Flyover States Reconsidered

In May 2012, Jason Aldean notched his seventh number one country hit with Neil Thrasher’s song, Fly Over States.  Aldean tried to explain its popularity, "The song is absolutely real, and when you tell a story like that and you deliver it in a way that it's real and you're not trying to sugarcoat it, people respond to that and relate to it. That's what this song is, and why it's become popular."

The problem is, the song isn’t real.

Not the part about the harvest moon in Kansas.  Nor songwriter Thrasher’s memories of windshield sunsets and flatbed cowboys stacking US steel. These are all wonderfully real. Thrasher is right when he says, “you’d think heaven’s doors have opened”.

It is the song’s opening that isn’t real.  Thrasher imagines two guys riding first class from New York to Los Angeles, flirting with the flight attendants.  They wonder aloud why anyone would want to live in the middle of nowhere. For Thrasher, these two travelers personify the arrogance and self-indulgence of urban America.

I have a completely different understanding of flyover states.  You see, I adore the heartland of America.  I love its fields, rivers, mountains, and valleys.  I admire its industrious people, its small towns and sprawling fields. I especially love the little towns of my own western North Carolina.

I fly over these states because I am afraid to enter them.  I often feel safer on an urban street than in a rural Walmart.  I feel more welcome in a city bar than in a country church.

By stereotyping the rest of the country, Aldean and Thrasher only compound the problem.  

I recently flew from Washington DC to Asheville, North Carolina.  A man in a Stetson hat and cowboy boots eyed me as he boarded the flight.  He spoke so all the other Stetsons surrounding me could hear, “Boy, I can’t wait to get back to Tennessee and my pickup truck and guns!”

The hats around me responded with a chorus of chortles and “you betchas”.

I shrank into my seat, seeking safety in silence and invisibility.  “Well,” I thought, “strike Tennessee from my list of safe places to visit.”

I am a 60-something transgender woman. I cannot easily hide my appearance.  Consequently, I must worry about my safety wherever I go.

It wasn’t always so.  In 1978, I took a year off from college to hitchhike and backpack the Rocky Mountains. I was a middle-class, white male.  It hardly occurred to me to worry for my safety.  When a Black man in his fifty’s stopped to give me a lift, I hopped in without a second thought. I was safe in the bosom of my country.

Like Aldean’s two airplane passengers, we slipped into idle conversation.  He talked about his job and family.  I rhapsodized about the beautiful mountains I had just hiked to.

My companion stared uncomfortably into the distance.  “Yeah,” he sighed, “I sure wish I could take my sons camping.”

I sat with that thought for the rest of our ride. It had never occurred to me that this wasn’t his country, too. How sad that this kindly gentleman couldn’t enjoy our heartland as joyfully as I did.

Thrasher appropriately celebrates the beauty that is the heart of America.  But when he criticizes those who avoid the heartland, he points the finger of blame in the wrong direction. In all my city-slicker years, I can’t recall a single conversation about the heartland’s lack of charm and beauty. What I can recall is innumerable conversations about how dangerous and unwelcoming the heartland can be. What I can recall are an endless stream of rural preachers, politicians, and media propogandists bloviating about the evil world outside their country citadel.

If flyover states want to lose their reputation, they don’t need to sell me on the beauty of their country and towns or the virtues of their people.  They just need to roll out the welcome mat and shut down the bullies in their midst.

I happen to believe that the majority of people in my region are reasonably loving and tolerant at heart.  I wish they would speak up.