西班牙文化之旅

Chapter 2

第 2 章

Hillbillies like to add their own twist to many words. We call minnows “minners” and crayfish “crawdads.” “Hollow” is defined as a “valley or basin,” but I’ve never said the word “hollow” unless I’ve had to explain to a friend what I mean when I say “holler.” Other people have all kinds of names for their grandparents: grandpa, nanna, pop-pop, grannie, and so on. Yet I’ve never heard anyone say “Mamaw”—pronounced ma’am-aw—or “Papaw” outside of our community. These names belong only to hillbilly grandparents.

鄉巴佬喜歡在許多詞語中加入自己的風格。我們稱小魚為“minners”，稱小龍蝦為“crawdads”。“空心”被定義為“山谷或盆地”，但我從來沒有說過“空心”這個詞，除非我不得不向朋友解釋我說“holler”的意思。其他人對他們的祖父母有各種各樣的名字：爺爺、娜娜、流行音樂、奶奶等等。然而，我從未聽過有人在我們的社區之外說“Mamaw”——發音為 馬'am-aw——或“Papaw”。這些名字只屬於鄉巴佬的祖父母。

My grandparents—Mamaw and Papaw—were, without question or qualification, the best things that ever happened to me. They spent the last two decades of their lives showing me the value of love and stability and teaching me the life lessons that most people learn from their parents. Both did their part to ensure that I had the self-confidence and the right opportunities to get a fair shot at the American Dream. But I doubt that, as children, Jim Vance and Bonnie Blanton ever expected much out of their own lives. How could they? Appalachian hills and single-room, K–12 schoolhouses don’t tend to foster big dreams.

我的爺爺奶奶——媽媽和爸爸——毫無疑問，是發生在我身上的最好的事情。他們花了他們生命的最後二十年向我展示了愛和穩定的價值，並教會了我大多數人從父母那裡學到的人生課程。兩人都盡了自己的一份力量，以確保我有自信和合適的機會來公平地實現美國夢。但我懷疑，小時候的吉姆·萬斯（Jim Vance）和邦妮·布蘭頓（Bonnie Blanton）是否對自己的生活抱有太大期望。他們怎麼可能？阿巴拉契亞山脈和單間 K-12 校舍往往不會培養遠大的夢想。

We don’t know much about Papaw’s early years, and I doubt that will ever change. We do know that he was something of hillbilly royalty. Papaw’s distant cousin—also Jim Vance—married into the Hatfield family and joined a group of former Confederate soldiers and sympathizers called the Wildcats. When Cousin Jim murdered former Union soldier Asa Harmon McCoy, he kicked off one of the most famous family feuds in American history.

我們對爸爸的早年知之甚少，我懷疑這種情況會改變。我們確實知道他是鄉巴佬皇室成員。帕帕的遠房表親吉姆·萬斯（Jim Vance）嫁給了哈特菲爾德家族，並加入了一群名為“野貓”的前同盟軍士兵和同情者。當表弟吉姆謀殺了前聯邦士兵阿薩·哈蒙·麥考伊時，他拉開了美國歷史上最著名的家族爭鬥之一。

Papaw was born James Lee Vance in 1929, his middle name a tribute to his father, Lee Vance. Lee died just a few months after Papaw’s birth, so Papaw’s overwhelmed mother, Goldie, sent him to live with her father, Pap Taulbee, a strict man with a small timber business. Though Goldie sent money occasionally, she rarely visited her young son. Papaw would live with Taulbee in Jackson, Kentucky, for the first seventeen years of his life.

Papaw 於 1929 年出生於 James Lee Vance，他的中間名是對他父親 Lee Vance 的致敬。李在爸爸出生幾個月後就去世了，所以爸爸不堪重負的母親戈爾迪把他送到了她的父親爸爸陶爾比那裡，爸爸陶爾比是一個嚴格的人，經營著一家小木材生意。雖然戈爾迪偶爾會寄錢，但她很少去看望年幼的兒子。帕帕將與陶爾比一起住在肯塔基州傑克遜市，度過他生命的前十七年。

Pap Taulbee had a tiny two-room house just a few hundred yards from the Blantons—Blaine and Hattie and their eight children. Hattie felt sorry for the young motherless boy and became a surrogate mother to my grandfather. Jim soon became an extra member of the family: He spent most of his free time running around with the Blanton boys, and he ate most of his meals in Hattie’s kitchen. It was only natural that he’d eventually marry her oldest daughter.

Pap Taulbee 有一棟兩居室的小房子，距離布蘭頓一家只有幾百碼——布萊恩和哈蒂以及他們的八個孩子。哈蒂為這個沒有母親的年輕男孩感到難過，並成為我祖父的代孕母親。吉姆很快就成了這個家庭的額外成員：他把大部分空閒時間都花在了和布蘭頓男孩一起跑來跑去，他的大部分飯菜都是在哈蒂的廚房裡吃的。他最終娶了她的大女兒是很自然的。

Jim married into a rowdy crew. The Blantons were a famous group in Breathitt, and they had a feuding history nearly as illustrious as Papaw’s. Mamaw’s great-grandfather had been elected county judge at the beginning of the twentieth century, but only after her grandfather, Tilden (the son of the judge), killed a member of a rival family on Election Day.² In a New York Times story about the violent feud, two things leap out. The first is that Tilden never went to jail for the crime.³ The second is that, as the Times reported, “complications [were] expected.” I would imagine so.

