From the fields to foundries Crittenden’s values timeless
And more from my latest op-ed for the Crittenden Press in Marion, Kentucky
Author’s note: You can read the full paper here.
There is something to be said about the resiliency of folks from Crittenden. The county’s population peaked in 1900, and little economic development has occurred since the decline of the tobacco industry and fluorspar mines, which were completely replaced by foreign imports in 1985, the year I was born. There is one thing that has transcended both space and time, however, and that is the timeless principles of Western Kentuckians. Although I was raised more than 300 miles north as a second-generation Hoosier in the heart of steel country, I can attest that the rural way of life continues to guide and influence my behavior.
After the Lewis & Clark Expedition was completed, my ancestor Sgt. John Ordway relocated from New Hampshire to New Madrid and recruited family to join him. After the earthquakes of 1811-1812, his widowed sister-in-law, Elizabeth, quickly remarried and moved to Piney Fork in the newly created Caldwell County. Her oldest son, Daniel Jr., is buried in the Hill Cemetery in Fredonia along the most northern route of the Trail of Tears, where he lived to see the Civil War. Within a decade after slavery was abolished, the area became almost entirely white.
During their 150-year residency, Ordways migrated north along Rt. 641, but no further than Marion. With the exception of a few livery stables, an ice store, and a machine shop, the vast majority of my predecessors were farmers. The Press tracks their movements over the years, attending church, weddings, birthday parties, and funerals, among other community events.
They were steeped in the Agrarian Tradition, where economic, social, and political systems centered on agriculture as the primary means of existence. This way of life was popularized by Wendell Berry in Henry County, Kentucky. Still, agrarians from the 1930s warned southerners about how work in the industrial north eroded culture in pursuit of titles, status, and materialism. This focus on faith, family, and community is the glue that kept Ordways rooted in such practices; however, economics would force change upon them.
It wasn’t until the Second Industrial Revolution at the turn of the twentieth century that the mechanization of agriculture took off. My great-grandfather, Virgil Ordway, was forced to pull one foot out of the family farm in Crayne and put it into the spar mines shortly after the Black Patch Tobacco Wars. Industrial life would be challenging, as organized labor did not arrive in the area until after the Second World War. Environmental protections for both workers and the land were still decades away.
In 1960, The Press reported that 10 years earlier (in 1950), the mine business was finished, and men only had two options for employment: go to Gary, Indiana, or find another mine in Eastern Kentucky. After returning from the Korean War, Papaw Hollis saw that Crittenden was unchanged. It was then that he decided to head north for a job at U.S. Steel, where he worked at the Sheet & Tin mill for 33 years.
He and Mamaw (Virginia) brought their values and lifestyle north. After years of renting in the City of Gary, they bought a very modest 864 sq ft house in neighboring East Gary (renamed Lake Station in 1977), which had a southern feel with its greenways and blueways. They resided in the last house on a dead-end street next to both woods and sand dunes. It was here that the Ordways recreated their Kentucky life, complete with a big yard where they planted oak, walnut, and pine trees. In addition, they had a white tin shed, a small red barn shed, a burn barrel, and a seasonal garden, which they shared with their neighbors.
Northerners called all white southern migrants “hillbillies” due to their accent and dialect, but the folks of western Kentucky are “flatlanders,” with a culture very different from their Appalachian counterparts. Their history and oral narratives are best captured in the book Southern Migrants, Northern Exiles by author Chad Berry, now a Vice President at Berea College.
Even though The Press advertised that more than 50 Crittenden County migrants attended a Baptist Church in East Gary, my grandparents fell away from the faith for a time. Instead, Papaw found community through his membership in the United Steelworkers Union (USW).
Both my dad and I were raised in that little house where the southern identity remained fully intact. Mamaw and Papaw would retire back to Crayne in the late 1980s, a common practice among many Kentucky migrants, as the north was never home for them.
After living with my grandparents for a year between 1987-1988, I would visit every summer until I was 12 and hunt deer with my dad in Sheridan until 1999. Given the intimate nature of The Press, my arrivals were noted by the paper twice. While I never looked forward to working in the family garden at Aunt Mary’s house on Lily Dale Dr., I enjoyed our visits with locals like Dean Akridge at his supply store in Fredonia. Mamaw even promised trips to the toy aisle of Walmart in the “big city” of Paducah if I’d let the local barber shop cut off my rat tail.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I noticed a tension between a Southern Culture of Honor and a Northern Culture of Dignity when it comes to what proper behavior looks like within one’s family and the greater community. My rite of passage into manhood was a strict standard set by dad and foreign to the peers of my childhood. The convergence of high-speed internet, smartphones, and social media, as well as the breakdown of the traditional family unit, has significantly eroded such practices.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, I delivered the commencement address at my alma mater, River Forest, a school that was quickly established in the late 1950s due to rapid southern white migration. My speech was based on wisdom given to me in 2005 by my (late) great uncle Charles Aldridge of Marion. He said, “never be ashamed of what you do for a living,” and “never forget where you come from.” Those phrases have never left me, and one thing I noticed about Ordways is that they never chased materialism or status, yet they live much longer and happier lives than folks in the north.
While I split time between Gary and Indianapolis today, my last eight years were spent in Washington, D.C., mostly working in the U.S. Senate. It was there that I read The Fall of Kentucky’s Rock: Western Kentucky Democratic Politics since the New Deal.
To summarize the book, local TV, radio, and newspapers have been eroded by technology, and now all our media comes from Washington. With places like Cave-In-Rock, Western Kentucky was once a dangerous frontier. Some industrial development came after, but the people never really prospered as commerce moved away, as more rail lines traversed the nation. FDR’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) helped the locals build roads, which they would later use to leave; however, his electric cooperative grants did bring Crittenden out of the dark ages, literally. Other than that, political elites at the national level erased what little economic activity existed, looked down on their religious convictions, and some dared to label such a group with “white privilege.” This caused Crittenden’s political views to pivot, but in the Jackson Purchase, voters did an about-face after 200 years of being named the state’s “gibraltar of democracy.”
For thousands of years, human customs and practices were shaped at the local level, rather than by overeducated individuals in a faraway land, that lacks input from a community’s unique lived experiences. While we might not always agree with our local media, outlets like The Press are critical to facilitating community conversations as they are far more productive than arguing with strangers on the internet.
Given her hardscrabble upbringing, Mamaw often said to “make do or do without” and reminded me not to become “too big for my britches” in my successes. Papaw and Dad also contributed to my development by encouraging me to think for myself and problem-solve through expectations like, “Son, figure it out,” and rhetorical questions such as, “Son, do I have to draw you a picture?” It is their actions, putting principles into practice and leading by example, which have enabled me to become a contributing member of society. Such behavior may appear primitive to the outsider, but the values of Crittenden County are timeless. It has been said, “You can take the boy out of Kentucky, but you can’t take the Kentucky out of the boy.” For Dad and me, Kentucky was always at the center of our identity. I am fortunate to have such a traditional upbringing and plan to advocate for this simple life because of the deep meaning and purpose it has given me.