Enjoying Blackberries in Purgatory
Sept 2023
Anna Woodward
I saw Summertown, Tennessee as sweet tea spiked with codeine cough syrup. Everyone seemed to enjoy sleepwalking through life with its saccharine, stuporous high. They couldn’t stop at a shot; it seemed like people were hooked, and they would stay as long as their glass was being refilled. It was the ambrosia trapped at the bottom of the pitcher plant that was the South. My own parents were born in the county and had been high school sweethearts, and they still live there. I found this horrifying, even though they have a happy, functional marriage. I could never understand it—I never felt community pride. As far back as kindergarten, I told anyone that would listen that I was going to move to Europe as soon as I had the chance. The small-town steadiness was a straitjacket that only became more painful as I continued to outgrow it.
In an insular community, your world either shrinks and refashions itself within its confines, or seems to expand to everywhere except your community, keeping you on the outside. Either way, the separation is tangible—and sometimes appealing. It was one of the earliest draws of Summertown. In the late 1800s, the water coursing through Summertown Springs was purported to have healing powers. Enough tourists flocked to the Springs to support a resort, three hotels, stables, and a dancing hall. The resort town was meant to be a getaway, but it was not isolated; bustling cities to shop at were only a short train ride away.
The nature-resort ideal is still part of the Southern mythos. For its part, Summertown is full of John Constable-esque landscapes. Although the Springs have faded into a little-known myth, I lived a few minutes away from what I think could be its contemporary proxy: the Stillhouse Hollow Falls state natural area. The entrance is right off an unassuming stretch of highway, but dense foliage and the white noise of bug chirps and shuffling small animals quickly envelope you. One of the trails leads to a clearing where the pool of a seventy-five-foot waterfall lies. With enough dexterity, you can scale about twenty feet to a stony alcove beside the fall. I would often go on early weekday mornings when the place would be empty, and it was always a replenishing experience. In two centuries, the resort town became a single-stoplight town that doesn’t even have a Walmart—but sitting on the slick, cool stone, feeling the breeze of a massive waterfall, I could see the appeal of the untouched.
These moments made me more sympathetic to those who sought their own private paradise there. On two hundred fifty acres on the outskirts of Summertown, architect Jamie Pfeffer recently renovated two historic log cabins, and constructed a lake house and the seven-acre lake it overlooks. A feature in Garden & Gun magazine showcases the envy-inducing property, replete with floor-to-ceiling windows, a Uruguayan open-fire grill, contemporary Tennessean art, and Kurt Østervig, Søren Hansen, and antique Wegner Wishbone chairs. Contemporary, airy, luxe. The perfect background for rose-tinted vignettes of searching for arrowheads and geodes, kayaking, and picking bulbous, sweet-tart blackberries. I thought that two-story homes with in-ground pools were as nice as it got in Summertown, but times are changing.
The Pfeffers are not Summertown natives; they moved from Nashville to give their children a country upbringing like their own. The town is increasingly popular for people who want the perks of working in a city with the nature and costs of a rural area. As Nashville and other cities bleed down, the class and wealth gap will continue to widen. Speaking from experience, picking wild blackberries is much easier to romanticize while you’re enjoying the resulting tangy, mauve ice cream than it is while you’re cleaning the cuts if you happen to fall into the briars. Likewise, the romanticized, pristine image of Summertown is only possible to keep if you are privileged enough to not see the young kids playing in front of decrepit mobile homes, complete lack of racial diversity, or homophobia.
The other way to have a romanticized view is to embrace these elements to some degree: people who take pride in living there and identify with the culture. Although the population has grown significantly in recent years, only a handful of people moved there or away each year I was in elementary school. The town’s community dynamic shifted to become more tightly knit and family-oriented after the resort’s death in the late 1920s; the last passenger train stopped in Summertown on December 9, 1954, marking the end of the town’s time as a tourist hotspot. As the community was cultivated in this new image, small-town pride grew. This sentiment is still strong today; most people embrace the culture to some degree.