吉姆嫁給了一個吵鬧的船員。布蘭頓家族是 Breathitt 的一個著名團體，他們的世仇歷史幾乎和 Papaw 的一樣輝煌。Mamaw 的曾祖父在 20 世紀初被選為縣法官，但只是在她的祖父 Tilden（法官的兒子）在選舉日殺死了敵對家族的一名成員之後。²在《紐約時報》一篇關於暴力爭鬥的報導中，有兩件事跳了出來。首先是蒂爾登從未因犯罪入獄。³其次，正如《泰晤士報》報導的那樣，“併發症是意料之中的”。我會想像的。

When I first read this gruesome story in one of the country’s most circulated newspapers, I felt one emotion above all the rest: pride. It’s unlikely that any other ancestor of mine has ever appeared in The New York Times. Even if they had, I doubt that any deed would make me as proud as a successful feud. And one that could have swung an election, no less! As Mamaw used to say, you can take the boy out of Kentucky, but you can’t take Kentucky out of the boy.

當我第一次在該國發行量最大的報紙之一上讀到這個令人毛骨悚然的故事時，我感到一種情感高於一切：自豪。我的任何其他祖先都不太可能出現在《紐約時報》上。即使他們有，我懷疑任何行為都會讓我像成功的世仇一樣感到自豪。而且一個本可以搖擺不定的選舉，同樣如此！正如媽媽常說的，你可以把男孩帶出肯塔基州，但你不能把肯塔基州從男孩身上帶走。

I can’t imagine what Papaw was thinking. Mamaw came from a family that would shoot at you rather than argue with you. Her father was a scary old hillbilly with the mouth and war medals of a sailor. Her grandfather’s murderous exploits were impressive enough to make the pages of The New York Times. And as scary as her lineage was, Mamaw Bonnie herself was so terrifying that, many decades later, a Marine Corps recruiter would tell me that I’d find boot camp easier than living at home. “Those drill instructors are mean,” he said. “But not like that grandma of yours.” That meanness wasn’t enough to dissuade my grandfather. So Mamaw and Papaw were married as teenagers in Jackson, in 1947.

我無法想像爸爸在想什麼。媽媽來自一個會向你開槍而不是與你爭吵的家庭。她的父親是一個可怕的老鄉巴佬，有著水手的嘴巴和戰爭勳章。她祖父的殺戮功績令人印象深刻，足以登上《紐約時報》的版面。儘管她的血統很可怕，但邦妮媽媽本人是如此可怕，以至於幾十年後，海軍陸戰隊的一名招募人員告訴我，我發現新兵訓練營比住在家裡更容易。“那些演習教官很卑鄙，”他說。“但不像你那個奶奶。”這種卑鄙還不足以勸阻我的祖父。因此，Mamaw 和 Papaw 於 1947 年在傑克遜結婚。

At that time, as the post–World War II euphoria wore off and people began to adjust to a world at peace, there were two types of people in Jackson: those who uprooted their lives and planted them in the industrial powerhouses of the new America, and those who didn’t. At the tender ages of fourteen and seventeen, my grandparents had to decide which group to join.

當時，隨著二戰後的興奮感消退，人們開始適應和平的世界，傑克遜有兩種人：一種是將生活連根拔起，種在新美國的工業強國，另一種是沒有。在我十四七歲的時候，我的祖父母不得不決定加入哪個團體。

As Papaw once told me, the sole option for many of his friends was to work “in the mines”—mining coal not far from Jackson. Those who stayed in Jackson spent their lives on the edge of poverty, if not submerged in it. So, soon after marrying, Papaw uprooted his young family and moved to Middletown, a small Ohio town with a rapidly growing industrialized economy.

正如帕帕曾經告訴我的那樣，他的許多朋友唯一的選擇就是“在礦井裡”工作——在離傑克遜不遠的地方開採煤炭。那些留在傑克遜的人在貧困的邊緣度過了他們的一生，即使沒有被淹沒在貧困中。因此，結婚後不久，帕帕就背井離鄉，搬到了俄亥俄州的一個工業化經濟迅速發展的小鎮米德爾敦。

This is the story my grandparents told me, and like most family legends it’s largely true but plays fast and loose with the details. On a recent trip to visit family in Jackson, my great-uncle Arch—Mamaw’s brother-in-law and the last of that generation of Jacksonians—introduced me to Bonnie South, a woman who’d spent all of her eighty-four years a hundred yards from Mamaw’s childhood home. Until Mamaw left for Ohio, Bonnie South was her best friend. And by Bonnie South’s reckoning, Mamaw and Papaw’s departure involved a bit more scandal than any of us realized.

這是我爺爺奶奶告訴我的故事，就像大多數家族傳說一樣，它在很大程度上是真實的，但在細節上玩得又快又松。在最近一次去傑克遜探親的旅行中，我的叔叔阿奇——媽媽的姐夫，也是那一代傑克遜人的最後一位——向我介紹了邦妮·南，一個在離媽媽童年的家一百碼的地方度過了八十四年的女人。在媽媽前往俄亥俄州之前，邦妮·南是她最好的朋友。根據邦妮·南（Bonnie South）的估計，媽媽和爸爸的離開涉及的醜聞比我們任何人都意識到的要多一些。

In 1946, Bonnie South and Papaw were lovers. I’m not sure what this meant in Jackson at the time—whether they were preparing for an engagement or just passing the time together. Bonnie had little to say of Papaw besides the fact that he was “very handsome.” The only other thing Bonnie South recalled was that, at some point in 1946, Papaw cheated on Bonnie with her best friend—Mamaw. Mamaw was thirteen and Papaw sixteen, but the affair produced a pregnancy. And that pregnancy added a number of pressures that made right now the time to leave Jackson: my intimidating, grizzled war-veteran great-grandfather; the Blanton Brothers, who had already earned a reputation for defending Mamaw’s honor; and an interconnected group of gun-toting hillbillies who immediately knew all about Bonnie Blanton’s pregnancy. Most important, Bonnie and Jim Vance would soon have another mouth to feed before they’d gotten used to feeding themselves. Mamaw and Papaw left abruptly for Dayton, Ohio, where they lived briefly before settling permanently in Middletown.

