A Love Song to Kentucky (and Nepal)

On my recent sojourn to Kentucky, I read a book about Nepal.  And therein lies a tale.

Kentucky is the home of the McConnell Center (yes, that McConnell)  which runs, among a very many other worthy activities, conferences for school teachers on important matters like the role of Liberty in Western Civilization.  This year’s week-long conference was in, mirabile dictu, Kentucky—this is more anomalous than you, Dear Reader, might expect—it is the fourth time I have done something with the McConnell Center, but the first time I have done something with them in Kentucky.  I spent the week at Natural Bridge State Park, which I am happy to report is a wonderful place if you are looking for a scenic mountain retreat with limited phone service and a Wi-Fi at the park’s lodge that works so slowly you’ll just decide to skip using it.  (Think: Dial-up days (remember that sound the modem made when it connected?).)

The school teachers with whom I spent the week were amazing (no surprise there—they are great).  But, this time I had the additional joy of spending the time with them on their home turf instead of somewhere in Tourist Land.  I am happy to report that Kentucky Charm is a real thing.  I learned a few things too:

1. Kentuckians really, really don’t like the fact that y’all look down on them.  They are a Proud People.

2. If you aren’t from Kentucky, then no matter how long you have lived there, you aren’t from Kentucky.

3. If you set your moonshine on fire and it burns blue, it’s fine.  If it burns green, you are going to have your knees lock up and maybe die.

I was only told that last item after drinking moonshine, by the way.  (I am happy to report it was blue.)

Speaking of moonshine, the Official Signature Drink of the tavern at Natural Bridge State Park is The Purple Lady, a cocktail with a moonshine base.  Nobody had ever heard of a moonshine cocktail before.  It isn’t real moonshine, though—some licensed thing in a jar with a label doesn't count as “moonshine” in the eyes of Kentuckians.  I think the rule is that if it legal to sell it, it isn’t real moonshine.  (The aforementioned blue burning liquid was real moonshine in case you were wondering (which you probably weren’t).)  I, and I alone, ordered The Purple Lady.  I achieved Instant Legend status not only for ordering it, but actually drinking it.  It was a kitchen sink cocktail—I cannot imagine who thought that combination of around 8 ingredients had any hope of being palatable.  It sounded disgusting from the description and it tasted even worse.  But I, a loyal sort, could not abandon my Purple Lady—I aspire to be a gentleman, after all—and so I consumed the drink made in her honor. 

The name of the tavern at the park is Trails End.  As one of the other participant’s noticed, it is Trails End, not Trail’s End.  A curious case of nomenclature—not sure what it means.  But, since the Purple Lady is ghost which frequents the park and the tavern announces not that a trail ends there, but that trails end, I realized a startling possibility too late to do anything about it—does drinking the signature drink named after a ghost in a Tavern named Trails End mean that one will shortly be joining said ghost?  To the best of my knowledge, I am still among the living (if I am not, this is a rather curious afterlife).

These ruminations on Kentucky bring us to the book abut Nepal promised at the outset.  The book was Palpasa Café, by Narayan Wagle.  Unless you are from Nepal, you probably have never heard of it.  I received it as a gift from a student (who was, presumably obviously, from Nepal).  The heart of the book had the protagonist wandering around rural Nepal during the height of the Maoist insurgency.  That part of the book was quite interesting in creating a sense of place.  One could feel the heartbreak of rural villagers caught in the middle of a battle between the army and the rebels, neither of which seemed to care all that much about the villagers in the middle.

(The book itself is a critical failure—the first part has much cringe-inducing dialogue between the protagonist and a woman he meets—I mean, in the scale of cringe-inducing dialogue, this was about as bad as it gets, it just kept going and going—and the plot itself was contrived and hinged on an endless series of impossible coincidences.  Indeed, even the whole “Let’s start wandering around rural Nepal” made absolutely no sense.  But, the plot was clearly a mere add-on to justify a dissertation on how the war in Nepal was affecting the people of Nepal.  And that part was not only good, but made me glad I read the book.)

This was a book rooted in place.  It felt like something that could only have been written in Nepal.  The author, the narrator, the protagonist, the love interest, and the villagers all belong not just in Nepal, but to Nepal.  And right there is the connection to Kentucky.  At previous McConnell Center events, I have met Kentucky school teachers.  But meeting them in Kentucky was different…they just belonged there.  They belong not just in Kentucky, but to Kentucky. 

An example: Kentuckians are obsessed with counties.  Obsessed.  The first thing they ask each other is what county they are from.  This has an amusing (well, amusing to me—nobody there understood my amusement) feature.  If you ask Kentuckians where they live in the state, they tell you the name of the county.  If you ask where that county is, they invariably tell you the name of a neighboring county.  When you still look blank, they just keep naming nearby counties.  When you finally say, “Is that in the west or east or north or south of Kentucky?” they get this really weird look before giving some sort a vague answer.  That way of establishing location apparently makes no sense to Kentuckians.  There are, by the way, 120 counties in Kentucky.  So, not even Kentuckians know all the counties in Kentucky.  But when they talk to each other, they go through the same list of surrounding counties to establish location.

Kentuckians are also obsessed with the fact that the rest of the country looks down on them.  Now to a Californian like me, Kentuckians are just part of that broad mass of Easterners (you know, everyone east of Salt Lake City), so I started asking if they thought of themselves like people from other states.  They looked at me in horror when I asked if there was a difference between Kentucky and Alabama.  Or Mississippi.  They assured me they were nothing like those states.  Nothing like Louisiana either (Cajun country).  Tennessee?  Too many cities.  The coastal states—might as well be Northerners.  West Virginia—well, that one didn’t generate instant horror at the comparison, but it was pretty obvious they don’t ever actually think about West Virginia.

On evening toward the end of the week, while we were sitting around drinking (bourbon and beer that night—not moonshine), I was listening to the Kentuckians complaining once again that the rest of the country thinks so lowly of them.  I asked why they cared so much about what others thought.  It is obvious that Kentucky is a beautiful state and Kentuckians are amazing people.  So, when others put them down, why don’t they just say “whatever”?  Then it hit me, that was a very “Californian” thing to ask.  When I realized this, I got that condescending “You clearly aren’t a Kentuckian” look and we all just moved on from my faux pas.  Kentuckians are, as noted above, a Very Proud People.  Honor means much to a Proud People.

So, all this has me wondering.  I am a Californian.  Do I belong to California in the same way that Wagle’s Nepalis belong to Nepal and the Kentucky school teachers belong to Kentucky.  Somehow, I don't think so.  California just seems so…transitory…in comparison.  Io wondered what it would mean to be Nepali or Kentuckian and realized I will never know.  I also realized while writing this, that no matter what I say, I could never write a true love song to Kentucky that Kentuckians would recognize as a love song to Kentucky.  So, I hope they know how much I admire and respect them.

So, I just listen to this—an artist I heard about last week—and think, “not my type of music, but now I know people to whom this speaks to their souls.”