Once the weather spikes in temperature, Appalachian porches become filled by friends who share stories and have crisp, cold beers.
Summer weather and porch brews is a cultural phenomenon that Elliot Stewart, 36, of Huntington, West Virginia participates in and gains much creativity through. Elliot has made zines — small-circulation, self-published booklets of original work — since he was 13.
As the owner of Porch Beers press, Elliot’s zines cover various topics like fandoms, music, and life as an Appalachian in West Virginia. “My idea of Porch Beers is kind of like a communal thing; going with your friends, maybe even making new friends over this kind of shared experience. That is what I want to do with my zine, connect to people in that way,” he said.
In Appalachia, food means many things. Food means: to fulfill hunger; to receive energy or reduce the risk of physical health problems, a way to keep warm or cold, momentarily deal with grief or sadness, to have fun and explore new cuisines, to bond with others, and the list goes on.
Elliot sees good times with his friends through a beer and some delicious food, but at one point food only meant that somehow, some way it got on the kitchen table.
Growing up in Logan, West Virginia, his family relied on welfare checks, food stamps, and help from food banks. Elliot had to limit some nutritional value for free donations of processed foods, canned goods, and occasionally “government cheese.”
While he remembers the food sometimes being nearly inedible at times, one thing he appreciated was the sense of community and the urge to help others — something that he experienced and felt when he needed help the most.
“When you go to different economic brackets, there isn’t like the expectation of having to provide for your entire community as well,” Elliot explained. “When you grow up in poverty, there’s definitely the, if your neighbor asks for $20, you give it to him, or when you need it, you won’t have it. There’s the expectation of providing for other people around you, whether they’re family or next door neighbors or like people in your church. And it’s once you get to a certain economic status that disappears, and it’s like weird to not have that expectation anymore.”
Elliot said growing up in poverty has created a financial habit of spending and feeling the need to spend money or it will disappear.
While he has a great job working from home for an insurance company — a job that he said gave him the financial ability to pay for gender reassignment surgery — it doesn’t mean there aren’t any monetary burdens living in a food desert.
His apartment and full-time work space, that’s planted in Huntington with no car, makes the desert painfully obvious to Elliot. When COVID-19 erupted, Elliot’s grocery shopping turned completely online.
With just a few clicks and filling out card information, Elliot still purchases his meals through Instacart, an online grocery delivery service. He relies on leftovers, since he only cooks and supports himself, and splurges to eat better choices like plant-based foods, tofu, veggies, rice and beans.
While he is thankful for virtual shopping, transactions can hold for several days and one time Elliott did not have enough to pay bills once an Instacart transaction went through. Luckily, as problems are expected every once in a while, Elliot said he knows he can lean on his friends and neighbors.
Through his own experience as a child in poverty and consuming media over the last few decades, Elliot feels that people don’t acknowledge the wide variety of people that Appalachia holds. These mindsets can and will limit the help that Appalachians receive based on stereotypes.
“(People) feel like Appalachian people deserve what they get because they didn’t vote right. I want to kind of throw out that there are a lot of progressive-minded people that are in Appalachia that are still impacted by bad policies that they didn’t necessarily ask for,” Elliot said. “When you throw Appalachia and the South under the bus as these, ‘backwards hillbillies’, it’s riding off a lot of marginalized communities like people of color and LGBT people.”
May 2022