1946 年，Bonnie South 和 Papaw 是戀人。我不確定這對當時的傑克遜意味著什麼——他們是在為訂婚做準備，還是只是在一起打發時間。邦妮對爸爸沒什麼好說的，除了他“非常帥”這一事實。邦妮·南（Bonnie South）唯一記得的另一件事是，在1946年的某個時候，爸爸和她最好的朋友媽媽（Mamaw）欺騙了邦妮。媽媽十三歲，爸爸十六歲，但婚外情導致她懷孕了。那次懷孕增加了許多壓力，使得現在是時候離開傑克遜了：我令人生畏、頭髮花白的退伍軍人曾祖父;布蘭頓兄弟（Blanton Brothers）已經因捍衛媽媽的榮譽而聲名鵲起;還有一群相互關聯的持槍鄉巴佬，他們立即知道了邦妮·布蘭頓懷孕的一切。最重要的是，邦妮和吉姆·萬斯在習慣自己吃飯之前很快就會有另一張嘴可以餵食。Mamaw 和Papaw突然前往俄亥俄州的代頓，在那裡他們短暫居住，然後永久定居在米德爾敦。

In later years, Mamaw sometimes spoke of a daughter who died in infancy, and she led us all to believe that the daughter was born sometime after Uncle Jimmy, Mamaw and Papaw’s eldest child. Mamaw suffered eight miscarriages in the decade between Uncle Jimmy’s birth and my mother’s. But recently my sister discovered a birth certificate for “Infant” Vance, the aunt I never knew, who died so young that her birth certificate also lists her date of death. The baby who brought my grandparents to Ohio didn’t survive her first week. On that birth certificate, the baby’s brokenhearted mother lied about her age: Only fourteen at the time and with a seventeen-year-old husband, she couldn’t tell the truth, lest they ship her back to Jackson or send Papaw to jail.

在後來的幾年裡，媽媽有時會談到一個在嬰兒期就夭折的女兒，她讓我們所有人都相信這個女兒是在媽媽和爸爸的長子吉米叔叔之後出生的。媽媽在吉米叔叔出生和我母親出生之間的十年裡流產了八次。但最近我姐姐發現了「嬰兒」萬斯的出生證明，我從來不認識的阿姨，她死得太早了，她的出生證明上也列出了她的死亡日期。把我爺爺奶奶帶到俄亥俄州的那個孩子沒能活過第一周。在那份出生證明上，嬰兒傷心欲絕的母親謊報了她的年齡：當時只有十四歲，丈夫只有十七歲，她不能說實話，以免他們把她送回傑克遜或把爸爸送進監獄。

Mamaw’s first foray into adulthood ended in tragedy. Today I often wonder: Without the baby, would she ever have left Jackson? Would she have run off with Jim Vance to foreign territory? Mamaw’s entire life—and the trajectory of our family—may have changed for a baby who lived only six days.

媽媽成年後的第一次嘗試以悲劇告終。今天我常常在想：如果沒有孩子，她會離開傑克遜嗎？她會和吉姆·萬斯一起逃到外國嗎？媽媽的整個人生——以及我們家庭的軌跡——可能對於一個只活了六天的嬰兒來說改變了。

Whatever mix of economic opportunity and family necessity catapulted my grandparents to Ohio, they were there, and there was no going back. So Papaw found a job at Armco, a large steel company that aggressively recruited in eastern Kentucky coal country. Armco representatives would descend on towns like Jackson and promise (truthfully) a better life for those willing to move north and work in the mills. A special policy encouraged wholesale migration: Applicants with a family member working at Armco would move to the top of the employment list. Armco didn’t just hire the young men of Appalachian Kentucky; they actively encouraged those men to bring their extended families.

無論經濟機會和家庭需要的混合將我的祖父母推到俄亥俄州，他們都在那裡，沒有回頭路。因此，Papaw在Armco找到了一份工作，這是一家大型鋼鐵公司，在肯塔基州東部的煤炭之鄉積極招聘。Armco的代表將來到傑克遜這樣的城鎮，並承諾（如實）為那些願意向北移動並在工廠工作的人提供更好的生活。一項特殊政策鼓勵大規模移民：有家庭成員在Armco工作的申請人將進入就業名單的首位。Armco 不僅僱用了肯塔基州阿巴拉契亞的年輕人;他們積極鼓勵這些人帶上他們的大家庭。

A number of industrial firms employed a similar strategy, and it appears to have worked. During that era, there were many Jacksons and many Middletowns. Researchers have documented two major waves of migration from Appalachia to the industrial powerhouse economies in the Midwest. The first happened after World War I, when returning veterans found it nearly impossible to find work in the not-yet-industrialized mountains of Kentucky, West Virginia, and Tennessee. It ended as the Great Depression hit Northern economies hard.⁴ My grandparents were part of the second wave, composed of returning veterans and the rapidly rising number of young adults in 1940s and ’50s Appalachia.⁵ As the economies of Kentucky and West Virginia lagged behind those of their neighbors, the mountains had only two products that the industrial economies of the North needed: coal and hill people. And Appalachia exported a lot of both.

