Broke.

Here's the complete story that I wrote for Backdrop Magazine. This version isn't the version that appears in the magazine, but it's my third and final draft that I submitted. I hope you all enjoy it. It's long--just some forewarning. However, it's well worth it to read it. Thanks for all the support.




Broke.


Traveling to Athens, Ohio, by State Route 33 in winter is a lesson in melancholy.

The four-lane highway snakes its way through cold, grayish-brown Appalachian hills. The landscape that connects central Ohio to its southeastern cousin evokes wistfulness as each tectonic bump trips into the next—a never-ending sea of dead trees and limitless pasture.

It’s Fitzgerald’s rural Valley of Ashes minus Tom Wilson and the gang.

The “Trailer Park” sits in this pensive, empty valley right before the State Route 13 exit. Its location infringes the Hocking and is hidden from the passing traffic on the highway above.

A driveway juts off the road, sloping down into a collection of dilapidated mobile homes. Its presence is almost undetectable to the casual passerby on Route 33. Faded pastel exteriors of each home steadily blend into their listless surroundings.

Cindy’s home is near the back of the park. Across the street two kids sit spiritlessly on cinder blocks that lead into their home. A mutt barks boisterously next door.

“In this trailer park you can tell it’s a poor community. There’s nothing really here for somebody who doesn’t have a college education,” Cindy explained.

Cindy is a 20-year-old mother who lives with her boyfriend and one-year-old son. Her face is languid; freckles dot her skin and fade into her exterior. Her smiles come painfully unnatural and seem forced from her austere expressions.

“The hardest part about living on the wages that I earn now is that I cannot give my son everything that I never had. Everything that I thought I’d be able to give him.”

“When I buy him clothes I go to Wal-Mart. It’s the closest thing. I always thought I’d be able to get him name-brand stuff because I never had that growing up. I always thought that he’d have toys—anything that he wanted he could have,” Cindy said.

For Cindy, this inability characterizes her as a member of Athens County’s working poor population. The term “working poor” refers to many people who we might see on any given day. According to Ohio University sociology professor Steve Scanlan, “the working poor are those who do the work that is often times unrecognized.”

“It could be sweeping our floors or doing a lot of the work people might find undesirable. The wages they earn—although they may be working full-time—aren’t enough to support themselves or a family.”

Cindy’s situation is not uncommon in a region known for its persistent poverty. According to the U.S. Census’ 2006-2008 estimates, the amount of families below the poverty level was around 17 percent (compared to about 9.6 percent nationwide) and the median household income was around $32,000 (compared to a $52,000 U.S. average).

“What’s unique about the working poor is that we say in this country, ‘work hard, pay your dues and you’ll be fine.’ There are people who do just that and are working 30- to 40-hour shifts but are still not getting by,” Scanlan said.

“The working poor in small towns and rural areas will have far fewer opportunities than those in urban areas. Those in rural areas don’t have the big factories. There aren’t people beating the doors down to open up industry here.”

The opportunities that rarely come—or never come at all—for some Athens County residents coalesce into an environment frothing with service industry jobs (fast food, Wal-Mart), few educational opportunities and an almost guaranteed destitution.

However, the Athens County Job and Family Services (ACJFS) is an oasis in Appalachia’s desert of poverty. Social worker Nick Claussen explains that ACJFS’s mission within the Athens County community is to provide a myriad of services like, cash and food assistance, Medicaid, job training programs, a child enforcement agency, a home-health service for seniors and work programs for teens and young adults to help them get into school.

Nick Claussen is in his mid-40s and is passionate about his position at ACJFS; however, he paints a grim picture about Athens County’s job market.

“We have a big service economy with the highest percentage of service-industry jobs in the state and the lowest percentage of manufacturing jobs in the state,” Claussen says. “We’re happy to have these jobs, but there definitely needs to be other jobs as well. There need to be jobs with higher pay. When the coalmines closed long ago and nothing came in to the region to replace them, it caused a lot of problems.”

According to Scanlan, when Athens County’s coalmines shut down a downward spiral ensued.

“The closing of a mine is devastating,” Scanlan says. “A former miner is likely to see a dramatic wage cut and loss of benefits…. Without economic development or extensive miner-retraining programs in the region that creates equally lucrative employment opportunities, mine closings will dramatically affect workers.”

However, miners and their families are the only residents who are impacted by the closings. Scanlan also points to a spin-off effect that mine closings have on other regional industries as well.

“The diner that the workers used to stop at for coffee on their way to the mine shuts down, the gas station they fill up at loses business and the tax revenues the schools receive are lost,” Scanlan says. “Thus, the economic costs have a snowballing effect that touches many lives.”

Both Claussen and Scanlan agree that besides the county’s obscenely high number of service-industry jobs and lack of industry and education, Athens County’s relative isolation also hinders residents.

Essential services and stores that many suburban residents take for granted are sparsely dotted around the county. Long commutes from rural areas to grocery and clothing stores—coupled with soaring gas prices—drain peoples’ already shallow pockets, Claussen explains. Some residents have to commute daily to Columbus, Chillicothe or Parkersburg, West Virginia, just for work.

“If you live in Glouster, you have to travel at least into Athens just to shop,” Claussen says. “They have one store out there, but for a lot of things they have to travel to Athens. And some places like that in the county it’s hard.”