Some of this group plays into the stereotypes of the rural, Southern, working class “white trash.” Although I had known many (and am related to a considerable number), I came to know several more of the prouder self-fashioned rednecks in a sophomore year agriscience class. Summertown’s brand of reclaimed rednecks is akin to those portrayed on the mid-2010s smash-hit reality TV show Duck Dynasty. Hunting was a steadfast topic of conversation in any class; at least one teacher was guaranteed to ask if anyone had gotten anything the first few days into every new hunting season. In agriscience, it was a daily conversation. Jacob would talk about his coon dogs, fittingly named after the two from Where the Red Fern Grows, giving us a painstaking play-by-play of each treeing, shooting, and field dressing. When that topic was exhausted, fishing or cars were next. A scowling girl I never learned the name of wore the same pair of worn leather cowboy boots and a hoodie with the Confederate flag pattern every day that semester. People vented about taking algebra II or biology when they were just going to drop out and get their GED, then go into the army or physical labor jobs.
The term “redneck” originally came from the sunburnt necks of populist yeomen farmers and was co-opted to use against populism supporters. By the turn of the twentieth century, it had become a shorthand for poor, rural Southern laborers with little to no education. According to historian Patrick Huber, in the early 1910s, some labor unions began reclaiming it with populist and class pride. Union organizers would even use the term to unify ethnically diverse miners in class solidarity. As the century progressed, “redneck” was still loosely affiliated with the working class, but it mainly captured the most distinctive cultural stereotypes of the South: poor, crass, ignorant, religious, and bigoted. Post-1970, many reclaimed the term yet again, but this, too, was less about class and more about culture.
I don’t know how it became ingrained, but I cannot remember a time I was not working to avoid the stereotype of the illiterate, uncultured Southerner. This was my earliest source of identity-based embarrassment. In first grade, people began asking me if I was British—I consumed a lot of UK-based kids’ TV programs and documentaries and had picked up a slight accent. This became a source of pride, and I begged my parents for elocution lessons to further eradicate any Southern inflection. These were denied, so I tried to emulate neutrality on my own. Policing my accent, a reflex at this point, is an attempt to avoid the assumptions it might evoke. It’s not only me; I’ve met several Southerners who wear their less discernable accents as a badge of pride.
As the self-professed rednecks illustrate, some stereotypes have a basis in Summertown’s reality. School-sanctioned sports games often began with first amendment-violating prayers, being baptized was an elementary school status marker, and a high school teacher quit because she didn’t want to chance having to teach a transgender student (who was in elementary school at the time). Despite my general misgivings, I internalized many things as a child that were harmful to others and destroyed my own mental health. As I realized this, what I saw as the stereotypical Southerner was an easy target for my anger; I increasingly felt like the only non-delusional person in Summertown.
The difficulty with maintaining blanket stereotypes is that individuals are nuanced. For example, my meat-loving agriscience teacher who would enthusiastically tell me about vegan recipes he’d tried; a few family members who took the time to listen to other voices and evolve their beliefs; classmates that were outspoken advocates for various minorities; or my brilliant government and economics teacher who was dedicated to teaching about structural inequalities and lesser-known black and LGBTQ+ history. A right doesn’t cancel a wrong, but I began to realize that I was treating the town—and the people in it—the way I abhorred other people treating it.
The rural South as a scapegoat allows other places and people to feel better in comparison, distracting from a painful reckoning with their own pasts and presents. In several ways, Summertown captures the American spirit too closely for comfort.
Summertown is also deeply invested in the American dream. Stephen Gaskin and a few hundred fellow hippies decided to leave San Francisco in the early 1970s to lead a life more aligned with their values. Their caravan stopped near Summertown, and they took a liking to the land. After buying seventeen hundred fifty acres, they started establishing their utopian commune. The community, The Farm, is still around and has gained national recognition. Although they are a non-representative sample of Summertown, I think they embody something a lot of people cling to: the idea that with enough drive and land, they can create something of their own to believe in. When I met people that moved from places like Franklin, Nashville, or even California, or read about families like the Pfeffers, they often cited opportunities to build a more intentional life. This is what draws much of the people moving there, despite the town’s problems.
Summertown encapsulates the dual conceptions of the South: a picturesque place where a few acres and a dream is all you need, versus insipid, uninspired land that is overrun by redneck imbeciles. These are both harmful oversimplifications; in my experience, the truth is somewhere in between. When I reflect on the pain of growing up there, or when I recount experiences that I didn’t realize were so atypical until people react with astonishment and pity, it can feel hopeless. I am afraid Summertown’s trajectory will never lead to another golden age like its resort beginnings. However, I now know better than to completely write off the town or people that live there. I don’t want to be there to witness it, but I hope to be proven wrong.