許多工業公司也採用了類似的策略，而且似乎已經奏效。在那個時代，有很多傑克遜和許多米德爾敦。研究人員記錄了從阿巴拉契亞到中西部工業強國經濟體的兩大移民浪潮。第一次發生在第一次世界大戰之後，當時返回的退伍軍人發現在肯塔基州、西弗吉尼亞州和田納西州尚未工業化的山區幾乎不可能找到工作。隨著大蕭條對北方經濟的沉重打擊，它結束了。⁴我的祖父母是第二波浪潮的一部分，由返回的退伍軍人和 1940 年代和 50 年代阿巴拉契亞迅速增加的年輕人組成。⁵由於肯塔基州和西弗吉尼亞州的經濟落後於鄰國，山區只有北方工業經濟需要的兩種產品：煤炭和山地人。阿巴拉契亞兩者都出口了很多。

Precise numbers are tough to pin down because studies typically measure “net out-migration”—as in the total number of people who left minus the number of people who came in. Many families constantly traveled back and forth, which skews the data. But it is certain that many millions of people traveled along the “hillbilly highway”—a metaphorical term that captured the opinion of Northerners who saw their cities and towns flooded with people like my grandparents. The scale of the migration was staggering. In the 1950s, thirteen of every one hundred Kentucky residents migrated out of the state. Some areas saw even greater emigration: Harlan County, for example, which was brought to fame in an Academy Award–winning documentary about coal strikes, lost 30 percent of its population to migration. In 1960, of Ohio’s ten million residents, one million were born in Kentucky, West Virginia, or Tennessee. This doesn’t count the large number of migrants from elsewhere in the southern Appalachian Mountains; nor does it include the children or grandchildren of migrants who were hill people to the core. There were undoubtedly many of these children and grandchildren, as hillbillies tended to have much higher birthrates than the native population.⁶

準確的數位很難確定，因為研究通常衡量的是“淨遷出”——比如離開的總人數減去進來的人數。許多家庭經常來回旅行，這扭曲了數據。但可以肯定的是，數以百萬計的人沿著「鄉巴佬公路」旅行——這是一個隱喻性的術語，它抓住了北方人的觀點，他們看到他們的城鎮被像我祖父母這樣的人淹沒了。遷移的規模令人震驚。在 1950 年代，每 100 名肯塔基州居民中有 13 人遷出該州。一些地區的移民人數甚至更多：例如，哈蘭縣（Harlan County）因一部關於煤炭罷工的奧斯卡獲獎紀錄片而聲名鵲起，該縣因移民而失去了30%的人口。1960年，在俄亥俄州的1000萬居民中，有100萬人出生在肯塔基州、西弗吉尼亞州或田納西州。這還不包括來自阿巴拉契亞山脈南部其他地方的大量移民;它也不包括移民的子女或孫輩，他們的核心是山地人。毫無疑問，這些孩子和孫子中有很多，因為鄉巴佬的出生率往往比當地人口高得多。⁶

In short, my grandparents’ experience was extremely common. Significant parts of an entire region picked up shop and moved north. Need more proof? Hop on a northbound highway in Kentucky or Tennessee the day after Thanksgiving or Christmas, and virtually every license plate you see comes from Ohio, Indiana, or Michigan—cars full of hillbilly transplants returning home for the holidays.

總之，我爺爺奶奶的經歷非常普遍。整個地區的大部分地區都開始購物並向北移動。需要更多證據嗎？感恩節或耶誕節後的第二天，在肯塔基州或田納西州的一條北行高速公路上跳上，你看到的幾乎每一個車牌都來自俄亥俄州、印第安那州或密歇根州——滿載鄉巴佬的汽車回家過節。

Mamaw’s family participated in the migratory flow with gusto. Of her seven siblings, Pet, Paul, and Gary moved to Indiana and worked in construction. Each owned a successful business and earned considerable wealth in the process. Rose, Betty, Teaberry, and David stayed behind. All of them struggled financially, though everyone but David managed a life of relative comfort by the standards of their community. The four who left died on a significantly higher rung of the socioeconomic ladder than the four who stayed. As Papaw knew when he was a young man, the best way up for the hillbilly was out.

媽媽的家人興致勃勃地參與了遷徙。在她的七個兄弟姐妹中，Pet、Paul 和 Gary 搬到了印第安那州並從事建築工作。每個人都擁有成功的企業，並在此過程中賺取了可觀的財富。羅斯、貝蒂、蒂貝里和大衛留了下來。他們都在經濟上掙扎，儘管按照社區的標準，除了大衛之外，每個人都過著相對舒適的生活。離開的四人死於社會經濟階梯的階梯上，比留下來的四人高得多。正如爸爸年輕時所知道的那樣，鄉巴佬最好的出路就是出去。

It was probably uncommon for my grandparents to be alone in their new city. But if Mamaw and Papaw were isolated from their family, they were hardly segregated from Middletown’s broader population. Most of the city’s inhabitants had moved there for work in the new industrial plants, and most of these new workers were from Appalachia. The family-based hiring practices of the major industrial firms⁷ had their desired effect, and the results were predictable. All over the industrial Midwest, new communities of Appalachian transplants and their families sprang up, virtually out of nowhere. As one study noted, “Migration did not so much destroy neighborhoods and families as transport them.”⁸ In 1950s Middletown, my grandparents found themselves in a situation both new and familiar. New because they were, for the first time, cut off from the extended Appalachian support network to which they were accustomed; familiar because they were still surrounded by hillbillies.

