I
At the end of my year’s commitment as an anti-poverty worker, I couldn’t decide what to do next, so I re-upped.

In the southern Appalachians, where I served, levels of education were low and substandard housing high. Textile mills, subsistence farming, and minimum-wage support industries constituted the job base. Most of the individuals joining Volunteers in Service to America had finished college, and those without degrees had gone to college for two or three years. The majority came from the Northeast, Midwest, or West Coast. Whereas the locals ate white bread, grits, and sweet iced tea, the VISTAs ate bagels, hash browns, and hot herbal tea. They all drank Pabst Blue Ribbon. Most folks we encountered believed in the inferiority of Black people and the biblical version of creation. The VISTAs, with few exceptions, held a liberal ethos.   

I grew up in Missouri, eight hundred miles away. Before VISTA, I hadn’t traveled more than three hours from my birthplace and hadn’t been on a plane. In my first year, I learned self-sufficiency on a two-hundred-dollar-a-month stipend, paying my share of the rent, utilities, and groceries and putting some aside in savings. My independence extended to my daily routine. I prized the freedom I had. 

Despite our generally amicable interactions, I stayed at arm’s length from the local inhabitants in inconspicuous but fundamental ways. For instance, we had limited social engagements, and I would not have considered dating a woman from the community. I counted on the other VISTA volunteers—twenty-five of us spread over ten counties—for companionship and emotional sustenance. My relationships with them ranged from bosom buddy to tenuous.  

II
Bob intrigued me. In his mid-twenties, he was several years older than most of us and previously handled marketing for an FM radio station that played classical music. More than once, he brought up that he earned in “the low five figures.” He and I each had a role with a crafts cooperative, and although an outlier, he impressed me. His business background was unique among our fellow social science and humanities majors, most of whom hadn’t held jobs. And while a few had an entrepreneurial bent, they didn’t perceive themselves as businesspeople. In our exchanges, he flattered me as an equal, but he looked down on many of the volunteers. Those he regarded as lacking had no professional experience (a few teachers and one nurse excepted) and embraced the counterculture in their looks, language, and drug use (pot). He deemed they did little of value.        

Bob’s self-assured manner communicated he knew more than I did, which I accepted without misgiving. After all, he was six years my senior and accomplished. But not everyone shared my assessment of his self-confidence and skills. Although he maintained a pleasant demeanor around the two women managing the crafts co-op, Bob couldn’t conceal he regarded them as unschooled in commerce. They reacted to his advice with a lukewarm reception and occasional resistance. (I had to admit he displayed questionable judgment at times: During a promotional event, where a lady named Granny Shook demonstrated how to make brooms, Bob insisted on giving a reporter the scientific name, Andropogon virginicus, for the dried grass she used instead of Granny’s term, broom-sedge.) When one of the managers disagreed with him, he responded with a bland, tight-lipped smile, like a parent attempting to coax a toddler to eat her carrots. When he couldn’t persuade anyone else to do it, Bob took on the task, with a martyr’s self-pity, of interviewing craftspeople and penning articles for one or two area newspapers. Though well-written, his pieces didn’t affect sales.   

Earnest in his words and conduct, Bob struck me as naïve every so often (he once fretted his roommate had a potted marijuana plant that I informed him was a holly bush). We seldom touched on politics or current affairs, yet I ascertained we held similar values, despising racism as an example. While I had a quibble about his wholehearted embrace of business practices and people, it disturbed me that a couple of my friends sneered at his establishment trappings. He and I meshed. I considered him a big brother who offered to inform and counsel rather than a smug capitalist. There were other poverty workers I felt closer to, but none whom I respected more.      

Notwithstanding his appearance—gaberdine slacks and white or blue short-sleeved dress shirts—Bob said he grew up in a hardscrabble neighborhood in Rochester, New York. Other than inconsequential matters, such as where he had worked and where I went to college, we didn’t discuss our histories. Yet one day, after about six months, he crossed our informal boundary. I glimpsed an unfamiliar side to him. 

I had stopped by his public housing apartment and found him hunched over a legal pad in the living room. Although six-four, he sat on the couch like a teenager with his legs curled behind him, shoes off, smoking a cigarette. His pale face revealed a trace of blue veins above his eyebrows and smooth cheeks. He wore unstylish glasses—the dark gray temples and bridge fading to clear plastic on the rim under the lenses—like those I had as a ten-year-old. After a few minutes of chitchat, he pulled his glasses up to the top of his forehead as a somber mood fell over him.        

