MARSHALL : IDENTITY 6
Over the last couple of years I have begun to know people in Marshall and begun to feel more at home in Marshall. Marshall is twenty miles down the French Broad River from Asheville. While Asheville has become the hip city, Marshall, county seat of Madison County, in the past has been the traditional stereotype Appalachian mountain rural county of powerful sheriffs, and tobacco fields and mountain likker.
But that stereotype no longer holds if it ever did. Madison County is divided between oldtimers whose families have lived there forever and liberal outsiders seeking the simple rural mountain life as well as rich outsiders from Florida building outsize cottages to escape to in the summer. I have been photographing Marshall for years at their yearly Pirates and Mermaids parade, their Christmas parade and their fashion shows. But even though my daughter Susie and son-in-law Todd live in a one room cabin with an outhouse up the hill and spring fed water, the rural life so many seek, I’ve always felt like an outsider who lives the suburban life in Asheville.
But this began to change when I attended Rob Amberg’s 75th birthday party in his parent’s native Sicily town of Letojanni. Rob Amberg is a well known photographer with his photographs in many museums who has chronicled Madison County for 40 years. He invited his wide circle of friends to come to the party and a number of people including several developers who have been transforming Marshall into a village of art and craft shops and great restaurants to go with the traditional hardware and furniture shops of Marshall. Getting to know these people in Sicily made me feel more a part of Marshall. I knew a number of people. I was no longer a complete outsider although I didn’t belong. But this year after Helene spread thick mud through all the shops of Marshall, washing some of them away, I went to the staging area for relief volunteers and photographed about 100 of the volunteers over five days. Many of these people lived in and around Marshall and in the weeks since when I’ve gone to a number of Marshall events where I recognize more and more people and they recognize me.
I realize that what I like about Marshall is that it is small. Everyone seems to know each other and when the flood came everyone was ready to help each other. The people of Marshall seem almost to be a family. And that sense of community is very attractive. I am beginning to think that I belong and would like to live there at least part of the time though, of course, now a good deal of housing has gotten washed away. But the people of Marshall are a tribe that I can relate to and feel part of, intensified by the response to Helene’s flood.
One of the things that everyone comments on is that when disaster struck, just a little more than month before the recent election that was about polarization, including the polarization between red and blue in Madison County, a county that voted heavily for Trump, that the polarization disappeared. People just didn’t care. Neighbor helped neighbor and outsiders from all over came to help clean up the mess. Donations came from everywhere and everyone who had a basic need was helped. Political tensions and political signs just disappeared.
And I was lucky to be pulled into this feeling and into the celebrations of community meals and the fashion show and ballad singing accompanying fundraising for those who had lost so much. The pain was evident but so were the very good feelings of togetherness and supporting each other.
The Marshall community became one more tribe that I want to belong to and seems to show how to disregard polarization and replace it with listening and support and empathy.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 