我的爺爺奶奶在他們的新城市獨自一人可能並不常見。但是，如果Mamaw和Papaw與他們的家人隔離開來，他們幾乎不會與米德爾敦更廣泛的人口隔離開來。該市的大多數居民都搬到了那裡，在新的工廠工作，這些新工人中的大多數來自阿巴拉契亞。大型工業企業⁷以家庭為基礎的招聘做法取得了預期的效果，結果是可以預見的。在整個工業化的中西部，阿巴拉契亞移植的新社區及其家庭幾乎無處不在。正如一項研究指出的那樣，“移民與其說是摧毀社區和家庭，不如說是運輸它們。⁸在 1950 年代的米德爾敦，我的祖父母發現自己處於一種既陌生又熟悉的境地。之所以新，是因為他們第一次被切斷了他們所習慣的擴展的阿巴拉契亞支持網路;熟悉，因為他們仍然被鄉巴佬包圍。

I’d like to tell you how my grandparents thrived in their new environment, how they raised a successful family, and how they retired comfortably middle-class. But that is a partial truth. The full truth is that my grandparents struggled in their new life, and they continued to do so for decades.

我想告訴你，我的祖父母是如何在新環境中茁壯成長的，他們是如何養育一個成功的家庭的，以及他們是如何舒適地退休的中產階級。但這是部分事實。完整的事實是，我的祖父母在他們的新生活中掙扎，他們繼續這樣做了幾十年。

For starters, a remarkable stigma attached to people who left the hills of Kentucky for a better life. Hillbillies have a phrase—“too big for your britches”—to describe those who think they’re better than the stock they came from. For a long time after my grandparents came to Ohio, they heard exactly that phrase from people back home. The sense that they had abandoned their families was acute, and it was expected that, whatever their responsibilities, they would return home regularly. This pattern was common among Appalachian migrants: More than nine in ten would make visits “home” during the course of their lives, and more than one in ten visited about once a month.⁹ My grandparents returned to Jackson often, sometimes on consecutive weekends, despite the fact that the trip in the 1950s required about twenty hours of driving. Economic mobility came with a lot of pressures, and it came with a lot of new responsibilities.

首先，為了更好的生活而離開肯塔基州山區的人們受到了極大的恥辱。鄉巴佬有一句話——“對你的腮幫子來說太大了”——來形容那些認為自己比他們來自的股票更好的人。在我祖父母來到俄亥俄州後的很長一段時間里，他們從家鄉的人那裡聽到了這句話。他們拋棄家人的感覺很強烈，人們期望，無論他們承擔什麼責任，他們都會定期回家。這種模式在阿巴拉契亞移民中很常見：超過十分之九的人在他們的一生中會“回家”，超過十分之一的人大約每月訪問一次。⁹我的爺爺奶奶經常回到傑克遜，有時是連續的週末，儘管 1950 年代的旅行需要大約 20 個小時的車程。經濟流動性帶來了很大的壓力，也帶來了許多新的責任。

That stigma came from both directions: Many of their new neighbors viewed them suspiciously. To the established middle class of white Ohioans, these hillbillies simply didn’t belong. They had too many children, and they welcomed their extended families into their homes for too long. On several occasions, Mamaw’s brothers and sisters lived with her and Papaw for months as they tried to find good work outside of the hills. In other words, many parts of their culture and customs met with roaring disapproval from native Middletonians. As one book, Appalachian Odyssey, notes about the influx of hill people to Detroit: “It was not simply that the Appalachian migrants, as rural strangers ‘out of place’ in the city, were upsetting to Midwestern, urban whites. Rather, these migrants disrupted a broad set of assumptions held by northern whites about how white people appeared, spoke, and behaved . . . the disturbing aspect of hillbillies was their racialness. Ostensibly, they were of the same racial order (whites) as those who dominated economic, political, and social power in local and national arenas. But hillbillies shared many regional characteristics with the southern blacks arriving in Detroit.”¹⁰

這種恥辱來自兩個方向：他們的許多新鄰居都對他們持懷疑態度。對於俄亥俄州白人的既定中產階級來說，這些鄉巴佬根本不屬於。他們有太多的孩子，他們歡迎他們的大家庭到他們的家裡太久了。有好幾次，媽媽的兄弟姐妹們和她和爸爸一起住了幾個月，他們試圖在山外找到一份好工作。換句話說，他們的文化和習俗的許多部分都遭到了當地米德爾頓人的強烈反對。正如一本名為《阿巴拉契亞奧德賽》的書所指出的那樣，山地人湧入底特律：「這不僅僅是因為阿巴拉契亞移民作為城市中」格格不入的農村陌生人，讓中西部的城市白人感到不安。相反，這些移民打破了北方白人對白人如何出現、說話和行為的廣泛假設。鄉巴佬令人不安的方面是他們的種族。從表面上看，他們與那些在地方和國家舞臺上主導經濟、政治和社會權力的人屬於同一種族秩序（白人）。但鄉巴佬與抵達底特律的南方黑人有許多共同的地區特徵。¹⁰

One of Papaw’s good friends—a hillbilly from Kentucky whom he met in Ohio—became the mail carrier in their neighborhood. Not long after he moved, the mail carrier got embroiled in a battle with the Middletown government over the flock of chickens that he kept in his yard. He treated them just as Mamaw had treated her chickens back in the holler: Every morning he collected all the eggs, and when his chicken population grew too large, he’d take a few of the old ones, wring their necks, and carve them up for meat right in his backyard. You can just imagine a well-bred housewife watching out the window in horror as her Kentucky-born neighbor slaughtered squawking chickens just a few feet away. My sister and I still call the old mail carrier “the chicken man,” and years later even a mention of how the city government ganged up on the chicken man could inspire Mamaw’s trademark vitriol: “Fucking zoning laws. They can kiss my ruby-red asshole.”

