Grabbing a drink with Donnie
I think I have a drinking problem.
What I mean by that is, whenever I end up somewhere new, the first thing I do is visit a local cafe or bar to grab a coffee or beer that, to be completely honest, I don't really need.
I do it because I’ve found it’s the quickest way to meet people on a local level. There’s something about sitting next to one another through the shared discomfort of public isolation and relative loneliness that fosters social engagement and connection. When given the opportunity, I’ve found that most people would rather engage than not and, in my experience, that has led to some of the most formative and informative single-serving interactions of my life.
This practice has proved bit challenging on this trip because every day I’m compelled to meet new people and gain new perspectives, so drinking caffeinated and/or alcoholic beverages have become a daily ritual as a result. Needless to say, being in a ever-constant cycle of caffeination, intoxication, withdrawal and hangover has certainly taken its toll on my overall well-being and limited budget for this trip.
All that being said, when I got to Beckley, West Virginia, the first thing I did was open Google Maps to find a tavern in the heart of downtown.🙃
I ended up at Foster’s Tavern.
A little after 8:00pm, I walked into an establishment with high, multi-colored ceilings, eclectically-adorned walls and a handful of patrons enjoying a quiet Wednesday night; I took my place at the then empty bar. About 20 minutes later, a middle-aged, barrel-chested white man with a peppered mustache entered the bar and sat a couple seats down from me. I watched as he went through the same cadence that I did in realizing the kitchen was closed, deciding whether or not to order from next door and choosing his beer selection for the night before settling into his bar chair.
When the collective discomfort reached its tipping point, that man was the first to engage by randomly asking our unsuspecting audience, “Have [either of] you ever been to one of those states where weed is completely legal? Do they just light up in the bar?”
Interestingly enough, through my travels a few years back, I had met a bartender in Washington state who gifted my friend and I a “Welcome to Washington” eighth and walked around downtown Denver while enjoying designer edibles, so I was able to confirm that the same rules applied to weed as tobacco regarding smoking. Little did I know that, by entering that conversation with him, my preconceived notions of a West Virginian had just picked a fight and were about to get their ass kicked.
Donnie was 49 and had lived in central West Virginia for his entire life.
Before going any further, it’s safe and important to say that Donnie didn't speak for the entire state of West Virginia, but he did prove that no place can be defined by convenient, singular narratives. With Donnie, I came face-to-face with something that I have been wrestling with in my last two posts about Charlottesville and Logan.
Through this project, I have no desire to define people’s narrative for them, rather I hope to capture, convey and elevate the narrative they share with me.
Donnie gave me a chance to do that. Our interaction was a case study in social penetration theory, sharing layer after layer of himself, he unfolded like an analogical onion, as we got to know each other. The first layer showed itself when, immediately after inquiring about marijuana policy, he shared that he had been a deputy sergeant for the local police department for 11 years.
Whether it was helping drunk drivers get home safely or rationalizing with rambunctious campers, he led the conversation by conveying his general philosophy of “leaving people be” while on the force. I asked him what we thought about modern policing and he expressed discontent at the fact that “one bad cop can ruin it for everyone on the force in social media era.” He emphasized his opinion that “ego” and “[personal] agenda” were the biggest problems for those nefarious actors. As an example, he told the story of a former subordinate who would drive around bar parking lots trying to bust drunk drivers. As his supervisor at the time, he had told the officer to “chill out” because “not everyone coming out of a bar was drunk,” but unfortunately his coworker persisted.
I asked him if he was a Netflix-watcher and, upon confirmation, asked if he had seen the docuseries, Flint Town; he hadn’t. I shared that I thought it offered nuanced perspective on the complexity of modern policing. I chose not to press him on the issue of black and blues lives since his lived experience and my staunch advocacy for systemic reform and racial justice might put us as irreconcilable ends. But I didn't take lightly the fact that he had offered critical analysis of his peers.
I imagined what it would be like to combine his critical insights with my desire to systemically overhaul the police state in this country in a productive way. What kind of coalition could be effectively built between former police officers and reform advocates to address this issue?
Donnie then spun off into the story of his daughter coming out to him.
She was attending college when it happened. Donnie and his wife were divorced by then and his daughter decided to open up to her mom first. It wasn’t received well, with her mom all but shunning her, so when she came to her dad, she was hesitant and concerned about how he would react.
He told me that he had only asked her one question when she disclosed it to him. “Are you still going to school?” he asked. The answer was yes. “Then I’m happy for you.”
