How I Became a Spiritual Suburbanite

The air-conditioner guy just left after kindly coming out to our house this afternoon to fix a leaky unit that wasn't working. Having a functional air-conditioner is important to me because I have a hypo-thyroid condition that makes me extremely sensitive to heat. As a result, I have enormous appreciation for his take time on a Saturday to come out to my house and do repairs.

And the air conditioner is working great now.

Unfortunately, there was a language barrier between us as he worked. His Eastern Kentucky accent was so thick I could barely understand what he was saying and I'm not sure he understood me all that much better. I've been living in Eastern Kentucky for 17 years, but I have to admit that I'm actually worse on Kentucky accents now than I was after 15 years ago.

That's because I've become a kind of suburbanite even though I don't live in a suburb. My town of Morehead is in the western foothills of the Appalachian mountains in Eastern Kentucky and the nearest urban center is Lexington sixty miles further west. Even though it takes an hour and twenty minutes to get from my house to downtown Lexington, I'm still much more likely to take a trip to Lexington than I am to even go to the east side of Morehead. And I haven't been to the next town east of Morehead in at least 5 or 6 years. When my wife and I want to take a weekend off, we generally go to Lexington and stay at a hotel. When we're in Lexington, the Joseph-Beth book store is our default place to relax and unwind. We've also started getting medical services there and we just generally like being in Lexington.

Without recognizing it, I've gradually moved into the Lexington shopping and culture orbit. I've become a spiritual suburbanite.

Far from detracting from Eastern Kentucky, my own spiritual suburbanness is one of the reasons why I think Morehead is an interesting place to live. A good chunk of the university population and hospital staff are just like me, spiritual suburbanites who face west toward Lexington rather than east and south toward the mountains. Like suburbanites all over the country, they listen to NPR several hours a day, go to Lexington for a variety of services, and have Lexington much more in mind as a place to go than Olive Hill, Sandy Hook, or West Liberty.

In fact, a lot of my friends and acquaintances are so absorbed in the suburban mentality that they would find it strange that I'm mentioning Eastern Kentucky towns as an alternative.

However, it's also pretty clear that a majority of the population in Morehead and Rowan County is oriented toward the mountains and has family connections, educational reference points, cultural interests, and religious interests in mountain culture and ways. From what I hear from my students, a number of people in Rowan County have never even been to Lexington.

And that's great. I just have a hard time understanding a lot of people.