I tried listening to S Town this week. I wasn’t captivated.
There was nothing wrong with the storytelling.
It took me a while before I figured out what was wrong.
I’m from a place like that.
S Town, for “Shit Town,” is Woodstock, AL, which is four hours north of where my stepfather lives (and where I did K-12). It’s four and a half hours north of my ancestral home, which we call Pinelog, as it’s surrounded by Pinelog State Forest and Pinelog Creek. Pinelog’s not a town–we have to use the post office in the closest town, Ebro (famous only for its dog track), even though they’re technically in another county.
When I heard the subject of S Town speak, I thought, yup. Sounds like a bunch of my cousins.
The subject’s home is hard to find. So’s the one I grew up in. Google maps can’t see it through the tree cover. It blends in with the rest of the forest, the rest of the swamp.
One of S Town’s main industries is logging. Same for where I’m from.
S Town, in other words, was very familiar. Too familiar.
And that’s why I couldn’t get into it.
The producer is astounded to hear people openly using racial and homophobic slurs, when they know they’re being recorded. I’m sure most of the audience is too.
And all I could think was yeah, that’s part of why I left.
It’s exotic to the NPR audience; it’s not at all exotic to me.
Still, if you ever wonder what my accent might have been, give S Town a listen.
