I just looked back over the blog and realized that I haven't written a post since March about anything which was absolutely Appalahchian in its focus. It is long past time to do that and my subject matter today cannot be more clearly Appalachian. "Divine Right's Trip" by Gurney Norman is subtitled "A Novel Of The Counterculture" and I do agree that it is. But speaking from the viewpoint of having been a hippie in Eastern Kentucky when the book was originally published in the corners of the pages of "The Last Whole Earth Catalog", I cannot think of a more Appalachian book. Admittedly, it covers a lot of ground on several topics and geographic areas which are not Appalachian. But it covers those topics from the viewpoint of a protagonist who is a fine example of the young Appalachians I knew when I was growing up not more than 30 or so miles where Gurney Norman grew up, and we both are definitely native Appalachians. The protagonist in this novel is David Ray Davenport, Divine Right, or D. R. as he is severallly known both inside and outside his head. He and his girlfriend Estelle are on a trip around the country in a Volkswagon van name Urge which has been painted in a very random fashion by D. R. and an equally random collection of his friend and momentary contacts. They are sometimes under the influence of marijuana, LSD, and malnutrition. Movement and new sights to be seen are generally more important to them than a normal workaday world. They are very typical characters of the hippie counterculture of the late 1960's and early 1970's. D. R. is a bit of a lost ball in the high, high weeds having been raised for the most part by his grandparents in a fictional county in Eastern Kentucky which can be assumed to be at least a marginal facisimile of the Letcher County in which Gurney Norman spent his childhood. D. R. does not know his father and his mother has given him the last name of a less than desirable step-father. Estelle is at least a competent enough woman that she can usually drag D. R. out of whatever mire in which has found himself. They take turns driving Urge across the country from one crisis to the next, from one interesting interaction to another with generally benevolent strangers. Eventually, the return to Cincinatti where they have friends and family and then become separated from each other somewhat unintentially when D. R. goes to visit his sister and her family and fails to return to Estelle on time. Then he hears by telephone from the local female country storekeeper Mrs. Godsey that his uncle Emmit is dying on the old homeplace in the head of a holler in Kentucky. D. R. offers to come and care for the dying uncle and actually delivers on the promise. They spend a few weeks getting to know each other again as the uncle attempts to train D. R. in the daily routine of his ramshackle house and a plethora of rabbits and chickens. Mrs. Godsey and her husband Leonard take D. R. under their wing so to speak, allowing him to have credit in their little store with little or no proof of ability to pay and he grows up a bit during the deterioriation and death of his uncle Emmit. He spends the last few days of Emmit's life caring for him in the local hospital, arranges his funeral, helps dig the grave in the old family graveyard in order to save some money, and decides to try to track Estelle down through a mutual friend who actually accomplishes the task. Estelle comes to Eastern Kentucky to live with D. R. and they decide to get the married. The final wrapping up of all the loose ends of D. R.'s life are brought togehter during the wedding which is performed jointly by the local mainstream (for Eastern Kentucky) preacher and a very hippie type of friend from California who is known only as the Annaheim Flash. The wedding is attended by a large crowd of people from both of D. R.'s worlds, Eastern Kentucky and all of hippie America. As many great stories end, a fine time was had by all. The old homeplace contains many of the things which have endeared Appalachia to thousands, perhaps millions of us: the homeplace itself now strip mined to near total destruction, the old family graveyard in danger of being buried by strip mine sludge, good friends and neighbors who step in at both the best and worst of times, and all those sometimes lost but never forgotten heartwarming experiences which always make home a home and prove that Thomas Wolfe was wrong. You can go home again, at least if your name is David Ray Davenport.
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