College . 03/14/2008 01:41 PM . John King

I tried to explain Drive-By Truckers to my brother. He’s 30, a union electrician, blue collar, 4 kids, listens to Godsmack, drinks Natty Light kind of guy. We basically just have our blood in common. But he likes southern rock, and I figured he’d like DBT. So I said, “They sing about the South. They sing about working-class people, tornadoes, poverty, factories shutting down. That kind of thing.”

“Oh, stuff you know all about,” he said. His sarcasm was impossible to miss – his laugh a clear indictment of my un-calloused hands.

That was months ago. I can’t get it out of my head.

But he’s right. Generations of my family have been blue collar, but not me. I don’t know anything about working in a factory; I just know the few stories my grandfather, dad and brother have told me about working through Indiana summers inside factories with no air conditioning, or underground in a dank mine, a hair from death. When my grandfather died in 2003, a small amount of money arrived as compensation for his black lung.

I know the story of how a hot steel beam nearly burned a hole through my brother’s hand just as his foreman walked by. The foreman said, “Yeah, that’ll happen,” and kept walking. I watched as my dad was laid off time after time until the factory finally closed. I know that my brother is frequently unemployed — often for months — but he still has to pay union dues. If he takes non-union work, the union will find out. “They always find out,” he says. “And then you’re screwed.”

If that happens, he says, he’ll never work again. Fear of reprisal keeps him from finding work by other means, because his union — the organization that is supposed to ensure his quality of life — is often better at catching him doing non-union labor than helping him find union work.

I’ve seen this life; I grew up in a working class home. But I haven’t been the one in the factory or the coalmine. I’m the sole member of the family who went to college.

We’re given this line that you go to college to “better” yourself. In doing so, students from working class backgrounds — especially those who are the first-generation college students — encounter the bias of academic life; blue collar values are treated with a kind of patronizing “acceptance” inherent among touchy-feely, perpetually clueless academic shut-ins. Universities spend so much time on racial unity with no regard for the fissure between classes: working class students and those from more privileged backgrounds have much to learn from each other, but few professors or administrators actually moderate.

When I go home, the fissure spans a different divide. In my family, I’m the black sheep— not just because of college, but in all of my interests – from music to film to books to career aspirations. Trouble is, these things don’t equal an identity, and even a black sheep needs an identity. You can’t surround yourself with superficial items — a cd collection, guitars, comics, etc. — and you can’t just fill your life with people who are not blood. I surrounded myself with friends who had similar interests, but that’s not enough. Family is family, no matter how much it hurts. You have to go home sometime.

Where you come from is often as much of what you are as your own reflection in the rearview mirror. Trying to drive away from that is futile. You will always be from your hometown. You will always be part of your family. You will always be what you are.

I suppose that’s why the music of Drive-By Truckers resonates with me – even if I’m not from the south, and even if I don’t know anything about working in a factory. While I grew up in a working class environment, I can’t claim that I’ve “lived it,” but something about these songs speaks to me, makes me feel closer to understanding my background, reinforces the values of my upbringing, and helps me feel rooted in a culture I can’t quite call home.

It’s important that I get acquainted with those roots. Inherent in working class ideals is a connection, at least for me, to the south. And I am not from the south. I don’t know what it’s really like. I have stories and secondhand experiences and blood relatives buried in clay, but I am, and will always be, from Indiana — and Indiana isn’t the south. I don’t care how close you live to the Ohio River or how much you’ve embraced being a “redneck.” If you were born north of the Mason-Dixon Line, you’re a Yankee. Get used to it. Southerners resent posers.

I don’t really understand the southern thing. I’ve never seen a tornado, except on television. I don’t even know what they sound like. Oh, sure, they all sound like trains, but I’ve never heard one go by, and Indiana gets them every year. I’ve also never tasted sweet tea. If it tastes anything like regular tea, I’ll hate it. A Coke is a Coke. Mountain Dew is Mountain Dew. I’ve never seen kudzu. I didn’t even know what kudzu was until a couple of years ago. These things don’t comprise a “southern identity,” but the association is powerful.

But when I see old family pictures taken in the south, or when I drive through the south, I’m looking at home. I feel at peace. I’m a Yankee, but when I go south of the Mason-Dixon, I pick up a tinge of an accent. Somehow it’s real, not some imitation by some Northern wanna-be trying to “relate.” I don’t have to relate. I’m relation.

There’s something inherently southern in me. Is it hereditary? Mom is from Tennessee. Dad is from southern Kentucky. I’ve got family all over the south. I’ve got the south in my blood. At times, when I hear DBT, it’s visceral. I can identify with them when they talk about their parents and southern traditions and hospitality and George Wallace and racism and football and God. I ache and I smile and I feel right at home because that’s the closest thing to life: simultaneous happiness and pain, sitting in a rocking chair, maybe with a cheap beer.

I’m not a southerner — and I repeat that because “real” southerners have made that clear. So no, I don’t totally understand the southern thing. But I owe my values to a working class upbringing. And though I’m working out how that fits into an academic life, I haven’t forgotten my heritage. The values of my past are a part of me. My hands may not be calloused, but my roots run deep.

John King is an adjunct instructor at what seems like every college
in Indiana, but mostly, he teaches screenwriting at Ball State University. When he’s not doing that, he’s trying to figure out how to balance academia and southern rock. And his roots, of course. Lately he’s wondering whether he should bother.


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