As my time in Tennessee comes ever more swiftly to an
end, I am prone to reflecting on the last 10 months. When we moved here with K.
last August, it was both exciting and terrifying to be in a new place. We moved
with nary more than a carload of stuff and spent the first two to three weeks
in Cookeville alternating between cleaning our new home (which was rather
disgusting, as if the people who had lived there previously just gave up on
taking care of it once they realized they were moving) and spending our savings
on furnishing it from the ground up. We had jettisoned so much of our stuff in
the move that we had to buy almost everything from scratch, from shelves to
soup ladles, from couches to kitchen cleaners.
When I recall that first month of living off Subway
sandwiches, killing cockroaches multiple times a day, not knowing hardly a
soul…I hardly want to move again. But when I remember how quickly and
pleasantly we made new friends and established ourselves at work and in the
community, I feel a bit better about our impending move. K. and I meet and make
friends easily, we open our homes to people, we get involved. We also, I think,
search out people like ourselves, thinkers, doers, creative folks, etc. We
taste the local cuisine and patronize local businesses, preferring local over
chain whenever possible.
Many people both here and in New York look at us askance
when we say that we moved from New York to Tennessee. They all seem to be
thinking, “Why would you do that?” I remember having the same thought when I
met a woman in Maryland who was part-owner of a local business there but fondly
reminisced about her youth in New York City. “Why did you leave?” I asked her
aghast, my 23-year-old brain unable to comprehend why anyone would leave the
most amazing, creative, sociable, cutting-edge place in the world.
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| Awesome view of New York, which I also love. |
After living in Tennessee for ten months, however, I
think I have the answer. And that answer is, that creative and awesome people
are everywhere—and so are small-minded assholes.
New Yorkers, after all, are notorious for believing they
live in “the best city in the world.” I was told multiple times while living
there a version of the following sentiment: Everything that is the best in the
world is here, so why leave or live anywhere else? or If it’s not in New York,
it doesn’t exist. But when I moved to Long Island, I encountered the same
attitude: Why go to New York City when we have so many amazing things here on
Long Island?
One of my favorite Long Island anecdotes is actually
K.’s. She went in for a check-up, and the doctor, a handsome man from the
South, was playing some classic jazz tunes on his in-office radio: Ella
Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, that type of thing. After he left, the nurse
helping out leaned over to K. and said, with a thick Long Island accent, “Can
you believe this music? I mean, what a hick!” We cackled and cackled over this
response later because, to us, it was obvious that this nurse was the hick;
what cultivated, cultured human being doesn’t like Louis Armstrong?
Case in point, hicks, or small-minded folks, are
everywhere. You don’t have to go to Tennessee or anywhere else a New Yorker
might consider “the boonies” or “flyover country” to find hicks. They are in
your backyard. They are the people who refuse to leave New York because “why
bother?” They are in New York City just as much as they are in the Tennessee
hills or in London or in China or in a village in Provence, Peru or Polynesia.
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| An asshole by any other name is still an asshole. |
Conversely, there are also educated, questioning,
creative, curious, intellectual, fabulous, fashionable and free-thinking people
everywhere as well. Here in the wilds of the Upper Cumberland plateau, I have
had the pleasure of meeting writers, artists, philosophers, thinkers, poets,
actors, readers, vegans and vegetarians, organic gardeners, musicians and many
more category of open-minded, wordly people who, for one reason or another,
live here and not anywhere else.
Of course, it is a lot easier, perhaps, to find these
people in big cities. And cities also provide other kinds of built-in conveniences
like arts newspapers or LGBT publications, a plethora of organizations putting
together events constantly, maybe a wider variety of shops catering to your
person interests and needs. Still, I have found charming bookstores, comfy
cafes, enlightened conversation, and delicious local eats right here in my
proverbial backyard, along with the greenery, rolling hills, lakes and rivers
that make it clear to me why artists, thinkers and writers would choose to live
here rather than, say, Nashville. There a few more beautiful views than the
green hills and clear streams of our very own Putnam County here.
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| A view of Center Hill Lake last fall when we visited the Appalachian Center for Craft, a satellite campus of Tech, where students can study weaving, blacksmithing & woodworking, among other crafts. The public can take workshops there, too. |
When I tell people that I really will miss Cookeville and
our friends here, many of them seem doubtful. “Well,” they say, “You are just
good at finding the bright side of things.” And maybe that is true; but maybe
it is also true that there are good things to be found nearly everywhere.
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| Cane Creek Park, on the western edge of town. |
