I’ve met pipe-liners, boiler renovators, peanut farmers, paper mill workers and cotton producers- the kind of people that go home with sweat on their back, tired and stained in grease. There’s pride in hard manual work here in Alabama, there is a deep sense of knowing that physical labor is not in vain, in fact, lives are often at stake in the building of American industry.
There’s a grit in the south, something I’ve possibly never understood until now. A don’t-mess-with-me-attitude I’d otherwise be turned off by. But from the stories, and the spits of tobacco in-between, it comes from a history of hard labor and a sense of ownership in American production. Both black and white men alike, carry this pride, though they’d likely not admit. Conservatism has a deep meaning here, one I used to not understand. The factory and farm hands don’t want their sweat to fall without protection of jobs, rights and freedoms they are accustomed to. And while guns, conservatism and deep religion aren’t my ideologies.. this is the heartbeat of Alabama, and the hard-lined dedication to those pillars digs deeply into a sense of identity here.
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AuthorKatie Elizabeth: Writer, Wonderer, Wanderer. Archives
April 2022
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