帕帕的一位好朋友——一個來自肯塔基州的鄉巴佬，他在俄亥俄州認識了他——成為了他們附近的郵遞員。在他搬家后不久，郵遞員就捲入了與米德爾敦政府的鬥爭，爭奪他在院子里養的雞群。他對待它們就像媽媽對待她的雞一樣：每天早上，他都會收集所有的雞蛋，當他的雞群長大時，他會抓一些老雞，擰斷它們的脖子，然後把它們切成肉，在他的後院吃肉。你可以想像一個有教養的家庭主婦驚恐地看著窗外，因為她出生在肯塔基州的鄰居在幾英尺外宰殺了尖叫的雞。我和姐姐仍然稱這個老郵遞員為「雞人」，多年後，即使提到市政府如何聯合起來對付雞人，也會激發媽媽標誌性的尖酸刻薄：「該死的分區法。他們可以親吻我紅寶石色的屁眼。

The move to Middletown created other problems, as well. In the mountain homes of Jackson, privacy was more theory than practice. Family, friends, and neighbors would barge into your home without much warning. Mothers would tell their daughters how to raise their children. Fathers would tell sons how to do their jobs. Brothers would tell brothers-in-law how to treat their wives. Family life was something people learned on the fly with a lot of help from their neighbors. In Middletown, a man’s home was his castle.

搬到米德爾敦也帶來了其他問題。在傑克遜的山區住宅中，隱私更多的是理論而不是實踐。家人、朋友和鄰居會在沒有太多警告的情況下闖入你的家。母親會告訴女兒如何撫養孩子。父親會告訴兒子如何做他們的工作。兄弟會告訴姐夫如何對待他們的妻子。家庭生活是人們在鄰居的大力説明下即時學習的東西。在米德爾敦，一個人的家就是他的城堡。

However, that castle was empty for Mamaw and Papaw. They brought an ancient family structure from the hills and tried to make it work in a world of privacy and nuclear families. They were newlyweds, but they didn’t have anyone to teach them about marriage. They were parents, but there were no grandparents, aunts, uncles, or cousins to help them with the workload. The only nearby close relative was Papaw’s mother, Goldie. She was mostly a stranger to her own son, and Mamaw couldn’t have held her in lower esteem for abandoning him.

然而，那座城堡對媽媽和爸爸來說是空的。他們從山上帶來了一個古老的家庭結構，並試圖讓它在一個隱私和核心家庭的世界中發揮作用。他們是新婚夫婦，但沒有人教他們關於婚姻的知識。他們是父母，但沒有祖父母、阿姨、叔叔或堂兄弟姐妹幫助他們完成工作量。附近唯一的近親是爸爸的母親戈爾迪。她對自己的兒子大多是一個陌生人，媽媽不可能因為拋棄他而對她不屑一顧。

After a few years, Mamaw and Papaw began to adapt. Mamaw became close friends with the “neighbor lady” (that was her word for the neighbors she liked) who lived in a nearby apartment; Papaw worked on cars in his spare time, and his coworkers slowly turned from colleagues to friends. In 1951 they welcomed a baby boy—my uncle Jimmy—and showered him with their new material comforts. Jimmy, Mamaw would tell me later, could sit up at two weeks, walk at four months, speak in complete sentences just after his first birthday, and read classic novels by age three (“A slight exaggeration,” my uncle later admitted). They visited Mamaw’s brothers in Indianapolis and picnicked with their new friends. It was, Uncle Jimmy told me, “a typical middle-class life.” Kind of boring, by some standards, but happy in a way you appreciate only when you understand the consequences of not being boring.

幾年後，媽媽和爸爸開始適應。媽媽與住在附近公寓的「鄰居女士」（這是她對她喜歡的鄰居的稱呼）成為了好朋友;Papaw在業餘時間從事汽車工作，他的同事慢慢從同事變成了朋友。1951年，他們迎來了一個男嬰——我的叔叔吉米（Jimmy），併為他帶來了新的物質享受。媽媽後來告訴我，吉米兩周時可以坐起來，四個月大時可以走路，一歲生日剛過就能說完整的句子，三歲時就能讀經典小說（“有點誇張，”我叔叔後來承認）。他們在印第安那波利斯拜訪了媽媽的兄弟們，並與他們的新朋友一起野餐。吉米叔叔告訴我，這是「典型的中產階級生活」。。從某些標準來看，這有點無聊，但只有當你瞭解不無聊的後果時，你才會以一種你欣賞的方式快樂。

Which is not to say that things always proceeded smoothly. Once, they traveled to the mall to buy Christmas presents with the holiday throng and let Jimmy roam so he could locate a toy he coveted. “They were advertising it on television,” he told me recently. “It was a plastic console that looked like the dash of a jet fighter plane. You could shine a light or shoot darts. The whole idea was to pretend that you were a fighter pilot.”

這並不是說事情總是進展順利。有一次，他們和節日人群一起去商場買聖誕禮物，讓吉米四處遊蕩，這樣他就可以找到他夢寐以求的玩具。“他們在電視上做廣告，”他最近告訴我。“這是一個塑膠控制台，看起來像噴氣式戰鬥機的儀錶板。你可以發光或射飛鏢。整個想法是假裝你是一名戰鬥機飛行員。

Jimmy wandered into a pharmacy that happened to sell the toy, so he picked it up and began to play with it. “The store clerk wasn’t happy. He told me to put the toy down and get out.” Chastised, young Jimmy stood outside in the cold until Mamaw and Papaw strolled by and asked if he’d like to go inside the pharmacy.

吉米走進一家藥店，碰巧有賣玩具，於是他拿起它開始玩。“店員不高興。他叫我把玩具放下，出去。年幼的吉米被責備了，他站在外面冷酷無情，直到媽媽和爸爸走過來，問他是否願意進藥房。

“I can’t,” Jimmy told his father.

