Family Values and Transport Nightmares
Moments and people in Somerset, Bowling Green, Nashville and Asheville
Two cool pieces of media recently highlighted trips through America via public transit. Here’s Dean Peterson from Vox going from LA to NYC via Amtrak, and here’s Joanna Pocock taking Greyhounds from Detroit to LA. I am glad that people are getting published for covering this stuff! I too want to get published writing about my trip, but even more so, I love seeing everyone who has the means to do so planning wild fascinating journeys via public transportation.
Now back to our regularly scheduled program.
Mom picked me up from the Nashville Greyhound and we got back to Kentucky late Wednesday night. After two weeks of go-go-go, I was stoked to spend a week with my family and do very little exploration of public transportation. My family and I spent a lot of time in cars together, although Zach and I did ride a bus around town in Bowling Green. Below is Bill the bus driver, who told us how Bowling Green’s modest bus lines have recently been privatized. Our first ride was free and then it’s $2 per ride. The buses operate between 6am and 6pm.
Riding the bus with your family members (see my brother, Zach above) is an interesting way to learn about place and family.
You don’t know how much you value family until you live far away from them, and if you move far away from your family, you will feel conflicted and guilty every time you take a trip anywhere without them. At least half of my five week trip has been with family or friends, but I could always spend more time.
Even when I don’t see them, their invisible support network is huge and powerful. A friend once told me she thinks it’s the kids who feel fiercely loved by their parents who choose to move overseas, their folks’ support propelling them into the great unknown. I like this heartwarming theory, although I think financial connections play a role too. When I first moved to Australia I had less than $3,000 in my bank account, but I knew if I needed help in an emergency, someone would be able to. (You could contemplate this requirement for any person who takes risks, personal or professional.) Fortune favors the brave, but is the definition of brave subjective?
While in Kentucky, I was seeking out stronger southern accents, looking for folks with different class, cultural and political backgrounds to myself. I was lucky enough to score a press pass to the Master Musicians Festival in Somerset, Kentucky, and I wrote about it recently in the Newcastle Herald. An adorable town of just 10,000 people, Somerset seemed great for conducting interviews.
Karen and her daughter Sophie of Belwood Family Farm were selling blueberries at the Somerset Farmers Market on Saturday. Sophie is an aspiring journalist, and in the photo Sophie is holding a picture of the newspaper she writes. I’ve included the interview because it’s so darn cute. I hope Sophie creates a Substack, so the rest of the world can read her news from the farm.
Chris of Yellow Bird Bakery in downtown Somerset talked about his family and his business. He said the best thing about where he lives is Lake Cumberland and his family networks. He said if it weren’t for their family he might move somewhere else. As a business owner, he wished there were more people around downtown.
“The other day someone hit the brakes out there and it was like everyone came out to look,” he said, laughing. “It was nothing.”
He and his wife have owned Yellow Bird Bakery for the last four years and the name came from Bright Eyes song lyrics, as they’re both big fans. Their best treats are made with lemon. I had a lemon bar and can confirm it was real good.
A contrast to that, is a chat I had at the festival with Atlanta-based rapper Fish Scales of Nappy Roots, where we discussed southern rap and what that means. He gave me some homework of rappers to listen to. Not only are Nappy Roots rappers who got their start in Bowling Green, but also they recently became brewers. I tried their Watermelon Chiquen Gritz beer, and I hope to make it to their Atlantucky Brewery in Atlanta soon.
After the festival, for my last night in Bowling Green, my entire family and I met for ice cream on the town square. It was great to see them even just for a minute and randomly talk to different people around us. It was another reminder that when people get out of their comfortable homes and go outside and walk around in nature and public, the world becomes more interesting and usually positive. The more people deliberately on the streets, the safer the community becomes. Community builds, and we find ways to help each other. This was literally the case on Tuesday night, as my uncle changed my cousin’s flat tire.
We ate our ice cream in the park, and a friendly photographer named Darian Jackson approached us to tell us about his business. Of course I asked to interview him. His business is called Xposed Media. He described Bowling Green Kentucky as the most beautiful little small country town in the world.
