be totally different from what any kid in Vinton

County’s process would be like. It doesn’t really compare and I, I guess at times I sort of embellished a little bit on the truth just to you know to have something to connect to them because I didn’t fill out scholarships, I didn’t apply for scholarships, I didn’t get scholarships. I got grants, I did do my part to sort of help out but it’s not the same at all in that same respect. I, there’s that. And then on top of that I wasn’t personally, and luckily I didn’t have this job when we were in our four steps, but I have no ability to speak to technical schools or vocational schools or two-year programs, blue collar jobs. There’s plenty of those in Vinton County that people could make themselves qualified for to sort of enjoy some of the

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luxuries maybe that people who have been through college enjoy. That’s why I feel I was unqualified. I really enjoyed the trip, I really really did.

I’m a little less than happy about the result.

Joan (Vinton trip): I guess I felt a little differently. I felt there was a lot of points where I could connect to these kids because I saw some parallels between me trying to figure out how to do the college thing and them trying to do the same thing. I feel like even if we just tell them that for me it was just saying that you don’t have to go to college but college is an option for you. It doesn’t matter really where you come from, that there’s all kind of different schools and there’s all kind of different ways to pay for college. So I just think if you think about it, I think there’s more similarities between people than are differences and I think that if you just kind of think about that you don’t have to lie to kids and tell them that.

You can be honest and say yeah mine was a bit different from yours but there’s gonna be some basics in there. Like I think everyone’s a little scared about going to college for the first time. Maybe everyone’s a little confused about the application process, like I know I definitely was. So I think it’s just finding those similarities and bringing them out and telling kids kinda where you struggled in the college process a little bit too.

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Belle (Brown trip): I think it’s important to get the information to kids,

but one of our last days there one of the classes instead of going through

the four steps we just did a Q&A session and I think they were a lot more

receptive to that and they’re gonna remember that more than people

throwing a bunch of facts at them. Especially you’re talking to middle

school kids and just giving them that speech that by the end of the week

we all had memorized. It’s just a speech of facts. But what’s really gonna

impact these kids is when you do give them your personal experience and

try to make connections with them, not just saying what you’re reading off

a page but actually saying what happens in real life.

I think it’s really useful for them to see that college isn’t just for rich

people. Half of the people in our group were first-generation college

students, I think two people were from Appalachia, so having that

experience knowing that it is an option if they do want to pursue it. Like

you said there’s other options but if they do want to go to college it’s not

just for the rich kids. There’s scholarships there’s grants, there’s plenty of

financial aid out there, and even if it’s just a few people that we help that’s

already enough.

Throughout this section of the post-trip reflection discussion, students raise important questions about the redemptive and transformative possibilities of service and education.

Specifically, they grapple with whether similarity of experience and empathy are

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fundamental to the goal of mutual exchange. The premise (and the promise) of service- learning is transformation through juxtaposition (through the experience of difference), often involving groups that are unequal in some way. Enduring questions in service scholarship revolve around how to deal with inequity experienced in face-to-face encounters framed as service.

Jack struggles with discourses of pride and discomfort. Though he is highly critical of the students’ ability to empathize across difference and critiques the method of delivery, he frames his contributions with comments that validate the trip, saying that they had an impact and that he enjoyed it. We can see better how these discourses frame his talk if we separate out aspects of his evaluation so that validating comments are in bold, ambivalent comments are underlined, and the basis of critique is italicized.

Jack (Vinton trip): This is something I sorta struggle with because it was

eye-opening for them while we were there certainly but I get, I don’t

know what kind of impact we had. To look at it really. I’m not the person

that can empathize best with those [inaudible] in Vinton County. I don’t

really understand where they’re coming from. I’m starting to get an idea

from it more and more but I’m really not qualified, for lack of a better

word, to be the one to tell them these things. So I don’t know what the

reaction was. I have mixed feelings about it.

