Adam Osborn Believes in Greatness

A tour of Appalachia, once and future

Adam Osborn and I are sitting on the curb by the Dollar General Store ignoring the traffic stuttering in a stop-go motion at the red light. I know because Adam told me that there used to be a playground here, and to Adam, this will always be a playground.

Adam is haunted, not by people but by places. And since I found him standing in front of the old Methodist church an hour and a half ago, he’s been trying to help me remember all the places I’ve never been and never will be. The gun and tackle shop. Hawk’s country store. The old train depot and its freight elevator. The Appalachia Hotel. The Peake Building with its 4 stories of ground-floor apartments. The jailhouse.

Just now, he’s looking at me half sideways and searching my face while he tells me that Miss Kitty from Gunsmoke used to live in the big house on the hill, and I can’t tell if he believes it or not (and I’m sad when I find out that it isn’t true). “This place is going down,” he tells me. “Big Stone Gap is going up, but these people right here are going down.”

We have agreed without a word to ignore what’s ugly here, and when — at the train station — I see a used needle on the windowsill, we make a silent pact to pretend it’s not there.

After some 12 hours working a jackhammer, and some 60 years in Appalachia, Adam needs to believe in greatness. I do too. And so here we are, together, digging through the ruins.

Three or four times while we’re talking, Adam brings up Grape Nehi — where he got it, how many he could get for a quarter, the make-shift cooler a mine worker made to keep it in, and so on. I remember the cans of Pepsi and peppermint candies my great uncle used to slide me with a wink, and I remember my mother telling me that Christmas for my mamaw was a few pieces of hard candy.

I think I know Adam, but a couple of times, I get scared and beg off. My mom is waiting for me in the parking lot of the Payless grocery store. We’re going for Chinese food. A couple of times, I get scared, and then I’m ashamed of my fear, and I stay and listen.

“Yeah, they did all this by hand … by hand,” he says. “They put their heart and soul into that. I keep telling these young people, when that’s gone, it’s gone. Ain’t coming back.” This is my fear and our inevitable reality. Coal isn’t coming back. The outside world has no dealings here. The only saving to be done is the saving we’ll do for ourselves.

I think if I can know this place like Adam does, maybe I’ll know myself. I can know the people I come from, and in this way, I can keep my ghosts alive inside of me. I can find some reflection of who I once was in these ruins — take them home and start over. I can live those long summer days again with my mamaw singing Barbara Allen and my papaw sitting behind the wheel chain smoking cigarettes with the window cracked.

“The bones are still good,” Adam says over and over. He reaches out to help me over the train tracks and up the hill, and his hands are worn with 60 years of getting by. “You can really make this into something.”

Adam Osborn believes in greatness. So do I.