Insular

A couple of weeks ago, I enjoyed a typical summer Friday afternoon here at home in Potter County. At the downtown Farmer's Market in Coudersport, vendors greeted me from their tables set up under the oak trees that circle the square. I picked up my weekly supply of eggs from Netra Baker who tempted me with her baked goods, artfully arranged on a patchwork quilt.

I selected a carefully crafted bouquet of flowers from a teenage neighbor who had often visited our farm with her father to pick up fresh vegetables when she was just a tot. She and her aunt have launched a business selling colorful blooms.

Next door at the funeral home, folks were gathered to honor the life of a schoolmate of my older brother, a history buff who could be counted on to set the record straight when those less knowledgable chimed in on social media sites.

Later at the grocery store, a former co-worker and her out-of-town grownup daughter were shopping for picnic supplies and we stopped in the aisle to chat. Other shoppers smiled a greeting as they steered their carts around us.

Does my experience sound like a page from the tourist promotion literature? 

"a friendly setting ... our small towns throughout the region will welcome you" 

It was a far different experience for a young woman I joined later that afternoon. She, too, had visited Coudersport on the same summer Friday afternoon. She stopped in town on her way to a nearby camp in the woods. But she had not been welcomed with friendly smiles at the grocery store. Rather she was greeted with glares and inpatient clucking of tongues and sighing as she slowly navigated the unfamiliar aisles to find needed supplies.

"It felt really uncomfortable. Unfriendly. People were staring at us and nobody smiled. All I wanted was to get out of there as soon as possible," she related. "My daughter and I were wearing masks because she isn't vaccinated and I am aware of your low vaccination rate. Do you think it's because we were wearing the masks? "

But I didn't have  to say what I was thinking because another companion did. "My husband won't go to the grocery store here anymore and it's not because he's wearing a mask - it's all about his skin color." And my friend looked over her shoulder to locate her dark-skinned, dark-haired little girl, swinging on the branches of a maple tree.

Ugly. Ugly. It was all I could say. I could not find other words.

There was another time when I couldn't - or didn't - find the words. It was a time when I made my living at the local hospital.

Recruitment of physicians to this rural area, always a challenge , led the recruiter and medical staff and board and hospital administration to make special efforts to find and encourage skilled doctors to practice medicine here. On this Sunday morning, a physician and his wife were wrapping up what had seemed to be a successful visit. They had met members of the medical staff, had toured the facilities and the young doctor with impeccable credentials seemed ready to make a commitment to sign a contract. But then his wife, wearing a hijab, stopped in the local grocery that day to pick up some diapers for their infant. It was while she was standing in the baby supply aisle that a person walked up to her and spit in her face. 

I don't often recount this story from my days working as Public Relations Director at my hometown hospital.  Mostly it's because of the loud sounds of silence that accompanied this unforgivable ugliness. And I was part of that silence. Of course, at the time we told ourselves we were being considerate of the wishes of the physician and his shattered wife who simply couldn't bear the thought having any spotlight shown on her. But now I wonder if openly talking about this incident would have given our community an opportunity to examine and call out this kind of prejudice. To perhaps have opened conversations, to perhaps have sparked outrage that this happened here. To perhaps have led to a greater understanding.

But instead, here we are all these years later and I must face again that this insular community is not only unwelcoming, it's racist.

And a postscript: My friend from away is a runner and planned to drive into Coudersport the next morning for a run. "I'll park my car in a place where no one will see my Black Lives Matter bumper sticker.