…

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I mean, not just that, I don’t even think we had the right message. You talk to people in Vinton County and like the adults you know who’ve sort of gone to college and understand what we’re trying to do. They’ll say not everyone’s cut out for college. I don’t want, not I don’t want every single kid in the school to go to college but if a lot of them do it’ll be very difficult for them, they might not succeed there. They may spend a lot of resources getting there that they won’t be able to return on. And I just have no way of speaking to that. That’s not the situation I was in. I don’t want to say we were misleading or misguiding, ‘cause I do think we helped a lot of people but it I’m not qualified to talk to these people.

…

Yeah, it’s my experience is different. I guess that’s at the base of it. It’s extremely different—not just different. Unworldly different. And I was sort of, first of all I was telling them what I knew which was totally different from what they knew, know what I mean? What my college process was like would be totally different from what any kid in Vinton

County’s process would be like. It doesn’t really compare and I, I guess at times I sort of embellished a little bit on the truth just to you know to have something to connect to them because I didn’t fill out scholarships, I didn’t apply for scholarships, I didn’t get scholarships. I got grants, I did do my part to sort of help out but it’s not the same at all in that same respect. I, there’s that. And then on top of that I wasn’t personally, and

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luckily I didn’t have this job when we were in our four steps, but I have no

ability to speak to technical schools or vocational schools or two-year

programs, blue-collar jobs. There’s plenty of those in Vinton County that

people could make themselves qualified for to sort of enjoy some of the

luxuries maybe that people who have been through college enjoy. That’s

why I feel I was unqualified. I really enjoyed the trip, I really really did.

I’m a little less than happy about the result.

Critique and ambivalence are expressed at the opening and closing of his comments, framing the experience in a way that confirms the transformational goal of the trip. These framing comments, however, contradict (or, at very least, are in tension with) the embedded critique. In the opening paragraph, for instance, the sentence begins with a validation of the students’ impact and closes with critique of that same impact: “it was eye-opening for them while we were there certainly but…I don’t know what kind of impact we had.”

His deepest and most specific critique is about class difference, mentioning that students from Vinton County may not be able to get the same return on their education and that the jobs they have back home are primarily blue-collar jobs that don’t require a four-year degree. Jack struggles to understand a culture of education and work in which students learn skills and take jobs close to home.

Two of the female students whose backgrounds are more similar to the students in

Brown and Vinton Counties—Joan and Belle—talk about personal experience and empathy as ways to overcome the types of barriers of difference that Jack described as

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potentially insurmountable. If we take a similar approach to a close reading of their contributions such that redeeming comments are in bold, ambivalent comments are underlined, and the basis of empathy is italicized, we can see Joan and Belle’s attempt to recover the possibility of empathy.

Joan (Vinton trip): I guess I felt a little differently. I felt there was a lot

of points where I could connect to these kids because I saw some

parallels between me trying to figure out how to do the college thing and

them trying to do the same thing. I feel like even if we just tell them that

for me it was just saying that you don’t have to go to college but college is

an option for you. It doesn’t matter really where you come from, that

there’s all kind of different schools and there’s all kind of different ways

to pay for college. So I just think if you think about it, I think there’s more

similarities between people than are differences and I think that if you just

kind of think about that you don’t have to lie to kids and tell them that.

You can be honest and say yeah mine was a bit different from yours but

there’s gonna be some basics in there. Like I think everyone’s a little

scared about going to college for the first time. Maybe everyone’s a little

confused about the application process, like I know I definitely was. So I

think it’s just finding those similarities and bringing them out and

telling kids kinda where you struggled in the college process a little bit

too.

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Belle (Brown trip): I think it’s important to get the information to

kids, but one of our last days there one of the classes instead of going

through the four steps we just did a Q&A session and I think they were a

lot more receptive to that and they’re gonna remember that more than

people throwing a bunch of facts at them. Especially you’re talking to

middle school kids and just giving them that speech that by the end of the

week we all had memorized. It’s just a speech of facts. But what’s really

gonna impact these kids is when you do give them your personal

experience and try to make connections with them, not just saying what

you’re reading off a page but actually saying what happens in real

life.