Flicking his cigarette on an ashtray every ten or fifteen seconds, he gazed at my sternum as he spoke, avoiding my eyes. He took on an older, tired mien. His brow wrinkled as if fighting off a headache, and he moved his glasses back in place. I noticed strands of gray in his slicked-back hair. He said, at about fifteen, he ran with a gang of boys. One evening four or five of them urged him to come with them, but he couldn’t get away. Later that night, they got drunk and raped a girl. He said, “I’m lucky I didn’t go with them. I would have gone to jail, probably for years. It would have ruined my life.” Stunned, I said nothing, hoping he had no more details. I believed him but asked myself if he had exaggerated, desiring to impress me with his past. I speculated he might be distancing himself from his middle-class detractors, showing he knows more about life’s downsides than they do. And his self-portrayal—a pawn who would have been unable to resist or stop a violent assault—unsettled me. He depicted a stranger.  

Not long before the end of my first year, our director announced a sharp reduction in the number of future volunteers and counties served and requested input on initiatives for the next group. If we thought our county should continue getting VISTAs, he instructed us to submit plans outlining their activities. I decided to tap into training we received on programs run by the now-defunct Farmers Home Administration. It provided low-interest loans and support for rural development, including housing assistance. My plan was simple: VISTA volunteers would acquaint themselves with FmHA requirements, get the word out about available aid for low-income households, and serve as advisors and advocates for four to eight families applying for homeowner loans. Bob’s buddy Matt, a VISTA in another small county, formulated a plan for a community center. In the competition for the limited number of slots, my proposal prevailed. My county, Banks, would get three volunteers the following year, and Matt’s county did not get any.     

Although I didn’t have a keen attachment to my idea, I sensed it had potential. And its selection by the decision-makers gratified my rivalrous impulses. But two or three weeks after my little victory, Bob startled me by suggesting I had gotten preferential treatment. When I denied it, he responded, “Oh, come on. I wasn’t born yesterday. We know how this works.” His voice yielded a slight tremor as his lips stretched back in a smirk. Too confused to counter intelligibly, I let the insult drop. Inarticulate anger clashed with a desire to remain circumspect and appear unfazed. But his baseless aspersion awakened me: I had been wrong about our friendship. He finished with an exasperated sigh, glancing at me sideways. It stung like a slap.  

III
VISTA had a slogan, “Help the poor help themselves.” It emphasized organizing low-income persons to address their needs, like selling crafts, purchasing food, or asserting welfare rights. The underlying theory purported that poor people learn skills from running organizations or banding together for a cause that would “empower” them in the future when the government-sponsored volunteers were no longer around. But organizing didn’t work in our case: It demanded seasoned operatives who could commit for more than a year. Those of us associated with the crafts co-op recruited members and assisted the staff with administrative chores. Other volunteers employed themselves in service-oriented tasks such as linking tutors to children in poor neighborhoods, supporting health department clinics, or helping at community service centers. But VISTA bureaucrats frowned on these activities: “What will they do when you leave? You are making them dependent on you.” While not heavy-handed, these admonitions loomed over us.      

Besides our other undertakings, we visited folks we had met in a community center or clinic or, in my case, craftspeople. We engaged them in idle chatter about the weather, listening to their tales and complaints, keeping them company. On occasion, we took (“carried” in the local parlance) them to the grocery, pharmacy, or doctor’s office, or we helped with handling their bills or making appointments. Whereas we called on all ages, we concentrated on women and men in their sixties and seventies, with a smattering of mothers with newborns, small children, or grandchildren. I frequented one or two weatherboard dwellings on most days. When discussing the possibility of rain, my inner voice would declare this didn’t constitute busywork—it’s being attentive to organizing opportunities.   

IV
Most people accepted us, and a few gave us a sincere welcome. But I recall meeting a relative of one of the co-op managers who asked, “Why did you come here? Can’t you do this work in your home town? Don’t they have people needing your help there?” Caught off-guard, I mumbled, “Well, this is where they sent me. We can be more effective if we aren’t distracted by being close to home.” She gave me a skeptical look but didn’t press for more details. Her query troubled me. Her tone conveyed a belief I found her and her neighbors wanting. I couldn’t respond that I doubted I would have volunteered if I knew the program would have assigned me to the city I lived in or, even worse, the countryside where I spent my childhood. My presence, I assumed, revealed a vexing problem she preferred to ignore: the poverty in her community. But her words touched an oozing wound of mine I rarely acknowledged and didn’t treat.   

