The Poco Field: An American Story of Place (review)

In his work, The Poco Field: An American Story of Place, Talmage Stanley masterfully weaves issues of identity with the personal story of his grandparents, C. T. and Aldah Apperson. Stanley begins his work with the observation that the idea of “place” is the result of interaction between three concepts: the natural environment, the built environment, and human culture and history. The idea of community and sense of place that is common in Appalachian identity is the result of the interaction of these three complex ideas. By evaluating the lives of his grandparents in both Keystone, West Virginia, and Newbern, Virginia, as well as their efforts to create a middle-class life for their family, Stanley is not only able to place the story of Appalachia within the context of the American story of consumerism, but to also create a framework for change and the building of stronger communities.

A primary focus of Stanley’s work is the effort of his grandparents to achieve a middle-class standard of living. To depict this effort, Stanley uses the Keystone neighborhood of Westfield. Westfield was the “white” neighborhood of the town, which contained the white school and church. In this area, native whites and immigrants lived in close proximity, implying that there was true diversity in Westfield. However, Stanley notes that the middle-class and elite white community of Keystone owned these homes. In other words, Westfield defined not only the values of the middle class of Keystone, and by extension the rest of the Central Appalachian coalfields, but it also depicted the rigid segregation between the different populations in the region. Stanley believes that there is more to the story of Westfield, however. He says that “owing its existence to the emergence of the Poco field as part of the American economic engine and a way of life defined in terms of industrial profit and consumer goods, Westfield is also a way of thinking and speaking with particularity about larger systems and structures of values, forces, ideas, understandings, and choices” (55). In other words, the idea of Westfield is a manifestation of American middle-class values about place, as well as a definition of the limits of middle-class desires in the Poco field. Stanley’s grandparents realized these limits, and eventually left the coalfields for Newbern in the late 1940s.

Stanley also does an excellent job of connecting the Westfield concept to the modern history of McDowell County. Despite a significant production of coal and the desire for a middle-class, consumerist standard of living, McDowell County remains mired in endemic poverty and the many problems that result from economic catastrophe. Using the examples of the efforts of the Big Creek People in Action to improve their community in Caretta, the failure of the First National Bank of Keystone, the devastating floods of 2001 and 2002, and the failure of the McDowell County school system, Stanley discusses the true detachment between the values of Westfield and what he calls a citizenship of place. As Stanley notes, “a citizenship of place that moves against and across the old Westfield boundaries understands place as a dynamic, ongoing social reality expressed in all aspects of daily life. This citizenship knows that we need each other on a deep and significant level” (187).

Using extensive primary sources, as well as an excellent amount of the relevant literature, Stanley has produced an important contribution to the field of Appalachian studies. His work requires scholars and students of the region to think of the modern history of Appalachia in a sophisticated and interdisciplinary way. How this notion of place will impact our history or our view of the region is an important question for scholars to consider as the region moves into the post-coal era.