Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Have Some Chicken And Joe!

Night Train is my main baby, let's keep that straight. However much it's 'my' journal, I feel constrained, by dint of the stories and poems we've published in the past, and our status as a non-profit combined with our incorporation as a quasi-educational institution, to a reasonable facsimile of what people expect to see. Else, why should they come back? And make no mistake, folks do come back to see what we do, and that's great. I appreciate their attention. I crave it, in fact. But there's always something else.

The great dirty or not so-dirty secret of my past, is that I grew up in the northernmost portion of the Appalachian Regional Commission designated 'Appalachian' area, north-central Pennsylvania. The stereotype, or more properly, the archetype, of the Appalachian region centers around the Kentucky/West Virginia portions of the ARC's designated area, but the economic difficulties and many of the same issues and similarities continued into that Bradford/Tioga county area in Pennsylvania, where I spent the first 24 years of my life. I played in cricks where all the rocks shone orange with runoff, where no fish lived, though the coal industry was dead by the time I was old enough to know what it had been and how it had caused the damage, and the lumber industry gone too, fifty or seventy-five years before. What was left to me and my friends was simply growing up and finding a way out, via the armed forces, via college, via just shitting and getting, if you could, the 'brain-drain' typical of rural Appalachia. You stay and become part of the scenery, or you never go back. Case in point, my father's family has lived, with three or four exceptions, in the same three-county area for 230 years.

We all know the stories, or we can look them up if we get the urge. Harry Caudill's Night Comes to the Cumberlands, revenuers, snakehandlers, the Hatfields and McCoys, feuding in general, moonshine, bluegrass, gospel, hard men, loose women, church women, coon dogs , coon huntin' and the folks who love them, or the NASCAR set, NRA set, however you choose to name them. I didn't see all of this, of course, being both Northern (pronounced Appalachia with a long second 'a' until I found out better, much later perhaps than I should have). and more well off than many in the parts of Appalachia below the Mason-Dixon. But what I found, in this literature of rural Appalachia and the rural south (and other places to be sure) was a sense that I had found something to mine, something that could be mine alone, something that felt exactly right to write about. And that's what I want this blogazine to be about.

I want to publish stories, poems, and essays about the rural life I lived for 24 years and still think of as my primary world and motivation. I still, nearly twenty years later, feel out of place in my chosen milieu, as a working-class kid who now teaches in private colleges and edits and writes. I don't have to explain that to anybody who's made the move themselves, but trust me, it's a bitch, and you never recover from it and the subsequent questioning of self and career that inevitably accompanies the process.

I'll have some official guidelines up soon, but suffice it to say that you can send your shit to rusty DOT barnes AT gmail DOT com. What I like I'll publish here as I get it. It'll even--gasp--be edited, possibly. You retain all rights to your work if published, of course, and as payment I will send you a book of my choosing from my personal library. It may be a little worn from reading, but I promise it won't be crap. All I ask in return--and I know it's a lot to ask for not much--is that you let me keep your story/poem/essay/interview on the blog in perpetuity. You can sell the thing to someone else the same day you sell it to me, I don't give a shit. What I want is to find good stuff and give it exposure. So previously published pieces, especially those appearing in print-only journals first, are fine by me.

I want to say something else, too. I don't plan on being super-polite here, or apologetic for my views. What I say here is just me, bs'ing with you all, discussing work, doing interviews, etc. and I don't expect much crosstalk between here and my official governmentally approved and sanctioned gig at the Train. OK?

If you'd like me to link to you and you have relevant content, hit me up via email, and I'll begin a list. I have interviews planned, art, poems, all kinds of neat and nasty stuff. As a final treat, I'll leave you with the work of the band that inspired this blogazine's title.



If your work has affinities with any of the writers I've listed in my profile, by all means, give me a shot.

12 comments:

Sue said...

are you going to post a link on lj when you publish something?

Rusty said...

Yeah, I'll cross-pollinate via Facebook and MySpace and my LJ. Just not NT.

Spencer Troxell said...

My family (on my mother's side) comes from Maetwan, and are intimately familiar with the hatfields and mccoys. I grew up in an atmosphere filled with men playing cards and smoking unfiltered cigarettes by train tracks, and am unhealthily familiar with tale of how the devil can draw a person from the light. I dig what you're shooting for.

Anonymous said...

I was sold with the "saucy content... one of these days" disclaimer preface.

Rosie said...

This looks great, Rusty! Thanks for the link. You should check out Buffy Holt, too. She's an ex-pat Appalachian gal in London and writes beautiful prose.

I'd love to read some of your stories about where you grew up.

Unknown said...

Playin in the crickbed w/ stones I was raised up north of you in a schizoid place still w/in the boundaries of Appalachia. The coal we knew was what passed through town on the train from the south that went north to the power plant along the east shore of the lake. Knowing that we almost have a common ruralized background I will see what crap I can throw at ya!

jc said...

i fucking LOVE this idea!! this may be just the thing to snap me out of it.

JC

WSSS admin said...

Rusty Rusty Rusty
You troublemakahhhhh
Fried Chicken and Coffee are two of my favorite food groups. I'm subscribin'

Tamara

Anonymous said...

Countless orphaned stories on my hard drive and not a one has a lick to do with ruralism.

Rusty said...

The blank page awaits, John. ;-)

kaolin fire said...

Fun video. Best of luck with that thar hill billyism! :)

Brad Green said...

I think a major component of ruralism is just a raw apprehension of a world with less concrete. When we abandoned gravel for our driveways the world changed. Gravel driveways help keep a family intact. If the road leading up to your house is smooth, then the shocks and vibrations within the walls more easily shake loose the rivets of the lives that are realized inside. When you drive down a mile of rattling, jouncy gravel before you get home, whatever the wife does to screw things up isn't so bad anymore. :)