“我不能，”吉米告訴他的父親。

“Why?”

“為什麼？”

“I just can’t.”

“我就是做不到。”

“Tell me why right now.”

“現在告訴我為什麼。”

He pointed at the store clerk. “That man got mad at me and told me to leave. I’m not allowed to go back inside.”

他指了指店員。“那個人對我生氣，叫我離開。我不准回去。

Mamaw and Papaw stormed in, demanding an explanation for the clerk’s rudeness. The clerk explained that Jimmy had been playing with an expensive toy. “This toy?” Papaw asked, picking up the toy. When the clerk nodded, Papaw smashed it on the ground. Utter chaos ensued. As Uncle Jimmy explained, “They went nuts. Dad threw another of the toys across the store and moved toward the clerk in a very menacing way; Mom started grabbing random shit off the shelves and throwing it all over the place. She’s screaming, ‘Kick his fucking ass! Kick his fucking ass!’ And then Dad leans in to this clerk and says very clearly, ‘If you say another word to my son, I will break your fucking neck.’ This poor guy was completely terrified, and I just wanted to get the hell out of there.” The man apologized, and the Vances continued with their Christmas shopping as if nothing had happened.

媽媽和爸爸衝了進來，要求對店員的粗魯行為做出解釋。店員解釋說，吉米一直在玩一個昂貴的玩具。“這個玩具？”爸爸一邊問，一邊拿起玩具。店員點了點頭，爸爸就把它砸在了地上。隨之而來的是徹底的混亂。正如吉米叔叔所解釋的那樣，“他們瘋了。爸爸把另一個玩具扔到店對面，以一種非常威脅的方式向店員走去;媽媽開始從架子上隨便抓起狗屎，扔得滿地都是。她尖叫著，「踢他媽的屁股！踢他媽的屁股！然後爸爸靠到這個店員面前，非常明確地說，「如果你再對我兒子說一句話，我就打斷你他媽的脖子。這個可憐的傢伙完全被嚇壞了，我只想離開那裡。那人道歉了，萬斯一家繼續他們的聖誕購物，就好像什麼都沒發生過一樣。

So, yes, even in their best times, Mamaw and Papaw struggled to adapt. Middletown was a different world. Papaw was supposed to go to work and complain politely to management about rude pharmacy employees. Mamaw was expected to cook dinner, do laundry, and take care of the children. But sewing circles, picnics, and door-to-door vacuum salesmen were not suited to a woman who had almost killed a man at the tender age of twelve. Mamaw had little help when the children were young and required constant supervision, and she had nothing else to do with her time. Decades later she would remember how isolated she felt in the slow suburban crawl of midcentury Middletown. Of that era, she said with characteristic bluntness: “Women were just shit on all the time.”

所以，是的，即使在他們最好的時候，媽媽和爸爸也在努力適應。米德爾敦是一個不同的世界。Papaw 應該去上班，禮貌地向管理層抱怨粗魯的藥房員工。媽媽被要求做晚飯，洗衣服，照顧孩子。但是縫紉圈、野餐和挨家挨戶的真空推銷員並不適合一個在十二歲時差點殺死一個男人的女人。當孩子們還小的時候，媽媽幾乎沒有什麼説明，需要不斷的監督，她的時間也沒什麼可做的。幾十年後，她會記得自己在上世紀中葉米德爾敦緩慢的郊區爬行中感到多麼孤立。對於那個時代，她直言不諱地說：“女人一直都是狗屎。

Mamaw had her dreams but never the opportunity to pursue them. Her greatest love was children, in both a specific sense (her children and grandchildren were the only things in the world she seemed to enjoy in old age) and a general one (she watched shows about abused, neglected, and missing kids and used what little spare money she had to purchase shoes and school supplies for the neighborhood’s poorest children). She seemed to feel the pain of neglected kids in a deeply personal way and spoke often of how she hated people who mistreated children. I never understood where this sentiment came from—whether she herself was abused as a child, perhaps, or whether she just regretted that her childhood had ended so abruptly. There is a story there, though I’ll likely never hear it.

媽媽有她的夢想，但從來沒有機會去追求它們。她最大的愛是孩子，既有特定意義上的愛（她的孩子和孫子是她晚年似乎唯一喜歡的東西），也有一般的愛（她看關於受虐待、被忽視和失蹤孩子的節目，並用她僅有的一點閒錢為附近最貧窮的孩子購買鞋子和學慣用品）。她似乎以一種非常個人化的方式感受到被忽視的孩子的痛苦，並經常談到她如何憎恨虐待兒童的人。我從來不明白這種情緒從何而來——也許是她自己小時候被虐待過，還是她只是後悔自己的童年就這樣突然結束了。那裡有一個故事，儘管我可能永遠不會聽到它。

Mamaw dreamed of turning that passion into a career as a children’s attorney—serving as a voice for those who lacked one. She never pursued that dream, possibly because she didn’t know what becoming an attorney took. Mamaw never spent a day in high school. She’d given birth to and buried a child before she could legally drive a car. Even if she’d known what was required, her new lifestyle offered little encouragement or opportunity for an aspiring law student with three children and a husband.