I think it’s really useful for them to see that college isn’t just for rich

people. Half of the people in our group were first-generation college

students, I think two people were from Appalachia, so having that

experience knowing that it is an option if they do want to pursue it. Like

you said there’s other options but if they do want to go to college it’s not

just for the rich kids. There’s scholarships there’s grants, there’s plenty

of financial aid out there, and even if it’s just a few people that we help

that’s already enough.

As low-income, first-generation college students, Joan and Belle have a vested interest in the possibilities of overcoming difference: for them, getting a college degree

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depends on it. Their rebuttal to Jack serves as a way of subtly marking his privilege by showing how he can afford to allow his skepticism to challenge the process on a deep level. As students invested in college access for underprivileged youth (that is, in their own personal experiences and the possibilities for others like them) they are interested in finding a way to redeem initiatives that promote equal access to higher education. They use the authority of their experiences to assure him that mutual recognition and exchange is possible, though he (and other privileged students) may not find it where they had thought. Though Jack is shocked at the inequality he observed and the culture of local blue-collar options he experienced, they argue that he needs to see past the shock of difference to find commonality, even at the most basic level.

Joan emphasizes similarities over differences and points to the emotional and logistical aspects of going to college, saying that regardless of class and culture all college applicants are to some degree scared, confused, and trying to make sense of the process. As she says, “there’s gonna be some basics in there.” Joan argues that it’s okay not to have the same experience as long as you share your own story and find even the most basic ways of connecting. Belle emphasizes that getting the information to the students and challenging ideas that college is only for elites is “already enough.” The mere fact of interrupting limiting ideas about college, she argues, is a significant impact.

She then builds on her point about finding ways to connect by saying that sharing one’s personal experience—“actually saying what happens in real life”—is the way to make an impact during college access service trips.

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Conclusion

Though we started out with ideals of mutual exchange in our pre-trip meetings, implementation of the Know How 2 Go curriculum and a lack of critical language to think through social inequality ultimately left students excited to have made new friendships at the same time that they questioned the relevance and impact of our message. Our message was often obliviously patronizing, particularly since we didn’t know enough about the history of the area or about the day-to-day lives of the residents to be able to engage in conversations that more approximated “mutual exchange.” Further, the Know How 2 Go curriculum and the packets we used for parent night proposed generalized rather than community-specific suggestions, which often left me feeling uncomfortable about how feasible our suggestions were for many of the residents. We did not solicit or consider “identified community needs” or engage in conversations that illuminated issues that the community would like to think through with us.

Unsatisfied with the way service was implemented, the Vinton County volunteer team attempted to create their own student organization. Unfortunately, though, the students were not able to follow through on their plans. When I emailed them in June of

2015 to see if the student organization had been created, only one student responded to my email. She said that they did not end up starting the group “because everyone’s schedules did not line up to meet to push forward to create the group.” Lacking a support structure and time in their schedules once they returned proved to be too difficult to get the project off the ground. Thought the students believed that it was possible to

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recuperate the work of the service trip, their inability to do the actual work leaves the idea in the category of failed good intentions.

Scholars of service learning have long grappled with how best to sustain the insights, questions, and energies of students upon returning home. In “The Pilgrimage

Transformed: How to Decompartmentalize U.S. Volunteer Tourism in Central America,”

Abigail Adams expresses the challenges of what she calls “the reincorporation stage,” which often “solidifies the process of bracketing and containing the powerful experiences, which are quickly stored away in cyst-like dormant narratives” (165).

