“I had a difficult stay in Iowa. He came to the family where there was tension between myself and the family. He came to basically do some conflict resolution and the first thing he did was, which he told us all, he said, “Go to the kitchen. We’re going to sit in the kitchen. Don’t sit in the living room because big families never sit in their living room, they always sit in the kitchen.” And he told me to tell them that he liked ice cream. So my host mom went out and got gallons of ice cream and so he immediately defused the situation. He had to basically talk them into keeping me there. He said I’m just not interested in farming. This was a farming mother, that was what she did all day long was cook five meals a day for the husband and kids and the farmhands. So she was like scooping him the ice cream and that really broke the tension. Iowa was the third home-stay. The very first, in southern Georgia, I lived with a family that was very elderly. I worked in a grocery store, a black grocery store. So I knew right away that I was a total fish out of water and that I needed to respect this environment, then the same in Appalachia.
When we got to Iowa, the family that I lived with reminded me of the background that I had grown up with, a nice home, they had a nice life; food was not an issue, all this kind of stuff. So it sort of lulled me into the false sense that this is like home. So I started playing music loud. I started like staying up late and sleeping in. Well, I totally missed that this was a very different culture from where I grew up. Well, farm families don’t like it when you sleep in. They had three teenagers. So they were sort of expecting me to be the older brother, to kind of look up to for the kids. I was not a good role model. I was not hard working. I didn’t want to go out there and slop the pig sty.
Basically he said, “John, you’re missing the cultural aspects of this. This is very important to these folks that you fit in with the family.” So he never said, “Don’t play the music loud, you’ve got to get up at five o’clock” But he clearly in talking about it, he said, “You’re in their home. What kind of sacrifices did you make yourself to fit in?”
It’s a little difficult to say, but I couldn’t stand the lady of the house, my host mother. I hated that lady. She was a controlling, very controlling — and I don’t like to be controlled. I was polite enough to say “Yes,” but then I would be passive-aggressive and I just wouldn’t show up on time or something like that. So I can distinctly remember sitting up with Gaudino at midnight in my bedroom. He had come, we had dinner. We made up with the family and all this. Then he said, “Well, John, let’s talk some more.” So we went to my bedroom and we stayed and talked with each other until midnight. I finally said, “I can’t stand this lady. I just don’t think I can do it. ” And later on when we came back here to Williamstown, he said as far as confronting and being uncomfortable, he said, “There are few examples of the 18 of us, or 17 of us, where we confronted ourselves” and he said, “Neikirk, you were one.”
Part of my value was that I had come from a nice family and you’re supposed to be polite and likeable. It’s the whole Christian thing, “Well, if you can’t say anything good, don’t say anything at all.” He said, and this is back here in Williamstown, “You learned that you’re capable of hating someone.”
–John Neikirk '73