”Not only is it affordable, but it’s truly a melting pot. Everybody is here, and there’s so much love,” he said.
For Darian, the worst thing about Bowling Green is the lack of high end stores; he wished there were more of those for his business meetings. I asked him about a nice sunset he’s seen, and he recommended me check out his website for a photoshoot he did from a parking garage of Western Kentucky University.
Later in the same evening a man with a cockatoo wandered up the street. Thinking of the same birds flying free in Australia, I had to interview him too. The topic of KFC came up.
My curiosity about strangers drives me. I type these words and I sit on the top deck of a bouncy Megabus to New Orleans. I have been listening to an older man call across the aisle to a slightly younger woman, giving her facts about Alabama, comparing Amtrak to Megabus. I feel such connection and compassion for people I don’t know, often those I’ll probably never see again.
After ice cream in the park, Mom drove me back to Nashville Wednesday morning where we met Rachel and Marissa, two writers, both originally from New York that have found their way to music city. We discussed writing, the patriarchy and the Binders full of Southern Writers Facebook group we’re all in, that’s how we connected. Both Rachel and Marissa pointed out how, before they moved to Nashville, they were dismissive about The South. Now, particularly as access to abortion is being denied and the queer community is under attack, this part of the country needs as many fighters as possible. Slavery is a product of the south, but it’s where the civil rights movement started too. I think about this and my own decisions. I choose to live in a country that grants me better welfare than the US ever has. I could unquestionably be a better agent for change and do more good moving back to this part of the world. But should we think of the world in these terms? Or is that an incredibly self-aggrandizing way to think: “where can I, Alex, helper of humankind and bringer of tidings and joy, go to make the world better? Oh how the world needs MOI to survive.”
Mom drove back to Bowling Green, and Zach picked me up from Nashville and drove me to Asheville, North Carolina. This was purely out of the kindness of his heart. Zach lives in Argentina and pulled some strings to make sure that he could help me with part of my trip. He’s another one of many examples of kind people going out of their way for me. The only alternative for me to get to Asheville would have been an overnight Greyhound from Nashville. I could have done it, but a ride with Zach sounded way better.
We got to Asheville, for a teeny tiny stay. I wanted to interview a few people and try a bus ride or two. I quickly learned that the free and beloved bus I used to take from my college, Warren Wilson, into town doesn’t exist anymore and hasn’t since 2016. This made me sad, especially after I read how few students regularly used the line. Back when I used to take it, it was so fun for a random night on the town. The more people use public transportation, the more we can justify its existence.
Instead of catching the free bus to Warren Wilson, I caught a quick bus from Asheville back to our hotel, the historic and delightfully dinky "Mountaineer Inn”. It was cheap too, with a pool!
Sometimes it is easy to talk to people on the bus, and sometimes it isn’t. One man told me he was a philosophy professor from Florida. At first I felt we were having good conversation, but as the ride continued I became less sure. I was distracted by the man across the aisle from me who had an ankle monitor on.
Later that day I spoke to council member Kim Roney, a “queer abolitionist transportation advocate who loves a good story.” A South Carolina native, she has so many great stories herself. She and her partner now live in Asheville, close to where they work. Back in 2008 the two decided to do a year without a car. They have managed ever since, although it isn’t always easy. Twelve percent of North Carolinians do not have access to a car, she told me.
She was already biking and walking, and then the city did a temporary trial where they made buses completely free. From that she was encouraged to explore even more and even get her bike on the bus. The free buses experiment helped her convert to her full time to current car-free lifestyle. She’s never gone back to a car.
“I fell in love with my city on the bus,” she said.
Kim was one of several people I met in Asheville who brought up frustrations with the current mayor, and Kim even ran against her once. (More on that in another Substack.) Kim is a wealth of knowledge, and I am inspired by how much she has done to advocate for the city and for public transportation.
After dinner Thursday night, the anxiety hit as once again I began to prepare for the uncertainty of a 5am bus ride, this time to Raleigh. Once I got to Raleigh, friends planned to meet me. A cab picked me up from the Mountaineer Inn at 4:30 and I arrived at the bus stop, a gas station on Swannanoa River Road. I stood around with at least 10 others, waiting waiting waiting.