I wasn’t the only fugitive. Steve, for instance, had finished college and needed a draft deferment. Holly had managed a laundromat in Arizona, making minimum wage, with a bleak future. Having lived it, she had grasped poverty’s curse. George had worked in a department store and liked to cook. Outraged by the Vietnam War, he refused to pay the telephone surcharge dedicated to supporting it. Despite a loving and close family, he couldn’t get anchored. He had attended a seminary for a couple of years, planning on becoming a brother, but dropped out. From there, the department store and then VISTA.   

When I extended my stay beyond a year, I received a promotion to a job called “VISTA leader,” overseeing volunteers from the next set. Although I never admitted it, the new position gave me a sense of accomplishment. But in this ill-defined role, I nudged rather than directed three Banks County volunteers and three in the co-op, all older than me. I soon appreciated nudging was synonymous with inspiring. My initial pride soon turned stale.        

V
Nearly every month, we had one or two parties. I remember a gathering in my second year. I drank too much, as I did at all the get-togethers. At around 11:00 or 12:00, I made the rounds in an unsteady, loosed-tongue state to let everyone know I was on my way out. I noticed Ginny, whom I hadn’t talked to all evening, standing under the light outside the back door, wearing a yellow blouse and blue jeans. I walked up to her.      

A first-year volunteer, she lived with two other women in an apartment owned by a Seventh Day Adventist hospital. About thirty, she stood an inch or two taller than average, plump but not fat, and had long, dark brown hair accenting her round, sun-tanned face. Unlike her roommates, Ginny could be boisterous. Even in her quiet moments, she enjoyed attention—coquettish glances, revealing blouses, and sitting up front in group meetings. She had the aura of a person who viewed herself as voluptuous.       

As she said, “So long,” her creased nose and puckered eyebrows elicited memories of a teacher glaring at an eight-year-old for pissing in his pants from laughing too hard. The teacher’s stare shamed the boy. I blurted out a goodbye that I thought witty and apt, “Good night, and may all your dreams be wet.” She huffed and made an inaudible comment. I couldn’t determine if I had hurt her or if she was acting, playing along by showing an angry visage. Among several people within earshot, no one laughed, but someone chuckled. I perceived I wasn’t so clever and became flustered. My uncertainty generated a question: Do women have wet dreams? While disconcerted, retracting my boorish quip would expose my uneasiness. I could not backtrack without an apology that included “I’m sorry.” I slunk away.      

VI
The window-dressing for VISTA embodied self-sacrifice to assist the underprivileged or gain experience for becoming social workers, teachers, or people-centered bureaucrats. However, my motives were mixed: doing good to feel good and getting away from my family. When I started, I woke each morning determined to carry out the tasks I had planned for the day with a sense of promise, if not optimism. Fifteen months afterward, my efforts bore no fruit. A listless disposition emerged I couldn’t escape. Co-workers like Bob disillusioned me; I embarrassed myself around Ginny and others. I lost interest in dealing with poverty. I went through the motions, sporadically making visits, but the cramped homes reeking of wood smoke and despair induced an aversion I didn’t have before. Their occupants’ cheerless smiles and hopeless stories no longer stirred me.   

Two months after the “wet dream” party, on a rainy November afternoon, my roommate and I met with Jon, our supervisor, and Jeff, his boss, the state VISTA director, to discuss a proposed initiative. We assembled in the local newspaper office, housed in a former bank built early in the century, with plank floors and large plate glass windows, a few hundred yards from our four-room house. After our meeting, I pulled Jon aside to let him know I intended to resign after Christmas. His face reddened, his lower lip protruded, and he bowed his head slightly, his darting eyes scanning the floor. He didn’t say anything, and I couldn’t tell if he felt unhappy to see me go or was trying to figure out how he should react. Jeff ambled up and, glancing at Jon, asked, “He leaving?” Jon nodded. Jeff said nothing, his countenance impassive. I don’t recall speaking, but I remember my discomfort. Until that moment, I had expected that they would regret my leaving. Jon’s ambivalence and Jeff’s indifference surprised me.   

A light shower fell as I hurried home. Having summoned the nerve to quit, I concentrated on my next steps: telling my parents and the other volunteers. My relief turned numb rather than liberating as the desire to forget and start over overtook me. I wanted to get it right. 

– Tom Wade