Mamaw 夢想著將這種熱情轉化為兒童律師的職業——為那些缺乏這種熱情的人發聲。她從未追求過這個夢想，可能是因為她不知道成為一名律師需要什麼。媽媽從來沒有在高中度過一天。在她可以合法駕駛汽車之前，她已經生下並埋葬了一個孩子。即使她知道需要什麼，她的新生活方式對於一個有三個孩子和一個丈夫的有抱負的法學院學生來說也沒有什麼鼓勵或機會。

Despite the setbacks, both of my grandparents had an almost religious faith in hard work and the American Dream. Neither was under any illusions that wealth or privilege didn’t matter in America. On politics, for example, Mamaw had one opinion—“They’re all a bunch of crooks”—but Papaw became a committed Democrat. He had no problem with Armco, but he and everyone like him hated the coal companies in Kentucky thanks to a long history of labor strife. So, to Papaw and Mamaw, not all rich people were bad, but all bad people were rich. Papaw was a Democrat because that party protected the working people. This attitude carried over to Mamaw: All politicians might be crooks, but if there were any exceptions, they were undoubtedly members of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition.

儘管遭遇了挫折，但我的祖父母都對努力工作和美國夢有著近乎宗教信仰的信仰。兩人都不抱任何幻想，認為財富或特權在美國無關緊要。例如，在政治上，媽媽有一種觀點——“他們都是一群騙子”——但帕帕成為了一名堅定的民主黨人。他對阿姆科沒有問題，但由於長期的勞資衝突，他和所有像他一樣的人都討厭肯塔基州的煤炭公司。所以，對爸爸和媽媽來說，並不是所有的富人都是壞人，而是所有的壞人都是有錢人。帕帕是民主黨人，因為該黨保護了勞動人民。這種態度延續到了媽媽身上：所有的政客都可能是騙子，但如果有任何例外，他們無疑是佛蘭克林·德拉諾·羅斯福新政聯盟的成員。

Still, Mamaw and Papaw believed that hard work mattered more. They knew that life was a struggle, and though the odds were a bit longer for people like them, that fact didn’t excuse failure. “Never be like these fucking losers who think the deck is stacked against them,” my grandma often told me. “You can do anything you want to.”

儘管如此，Mamaw 和 Papaw 仍然認為努力工作更重要。他們知道生活是一場鬥爭，儘管對於像他們這樣的人來說，可能性要長一些，但這一事實並不能成為失敗的藉口。“永遠不要像這些該死的失敗者一樣，認為甲板對他們不利，”我奶奶經常告訴我。“你可以做任何你想做的事。”

Their community shared this faith, and in the 1950s that faith appeared well founded. Within two generations, the transplanted hillbillies had largely caught up to the native population in terms of income and poverty level. Yet their financial success masked their cultural unease, and if my grandparents caught up economically, I wonder if they ever truly assimilated. They always had one foot in the new life and one foot in the old one. They slowly acquired a small number of friends but remained strongly rooted in their Kentucky homeland. They hated domesticated animals and had little use for “critters” that weren’t for eating, yet they eventually relented to the children’s demands for dogs and cats.

他們的社區分享了這種信仰，在 1950 年代，這種信仰似乎是有根據的。在兩代人的時間里，被移植的鄉巴佬在收入和貧困程度方面基本上趕上了當地居民。然而，他們在經濟上的成功掩蓋了他們的文化不安，如果我的祖父母在經濟上趕上了，我想知道他們是否真的被同化了。他們總是一隻腳踏在新生命中，一隻腳踏在舊生命中。他們慢慢地獲得了少數朋友，但仍然牢牢紮根於肯塔基州的家鄉。他們討厭馴養的動物，對不吃的“小動物”幾乎沒有用處，但他們最終還是屈服於孩子們對狗和貓的要求。

Their children, though, were different. My mom’s generation was the first to grow up in the industrial Midwest, far from the deep twangs and one-room schools of the hills. They attended modern high schools with thousands of other students. To my grandparents, the goal was to get out of Kentucky and give their kids a head start. The kids, in turn, were expected to do something with that head start. It didn’t quite work out that way.

然而，他們的孩子卻不同。我媽媽那一代人是第一個在工業化的中西部長大的人，遠離山上的深邃和單間學校。他們與數千名其他學生一起就讀於現代高中。對我的祖父母來說，目標是離開肯塔基州，讓他們的孩子有一個良好的開端。反過來，孩子們也被期望利用這個領先優勢做點什麼。但事實並非如此。

Before Lyndon Johnson and the Appalachian Regional Commission brought new roads to southeastern Kentucky, the primary road from Jackson to Ohio was U.S. Route 23. So important was this road in the massive hillbilly migration that Dwight Yoakam penned a song about northerners who castigated Appalachian children for learning the wrong three R’s: “Reading, Rightin’, Rt. 23.” Yoakam’s song about his own move from southeastern Kentucky could have come from Mamaw’s diary:

在林登·詹森（Lyndon Johnson）和阿巴拉契亞地區委員會（Appalachian Regional Commission）為肯塔基州東南部帶來新道路之前，從傑克遜到俄亥俄州的主要道路是美國23號公路。這條路在大規模的鄉巴佬遷徙中是如此重要，以至於德懷特·約卡姆（Dwight Yoakam）寫了一首關於北方人的歌曲，他們譴責阿巴拉契亞兒童學習了錯誤的三個R：“閱讀，正確，Rt.23。Yoakam 關於他自己從肯塔基州東南部搬家的歌曲可能來自 Mamaw 的日記：

         They thought readin’, writin’, Route 23 would take them to the good life that they had never seen;

他們以為讀、寫、寫、23號公路會帶他們過上他們從未見過的美好生活;

         They didn’t know that old highway would lead them to a world of misery

他們不知道這條古老的高速公路會把他們帶到一個痛苦的世界

Mamaw and Papaw may have made it out of Kentucky, but they and their children learned the hard way that Route 23 didn’t lead where they hoped.

媽媽和爸爸可能已經離開了肯塔基州，但他們和他們的孩子以艱難的方式瞭解到，23號公路並沒有通向他們希望的地方。