A peek at ‘flyover country’ inside tiny Booth’s Corner
A 2008 documentary film, “Split: A Divided America,” examines America’s Blue StatesRed States, ProgressivesConservatives, InsidersOutsiders political divide from the perspective of cultural factors (religion, urbanization, race, wealth), the mainstream media, contemporary campaign strategies, and the deterioration of civil discourse.
Based upon recent, admittedly unscientific, personal observations, examining the schism from the perspective of regional dialects might aid in delineating, if not healing, the rift.
I inadvertently crossed this linguistic divide the evening before Super Bowl Sunday at Booth’s Corner Farmers Market in Garnet Valley. I was picking up my game day party platter from the market’s five-star rated Cajun Kate’s.
Stepping into Booth’s Corner was like stepping across the Mason-Dixon Line. Nordstrom’s and Gucci were nowhere in sight, but anyone in the market for billiard supplies, exotic pets, vinyl records, or longing for jambalaya or artery-clogging donuts was in the right place.
Most everyone spoke with a lilting, non-Philadelphian twang, more south of the border than south Philly. Odd given that Garnet Valley is part of Delaware County, a close-in, blue collar, Philadelphia suburb.
The term “Flyover Country”’ came to mind.
Technically, “flyover country” describes the part of the country that some Americans only view by air. It also includes states like West Virginia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, which at first glance are outside the grid.
A blue-collar Philadelphia suburb suffused with a southern twang 15 minutes from PHL International on I-95 definitely doesn’t fit.
It’s as if Booth’s Corner broke away from a flyover state like, say, Arkansas or Nebraska and landed smack in the middle of the densely populated, heavily urbanized Northeast Corridor.
SiriusXM satellite radio’s menu of niche programming includes Outlaw County, a “sanctuary for the freaks, misfits, rebels, and renegades of country music.”
Speaking with that distinctive twang, a female deejay confesses to liking “that whiskey feeling” after playing a smoky country ballad. Singer Hayes Carll wails that his high school sweetheart “left (him) for Jesus and that just isn’t fair.”
I’m willing to bet that countless (ersatz) flyover folks as disparate as the Booth’s Corner people and an Outlaw Country listener-friend who self-describes as an “elegant, grandmother of 10, Chester County cattle rancher, cum farmer, ‘mom’” are embedded among urban and suburban sophisticates.
A recent first ever visit to West Virginia confirmed that the Mountain State indeed fits the profile of a flyover state.
West Virginia borders Pennsylvania and the densely populated Washington metropolitan area, yet retains its own distinct, appealingly quirky, rural personality.
Sounding just like the Outlaw Country deejays and Booth’s Corner folk, the natives were unfailingly friendly, gracious, and unassuming.
They also unapologetically cling to their guns and religion.
Sunday morning television is chockablock with small, local church services and evangelists.
A native son proudly displayed his “safe room,” so-called because of its impressive collection of firearms.
Often derisively called Wal-Mart shoppers, these “centrally isolated” enclaves are the cultural I-beams that ensure that this pulsating, vast, diverse, “out of many, one” America doesn’t degenerate into “out of one, many” factions.
For any politician to not accord them the respect and recognition they deserve is deplorable.