Complicated experiences, she argues, transform into “inspiring stereotypical stories, smoothed by the physicality of service work and the covering ‘good works’ metanarrative…to neutralize any confrontation with one’s own privilege and the other challenges of the encounter” (165-166). Adams offers up two proposals for interrupting decompartmentalizing tendencies in short term service trips: engaging in public storytelling and removing the service component of the trip, replacing it with more intimate forms of community engagement (168).

Eric Usner, in “From Skeptic to Convert, from (Short-Term) Service to (Long-

Term) Witness: Toward Pedagogies of Witnessing on International Service Trips,” argues that one of the goals of Critical Service Learning is to leave students “with a nagging sense of discomfort that will fire their critical thinking and compel them to action”(102). Some of his students at Lawrence, for instance, followed up on a transformative trip to Nicaragua by engaging in continued work with subcontracted migrants at their university, including offering reciprocal language classes, advocating for

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free legal counsel, and raising the minimum wage for the employees (103). Significantly,

Usner’s model of Critical Service Learning provides a structure for continual engagement and discussion after students return from the field so that students have outlets for transforming their questions, discomforts, and desires into action.

Though Ohio State Buck-I-Serv trips appear to be thorough and community- driven on paper, on-the-ground implementation of the principles—especially the use of stock programs like Know How 2 Go—fall short of such goals, leaving students with an abundance of positive memories created among the volunteer group but little in the way of deeply-engaged community-centered service. Service-learning leaders can consider models offered up by Adams and Usner that seek to understand the ways that service can have unintended consequences and to consider the ways that service trips both at home and abroad can be recast and extended so that they better serve both the community and student populations. University administrators and trip leaders can consider the ways that they construct and interact with existing moral geographies of Appalachian Ohio as well as take time to learn about both the public and private moral geographies that residents construct and enact themselves.

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Conclusion

Well the road it overtook me to the point where I was blind My body was weak but not as much as my mind, oh my mind I just can’t get, can’t get my fill of those hills, oh but still No matter where I am in this land I feel alone, when I’m not at home

Whoa-oh-whoa-oh-whoa-oh-whoa-oh-whoa-Ohio! Hiyo!

So if you, if you see me hunkered down in your town I’m just watchin’ the clock on the wall ‘Til I can go to the place I love most of all

Radiate—just wait to die Break your back and never, never wonder why Get me home before I, ‘fore I lose my mind I need some space to let my, my tape rewind

Whoa-oh-whoa-oh-whoa-oh-whoa-oh-whoa-Ohio! Hiyo!

“Ohio” by The Black Keys

This past September, I was giving a guest lecture in an Introduction to Folklore course about the floodwall murals in Portsmouth, Ohio. The instructor agreed to show a documentary that came out recently about the murals, titled Beyond These Walls:

Building Community Through Public Art, which was produced by a professor at the local university and had aired a few months prior on PBS. The documentary tells a story about the ways that the Portsmouth Floodwall Murals create a sense of community identity while they promote tourism. Students had already watched 15 minutes of the film during the previous class and I asked what had struck them about the first portion. A young man in the front of the room raised his hand and said, “Why aren’t these people doing more to

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help themselves? I’m from Buffalo where we had a similar situation, and the city was able to turn itself around. I just don’t understand why they’re painting these murals when they could be investing the money to stimulate the economy.” Though a couple students and I offered counterpoints about the difficulties of attracting new industries, shifting to a new economic base, or simply getting up in the morning after having been laid off, I got the sense that he left the class pretty unsatisfied with our responses.

The best, and perhaps most effective, response I was able to give him was that folklorists try to approach these topics as questions rather than judgments: Instead of

“Why aren’t these people doing more to help themselves?” we could ask, “What motivated the residents of Portsmouth to invest in free public art during an economic downturn?” Further, we might ask, “What might they be striving for, if not what we would perceive to be a ‘definite’ economic reward?” Clearly the residents responsible for the murals were driving toward a different goal, and it was broadly outlined in the title of the documentary: “creating community through public art.” In contrast, the student assumed that residents were responsible for their own economic recovery and that they were somehow inept at bringing the ideal of a bootstraps-style recovery to fruition. I was struck by the way the student, and likely many other people who have watched the film or passed through Portsmouth, could make such harsh judgments about a people and place within only a few minutes.

