BY CRYSTAL CUNNINGHAM
“Just about everything you can say about Monroe County is wrong,” said one resident.
Tompkinsville, the Monroe County seat, and the communities of Bugtussle, Persimmion, Turkey Neck Bend, Cyclone, and Mudlick, to name a few, is a full place of diversity. Monroe County is a mixture of the young and the old, the advanced and the primitive.
It is a place where an electronic cable factory provides jobs for some, while others work in the fields and have no electricity in their homes. It is a place where the evening finds teenagers revving their engines in the Big Star parking lot, talking about the basketball rivalry between the county’s two high schools, and the late afternoon finds older folks crossing the quiet Cumberland River by the slow-moving ferry
To say that Tompkinsville is “backward” would be to deny the existence of its garment factories, lumber mill, cable and cheese plants and assorted businesses. Many of the residents grew up in Monroe County to become wealthy landowners, workers in the industry, doctors, teachers, and politicians. Some moved to Tompkinsville because of its traditional, down-home flavor that is a literal “breath of fresh air.”
One doctor moved to Tompkinsville so that his children could grow up with traditional values. Turkey Neck Bend, across the wide Cumberland River, attracted several “hippies” in the late sixties and early seventies. Because only a ferry bridges the river between Turkey Neck Bend and Tompkinsville, the semi-isolated community is a haven for back-to-nature people who enjoy clean air and the rolling countryside. Of course there are also those who have lived in Tompkinsville and the surrounding area for generations. For many of them, change is slow and memorable.
To say that Tompkinsville is isolated would be to forget its reputation as a die-hard Republican county that “bulls their man through” on the state level. Politics are a hot issue. It’s hard to be a Monroe Countian and not be up on the issues.
Yet, since the steamboats stopped traveling the river in the 1930s, no major trade has been carried on within the county. There are no major highways, just some winding roads that provide shortcuts for truckers and routes to and from Dale Hollow Lake.
One would be right in saying Tompkinsville is a place where balding men in overalls sit on their porches snapping beans with their plump grey-haired wives, but there are also working mothers, administrators, and oil millionaires.
These are the people who come to the annual Watermelon Festival to display their crafts, enter the Biggest Watermelon Contest and have outhouse races. They come because they aren’t afraid to have fun. These are the people who are serious about their work because it’s hard to be a stranger in a small community. These are the people who have learned to live in harmony because they need one another. They know well the meaning of Ma Joad’s statement in Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath:”
“Why, we’re the people. We go on.”