5:30 no bus.
6am no bus.
By 6:30, more of us began talking to each other. A woman named Shirley saw I had a battery charger and asked if I could help another man waiting and let him charge his phones. He’d recently been in a car accident. He had two phones, both barely working, both smashed to oblivion. He was using one which had data for the other. Of course I said yes.
I didn’t think too much about the lack of facilities at the other bus/gas stations because the bus was always on time (Thanks Megabus!), but when it is not on time the lacking becomes obvious and problematic. Where are the bathrooms, the benches, the water, the shelter?
We sat on the curb, waiting for the bus. I called Greyhound twice and waited on hold forever. Eventually I got vague updates. This is such a shame because literally, you can track all vehicles. I’m not an IT gal, but if I can track my family’s whereabouts on Google Maps, surely it would not be too costly or inconvenient for Greyhound to allow you to track their buses. By doing this, I could have slept in to a normal hour. (I’m still working on getting my $50 back too.)
I talked to different disgruntled passengers including Shirley who was from New York, but had family and a farm in South Carolina. She had come down for her Auntie’s birthday, which she might miss. I told her I lived in Australia, and she asked me if it was true that there were no brown people there. (This is not the first time I’ve been asked this.) Obviously people of every culture and color live in Australia, but I suppose that, compared to the United States, Australia would appear to have less racial diversity. Here’s an interesting, dated article on the topic. It was not the conversation I expected to have that early in the morning.
My brother woke up and realized I was still in Asheville. He couldn’t believe it. He drove down to pick me up and drive me to Charlotte (his final destination), where I hoped to find an alternative way to Raleigh.
When he pulled up to the gas station around 8am, another passenger was borrowing my phone to speak to his cardiologist. This passenger was meant to be in the nearby town of Shelby by 10am and now was going to miss his appointment.
Zach and I were leaving, and Shelby was on the way. I thought of Ed on my last Greyhound trip. I looked at the others sitting on the curb in the increasing heat. Zach said to the guy, “we can give you a lift.”
I called out to the others “anyone want to come to Charlotte?”
They shook their heads and we waved bye.
The man got in the car and rolled down the window, “trying to get rid of the homeless smell.” he joked. But I couldn’t smell him. Before he had said that I didn’t know he was homeless. He was in the car with us less than five minutes when I realized, despite the normalcy of his phone call with the doctor, he was mentally unwell. He was extremely paranoid. He listed multiple pop stars who had stolen music from him, he spoke about how everyone was manipulative, from “the tan people” to his own parents. He talked a lot about sex offenders, killing people, stabbings, manipulative police and how he is trying to get a gun.
He sat in the back seat, and I kept looking back at him, trying to keep him talking, I’m not sure why. I tried to maintain eye contact and also tried to direct our conversation towards some sort of neutral normal topic. Zach was speeding like a maniac down the back country roads to Shelby. Usually I hate when he drives like this, but not this time.
The drive to Shelby was meant to take an hour and a half and Zach did it under and hour. I felt like a bitch and a half because I wanted this man out of Zach’s car. And of course once we dropped him off I hated myself because he was clearly unwell, and now he was in a different new town with nowhere to go. We had done the bare minimum to help him and I just worried about ourselves the entire time.
The homelessness crisis in this region is shocking. Everywhere I’ve gone people talk about it, and I’ve seen it first hand. The economy is said to be booming. Everyone is hiring. Why are so many people living in poverty and also why is it so terribly connected to mental illness?
Zach and I kept driving to Charlotte. My head was racing after no sleep, no bus, and the man in the car with us. We got to Charlotte and calmed down a little. I found new people and places. We visited a Waffle House and the Little Sugar Creek Greenway.
An Amtrak train took me from Charlotte to Durham in two hours for only $25. I hopped on, and it was on time and fine. I slept most of the ride. My dear friend and college roommate Chelsea was waiting for me when I got off the train. I hugged her so hard and thought about how lucky I am.
I described my Greyhound nightmare to my friend Calyx and she wrote, “Family is especially important because you can’t count on infrastructure or government in the South. Family values.”
Family are the people who will pick you up when the bus misses you.