Similarly, in a February 13, 2009 interview with Diane Sawyer, Bill O’Reilly characterized Appalachia as a hopeless region caught in a cycle of poverty, ignorance, and drug abuse. He claimed that if he grew up in the region he would simply leave,

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saying, “Look, if I’m born in Appalachia, the first chance I get, I go to Miami. Because that’s where the jobs are. And I don’t want to sound hopeless about it, but I think it is hopeless.” Throughout Appalachian Ohio, a similar narrative of abandonment takes the form of the “rust belt” label, which is synonymous with deindustrialization, economic decline, job and population loss, and brain drain. The intersection of culture and economics (which often raises questions about the relative responsibilities of individuals and institutions) is at the heart not only of the questions the student was asking me, but also of folkloristics, as we tend to examine the creative ways that individuals respond to

(or make do despite) structural inequalities. O’Reilly’s and the young man’s response illustrates the ways in which folklore is always embedded in (and in dialogue with) multiple economies operating at various scales and viewed from differential perspectives.

Critics of the “abandonment model” espoused by O’Reilly, the authors of Rural

Literacies posit “sustainability” as an alternative metaphor for recuperating communities.

As I close this dissertation and look toward a new year working with the Appalachian

Project, I wonder about what sustainability looks like in Appalachian Ohio. Talking with residents about the murals and talking with students about their road stories reveals the critical ways that they use them to mediate between their home and the larger world, and especially how they employ the road/murals as a strategy to respond to preconceived notions about who they are, what they’ve been up to, and how they should be spending their time. Ambivalence, recuperation, and empathy are important stances that shape the moral geography of Appalachian Ohio. I argue that reflections from elsewhere among

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Appalachian Ohioans are the crucial ways in which residents and college students from the region negotiate their experiences of place in a global economy.

Wrapping Back Around: Fragments From Extended Fieldwork

As I wrote the dissertation—indeed, after I had finished the bulk of my fieldwork—I heard and saw little bits of information that supported, challenged, and existed alongside the interviews I conducted with the students. These fragments came primarily from informal conversations held before or after Appalachian Project meetings,

Facebook posts, and email and text message correspondence. The students and I have kept in touch with one another in some way or another over the past couple of years, primarily through Facebook and their requests for recommendation letters. Through these informal connections, I was able to stay informed about the students’ career choices after graduation. I was surprised, for instance, in late December 2014, when Dave, who in

Chapter 2 said that even if things were to get better in his hometown he wouldn’t want to return, wrote a Facebook post saying “As much as I dislike the Ohio Valley, it’s never easy to leave it.” Responding to a friend’s post suggesting that he move back to

Columbus, he said he would move “to Columbus or Pittsburgh at the first opportunity.”

Similarly, when Dana visited Columbus during a break from her job with a national non-profit educational outreach program, she said she was eager to move back to

Ohio, though probably not to her home county. While away, she realized how much she missed her home state and ended up applying to graduate programs in Social Work throughout the state. Unlike Dave and Dana, Wren did not leave the state for work, but

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she also applied to and was accepted into a Social Work program in the state. Thus far, the students are indeed staying relatively close to home, with only two of the seven students I interviewed currently residing outside the state of Ohio, one of which resides in a neighboring state. We need to better understand how students position themselves within institutional and community contexts—the job interview, the personal statement, etc.—in order to get a fuller picture of the shape that their reflections from elsewhere take.

