{"id":898,"date":"2012-08-12T06:39:50","date_gmt":"2012-08-12T13:39:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=898"},"modified":"2013-01-08T08:30:45","modified_gmt":"2013-01-08T13:30:45","slug":"belle-west-virginia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=898","title":{"rendered":"Belle, West Virginia"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n

They are easy to make fun of.<\/p>\n

The women’s hair is a bit too big, their necklines a bit too low. \u00a0Men sport facial hair and at least one article of clothing is “camouflage.” \u00a0Men’s shirts usually don’t have sleeves. \u00a0Faces and hands reflect a hard scrabble living. \u00a0Cigarettes and obesity are hard to avoid. \u00a0A good percentage of the houses are “manufactured” – that is, mobile homes sitting on cinder blocks. \u00a0Many are abandoned. \u00a0Cars, or various parts of cars, dot the front lawns. \u00a0A lot of lawns need \u00a0mowing.<\/p>\n

But then you meet and work with the people you see something very, very different.<\/p>\n

You realize that a lot of us “sophisticated big city and affluent suburban” types could learn a lot from the people in Belle, West Virginia – this town just outside of Charleston south of the Dupont Chemical plant. \u00a0A place where the McDonald’s is open all night to accomodate the shift workers.<\/p>\n

I spent a week there with a bunch of high school kids from churches across the country – Texas, California, Illinois. \u00a0They divided us into crews and we spent a week in a family’s home cleaning, painting, doing odd jobs. \u00a0We all learned some things. \u00a0How to rehang a gutter. \u00a0How to fix a roof. \u00a0How to build a deck.<\/p>\n

But what we learned most was from the folks in Belle.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>We learned that there are people out there who still know and care for their neighbors. \u00a0One of our crews was working with an elderly woman whose son was in the hospital with cancer. \u00a0He passed away that Tuesday morning, just the second day we were on the job. \u00a0Within hours there were dozens of neighbors descending on the house with food and condolences. \u00a0They stayed all day. \u00a0As one person said with a smile, “we take of each other here in Belle.”<\/p>\n

How many of us in our comfortable suburban neighborhoods could say that?<\/p>\n

We learned that there are people who keep their word. \u00a0Our crew was assigned to the house of “Miss Ginny”. \u00a0We were struggling with a gutter installation that was part of our work assignment. \u00a0The pitch on the roof was too steep (at least for us) and ladders too unstable. \u00a0On our last day in Belle, I saw a handful of men, the oldest well into his sixties, in the neighborhood fixing the roof on a small house down the block. \u00a0I asked if he’d come down and look at the project. He did. \u00a0“How much?” \u00a0I asked. \u00a0“Fifty dollars cash.” He replied matter-of-factly. \u00a0I handed him seventy-five dollars and never saw him again. \u00a0A week later I got a thank you note from our resident, Miss Ginny. \u00a0“The gutters look beautiful,” she wrote.<\/p>\n

I wonder if I could have relied on a random contractor in our community to do the same.<\/p>\n

We learned that there are people who are grateful for even the smallest of things. \u00a0We worked the entire week at Miss Ginny’s house, often in blistering heat. \u00a0Miss Ginny always sat with us in the shade on the carport. \u00a0She was hard of hearing, a cancer survivor, and suffered from lupus. \u00a0But she was there every day. \u00a0She’d be the first to hold the ladder when someone was up caulking or painting. \u00a0She’d bring us home made brownies and store bought Cheetos. \u00a0She had water in the fridge. \u00a0Her small frame home was dark and simple but she made it our own and never complained about the sweat, sawdust, and grass that I’m sure we tracked in and out. \u00a0She was all alone. \u00a0Her husband died seven years ago. \u00a0The two boys were far away. \u00a0She lived off social security. \u00a0Not a hint of any modern technology – no cable, no computer. \u00a0Her health was failing.<\/p>\n

But never a complaint. \u00a0Indeed, I’ve never heard anyone say thank you as much as Miss Ginny. \u00a0“You guys are doing a great job!” she said repeatedly (even though our work was very amateur hour). \u00a0“Thank you so much!” came at least once an hour. \u00a0Miss Ginny constantly reminded us that she felt very blessed and thanked the Lord every day for all the good things in her life. \u00a0She didn’t have much, but was always joyful for what she had.<\/p>\n

And I thought to myself how often I complain about even the small things that go wrong in life.<\/p>\n

Yup. \u00a0We all learned a lot from the folks in Belle, West Virginia.<\/p>\n

Get past the surface appearances, the stereotypes and the things that – at the end of the day – really don’t matter that much- and you see people that we all would do good to aspire to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They are easy to make fun of. The women’s hair is a bit too big, their necklines a bit too low. \u00a0Men sport facial hair and at least one article of clothing is “camouflage.” \u00a0Men’s shirts usually don’t have sleeves. \u00a0Faces and hands reflect a hard scrabble living. \u00a0Cigarettes and obesity are hard to avoid.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[156],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=898"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":997,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions\/997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}