The Tune That Followed Me Around The World
You can’t run from where you come from
I’d heard the song a thousand times. Those optimistic first notes, the nostalgic harmonies, the bright acoustic twang. It was a classic — at least, it was a classic where I’m from.
I figured people only really knew John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” if they were from the same state as me. I figured Morgantown dorm rooms and grimy backroads bars were the only places people threw their beers in the air, spilling a considerable amount, and screamed: “COUNTRY ROOOADS, TAKE ME HOOOME.”
That’s why my ears perked up when I heard those twangs half a world away, at a pub in Ireland. I nearly spilled my own beer as the performer started the song… “Almost heaven, West Virginia.”
I was never too fond of my “home state.” I spent most of my childhood in northern Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C., comforted by city noise and closeness. I was miserable when, at age ten, I was dragged deeper into the country and high up into the mountains to a tiny town in West Virginia. I spent middle school, high school, and college there. My feelings about my adopted state teetered between passionate irritation and full-blown hatred.
The mountains were pretty. But they were just mountains. Mountains could be found all over…
