S-Town

14. S-Town

On Tuesday a new podcast came out called S-Town. The details of it don't really matter but I wanted to listen to it because it takes place in rural Alabama. Upon listening I found out it takes place in Bibb County... I binged listened with Moo and finished in one day. At the end I felt lost. I've spent the last 4 days struggling with the feelings that came up after listening. I looked up the subreddit for S-Town and found someone who perfectly captured my feelings. I want to share them here.

"Lived my whole life in the Deep South, though I live abroad now. The accents, the colloquialisms, the "fuck it" attitude coupled immediately with the super secretive eyebrow-waggling, I-can't-say-it-out-loud attitude, the oppression, the unfairness, the enigma of coupling abusive child-molesting fathers in the same category as not being able to buy a beer with the expired license, the drawls and the brawls and down-low meetings of men with "sugar in their tank" at rest-stops on lonely forested highways, the uncle with a bullet in his head that echoes everything said, the bending and breaking of rules, the camaraderie between police and low-lifes, the stray dogs, the ones who dump stray dogs, the ones who save stray dogs, the grandmas taking care of generations of family sleeping in their living rooms, the teenage pregnancies, the assumptions of others and defense of your own blatant sins, the baptist message at an atheist's funeral... I honestly don't think a more vivid and perfectly realistic picture of the rural Deep South could ever be painted. What an enigma and mystery this land is.

For the first time in a long time, I pined for Mississippi. For the land of contradiction. The most segregated *and* integrated place in America. The religious and the heathen cavort together in the same skin countless times between Sunday morning church and Wednesday night service. The ignorance and the brilliance, the coldness and the warmth, the suspicion and the welcome, intersecting like Highway 49 and Highway 61, where you can sell your soul to Satan in the shadow of a dozen churches.

Man, this podcast got in my bones. It devastated and amused and befuddled and extrapolated.

I have never felt so certain of my home and so repulsed by it. I have never felt as lost or as found. The decaying, decrepit Shit Towns of the South may be fading away, but they burn as vivid as they ever have.

I can't say enough about how this made me feel. Perfect, confusing, disturbing, authentic, and complex look at life in the rural Deep South.

I hate it with all my heart and love it with all my heart, all at the same time."

I wanted to add this to this list of things I'm thankful for because it reminded me to be thankful for and see value in where I come from.