It was a bitterly cold January day at the ACJFS’ workstation in The Plains. Potholes littered the parking lot, as the dark gray building seemed to bleed right into it.

The inside of the workstation looks vaguely familiar to an old Odd Lots; however, instead of discounted goods lining shelves, office cubicles protrude from the carpeted floor, raising up like corn.

For Athens resident and single mom Deana Gordon, The Plains workstation is her ticket to a better life.“I come here from 7-5 everyday for welfare. I go home and maintain being a mom and putting food in my daughter’s belly,” Gordon says. Confidence permeates her pores as she speaks—her eyes assuredly locking with yours.

Gordon has lived in Athens for four months since moving from Columbus. As she put it, her life has not been easy: growing up on the westside of Columbus, she lost her mother at 14 and her crack-addicted father was rarely present. She moved to Athens after placing a restraining order on her abusive former boyfriend.

ACJFS gives Gordon medical assistance, food assistance and cash assistance. However, her specific situation with ACJFS requires that she attend classes every day, Monday through Friday, in order to receive her GED—or she loses everything.

Although her situation with ACJFS may sound like a typical welfare story, Gordon is quick to point out the glaring misconceptions with welfare mothers. “I was lucky to get it. Down here, you have to qualify. When I’m done with my GED I have to get a job and they still take from you. They never let you get ahead,” Gordon says.

“And people who have jobs are always like, ‘we take care of the welfare people,’” Gordon says. “No, you don’t. You really don’t. Just because you have a good job and you pay your taxes doesn’t mean that you’re taking care of us. We’re doing it because we want people to help us; we’re doing it because we want to get on our feet.”

But ACJFS doesn’t just help young single mothers. Others—those who are middle-aged and have families—have also had to seek assistance from the organization.

Crystal Vance—a life-long Appalachian resident with a college business degree—also has to utilize ACJFS’ numerous services. “If you’re lucky—if I were lucky—you’ve got fast food (jobs), but I got into a car accident and ended up having to be out of work for awhile,” Vance says.

“From the time I had my car accident to now, I have found one job and I worked there for about three months until I had a family emergency and they fired me because I had to leave.”

Vance, a married mother to a 16-year-old, has spent most of her life in Appalachia, being born in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and eventually ending up in Athens. After spending time away, she moved back to Appalachia to be closer to family only to realize her mistake when she noticed the few job opportunities.

Injured in a car crash where she broke her hand and ruptured her spleen among other things, she now owes $7,500 to her insurance company—not to mention an outstanding debt for her college fees.

Looking to work her way up the business ladder, Crystal is searching for secretary opportunities. However, those opportunities could be few and far between in Appalachian Ohio, she laments.

“There’s McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, convenience stores—maybe—a lot of mom and pop’s. There isn’t a lot of big business,” Crystal says.

By spending most of her life in the region, Vance bluntly summarizes southeastern Ohio’s lack of appeal. “This is a sucky area. And I wouldn’t recommend anyone living down here,” Vance says. “And you know it’s beautiful. I grew up down here. But there’s nothing to do out here, and there’s no where to go out here unless you’re an alcoholic or a druggie.”
Both Scanlan and Claussen emphasize the need for greater funding and benefits to help Athens County working poor residents.

“There are a lot of programs to help the working poor in Athens County,” Claussen said. “(But) our own programs got funding cuts. They are facing harder times now than in years past. And it’s a terrible time now because demand is going up everywhere. The state budget is a mess. They need to bring in more funding.”

Welfare programs across the nation have been disappearing quickly since the 1960s, but it wasn’t until former president Bill Clinton’s proclamation to “end welfare as we know it” with 1996’s Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA).

PRWORA effectively ended welfare as an entitlement and singled out out-of-wedlock births and intergenerational poverty as the causes of a faulty welfare system.

PRWORA mandates that the states are allowed to develop their own welfare systems and stipulates that a person can only receive 5-years worth of welfare over his/her lifetime—no matter the person’s opportunity deprivation.

However, some have questioned whether a smaller welfare system is really the cause of poverty. Some, like Scanlan, point to a minimum wage that fails to keep up with yearly inflation and a lack of benefits.

“Now it’s expected that your child go to college; health care expenses are now more than ever; education costs have increased more than inflation; same with housing costs. Wages just haven’t kept up,” Scanlan says

“(But) It isn’t as much a wage increase as much as it is making sure that people have…. health insurance, rent subsidy and food assistance. Things like that would relieve a lot of the stress on individuals doing this kind of work.”

Sitting in Cindy’s trailer that late-December afternoon, the sun shone through the blinds. The light settled peacefully on her precociously worn face.

”Do you think Appalachian poverty differs from poverty elsewhere? Can it be fixed?” I ask Cindy, who is sitting in her worn recliner with a contemplative look.

“I don’t think it’s any different,” Cindy says. “Everywhere it’s the same thing—whether you’re in a big city or a small town. But I think it will be awhile before it gets fixed. I thought about moving out of Athens because I don’t see change coming any time soon.”

As she concluded, her face remained stoic. The last ray of sun hit her at the perfect angle, highlighting her face’s precocious wear of twenty years. It then slipped away through the blinds—calmly disappearing behind those crestfallen hills outside her window.