He then went on to share about a gay coworker he had had while working at the local DuPont factory in his younger years. He started by expressing that the guy was a “great, reliable coworker” and “that was all that mattered to him”. However, unexpectedly, the reason he brought it up was to express his approval of legislation allowing domestic partners to be on each other’s healthcare plans because “it didn’t make sense for two people living in a committed relationship to have two different healthcare plans.”
Whether he acknowledged it or not, Donnie was an advocate for the LGBTQ community. I doubt I’d see him at the front line of a rally, but to know that he held those values and supported marginalized people in his life was reassuring.
I ordered my second drink. Donnie continued sharing.
He began to fill in the gaps of his life story (and what follows is my best attempt to recall all of it).
After excelling at high school football and “casually selling weed that he got in bricks from his biker gang uncle”, his career started as a naval medic near the end of the first Bush Era, serving in Somalia and Panama. For good measure, he nonchalantly provided the context, “have you ever seen Black Hawk Down?” I had actually re-watched it a couple weeks prior. “Well, I was there.”
From there he came back home to Beckley and an economy flush with working-class jobs; that’s when he started working at the DuPont factory. A period of layoffs ultimately led him to apply to work for the local police department, returning us to where our saga began. Today, he works as a utility man taking care of an office building in town.
At one point he even offered up, “it might not look like it anymore, but I was an amateur boxer at one point in my life.” Knowing all too well how easy it is for former athletes to form meaningful connections through their shared athletic nostalgia, I joined him in a self-effacing physical appearance party, referencing my time as a college athlete. We shared a reflective laugh and solidified our connection through that common ground.
The more Donnie shared about himself the more ubiquitous his lived experience seemed to me. The opportunity for us to connect as former athletes felt like a simple instance of how easy it is for people to connect in general.
As we reached present day, I looked down at my nearly finished drink and then my watch for the first time in our conversation. I had planned to retreat back to my 2-star Microtel Inn & Suites to enjoy the dilapidated pool and over-chlorinated hot tub before they closed them for the night, but that's when Donnie offered to buy me another drink. For one of my final interviews in South Bend, I spoke with a local entrepreneur who shared his advice for other leaders to “always take the meeting”. This felt like an instance of that advice, so I accepted his offer and took the free drink.
That’s when the beauty of our conversation truly unfolded along political and environmental thresholds.
We started talking about presidential politics.
It’s worth mentioning that, up until this point, I hadn’t divulged that I wasn’t from the area and I had done my best to withhold judgement. However, especially considering we were in the oft-lauded heart of “Trump Country”, I compromised my integrity a bit and set my expectations on us having defined political differences; I was wrong.
He led by addressing the elephant in the room, “don’t think that everyone here supports Trump.” That’s not to say that he came out as a Hillary supporter or even a Democrat, but it is to say that we were able to explore the complexity of our current political climate. After some back-and-forth, I went on to ask him what he thought of Obama as a person. That offered one of my favorite insights from the night, “I respected Obama and think Trump is setting us back more than Obama ever could.”
From there, our conversation shifted to the environment. I don’t remember how our dialogue got us to this point, but I’ll never forget him calmly yet intently stating, “West Virginia stood in solidarity with those in Flint and Standing Rock because they knew what it was like to have their rights to clean water taken away from them.”
To call it out, I wish the countless number of my liberal and progressive-minded peers, who would not have even let themselves be in the position to have that conversation, could have at least been there to hear Donnie share that final sentiment. Within our political, informational and geographical divides, we often lose sight of the fact that, despite our wonderful complexity and diversity, most people just want the best for our country and society.
Donnie was the perfect example of that.
As the night and our conversation wound down, Donnie and the bartender decided to latch onto the fact that I was from out-of-town and began bombarding me with all of their recommendations for how I should spend the next day prior to pushing onto Johnson City.
Beckley is situated on the outskirts of New River Gorge National Park (basically the Grand Canyon of West Virginia) and, naturally, the two of them knew all of the places to go and things to do. They helped me avoid the tourist traps and even sent me a place that, I kid you not, was called the Secret Sandwich Society.
They also sent me to this viewpoint that gives Horseshoe Bend a run for its money…
…and sent me to this abandoned old rail town turned into a national historic site.
When it came time to say our goodbyes, Donnie gave me his phone number and told me that the next time I came through, he would set me up with his friend, an experienced river guide, who could show me all the best rafting spots along New River and, of course, offer to buy me another drink. The bartender was even kind enough to give me a nifty sticker for her friend's brewery, makers of the beer I had been drinking all night, down the road. As I was leaving, that same brewery-owning friend showed up to cover the closing shift for the bartender who was working extra hours to save up money for the child she had on the way.