Moral Geographies, Sense-Making and Performance in Reflections from Elsewhere

Reflections from elsewhere is a concept that encapsulates practices of sense- making as well as presentation and performance. It is a concept that reminds us that sense-making occurs both in private and in public, as personal or community-wide contemplation that is always in dialogue with the larger world. Reflections from elsewhere are moral geographies: the ways that people make sense of and evaluate the spaces they inhabit and work to engage the ways that others are already interpreting them. Student’s critical discourses around their time of graduation, ruptured terrains and emerging tourist economies, and sites of university outreach are spaces ripe with reflections from elsewhere because they are spaces that are already very self-consciously constructing themselves in ways that engage the possibilities of how they can be interpreted.

Steve Jenkins shows us that moments of rupture can prompt moments of reflection, time to sit back and try to understand. Steve’s binder shows us how reflection

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entails sense-making as well as presentation, as they form a moral geography of his local landscape in his own home office. Students’ moral geographies had (and still does have) clearly defined spaces of value. Home spaces combine limited options with demands of humility while the university space combines expanding options with new discourses of value that are often in conflict with home values. Traversing the road between college and home then, is a critical practice of “keeping ties” that continually asserts students’ desire, willingness, or obligation to bridge their two worlds. Taking the long view of history, the selective and hyper-visible moral geography of Portsmouth naturalizes historical processes such as the removal of Native American populations, the coming and going of various industries, and the formation and struggle of labor unions in the area.

Interestingly conflict resides in the gaps of the visible moral archive in Portsmouth as well as the informal conversations between long-time residents. Not airing the dirty laundry is an important practice when building a tourist economy based on nostalgia for

“the good old days.” And, we see in the Buck-I-Serv failures the need for university administrators and service trip leaders to consider the ways that they construct and interact with existing moral geographies of Appalachian Ohio as well as take time to learn about both the public and private moral geographies that residents construct and enact themselves.

Further Research: Intersections of Staying and Public Display

While the project of analyzing reflections from elsewhere has been to understand vantage points associated with youth from post-industrial small cities, a couple of areas

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of continuing research stand out to me. Though I focused on the students who attended

Ohio State, I am also interested in more fully exploring the lives of young people who decided to stay in their home cities, particularly in Portsmouth, Ohio. How do they feel about their roles in their communities, families, and friend circles? I’d also like to do a more in-depth historical-cultural analysis of the Portsmouth Floodwall Murals, asking, what are the politics behind such a grand representation, what histories of representation do they connect to, and how do the murals fit in with the larger historical culturescape of the city? And then, in what ways does staying in one’s community intersect with such public displays? In what ways, for instance, do stayers mark their landscape?

I’m also interested in taking a closer look at the ways in which labor and conflict figure in to the Portsmouth Floodwall Murals project in order to get a deeper sense of the local politics involved in murals selection and production. Most important, I’d like to explore the activity that takes place around, behind, and in between the Portsmouth

Floodwall Murals—the spaces in which, in some cases, more complex stories of community and conflict can take shape. Mural offshoots—the Portsmouth Floodwall

Stars located on the river side of the floodwall, commemorative souvenirs, Shawnee State

University promotional banners, informal volunteer resident-led tours, the recently- created Scioto Historical app, and a failed attempt to plan a Murals Festival—tell a deeper story about the ways that residents make the murals work for them and the ways that they work for their city. In considering the labor and display that circulates around the murals, I would like to consider how residents

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 respond to national and global economic (de)regulations and shifts (and the ways that outsiders expect residents to respond to them) by serving as a tool for heritage tourism as economic reinvention  engage non-monetary economies of attention (such as touristic viewing, capacity for empathy, and interest in engaging in activism), commitment (commissioning and sustaining mural companion projects), history-making, and community- building  have conversations about potential opportunities for future economic development  narrate the historical, discursive, and experiential gaps in the Floodwall Murals project

I’d like to investigate the accompaniments of heritage tourism—the objects and energies that surround the tourist site—and the incredible amount of often invisible, volunteer labor that goes into local economic revitalization carried out as heritage tourism.

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