Miserablism

Growing Up in a Small Country Town

Let's suppose on some future date you find yourself in the nation's capital on a long overdue vacation with the family. Let's further suppose one afternoon you strike up a conversation with a D.C. local who tells you how beautiful and bountiful the Virginia countryside is that time of year, with its lush, rolling meadows and its green, grassy hills. Let's finally suppose you rent a car the very next morning, so you and the family can partake in the beauteous bounty that is Virginia's countryside. Your trip would begin from your hotel, through the streets of D.C. to the Whitehurst Freeway, whereupon you would cross the Potomac River via the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge and merge into the spacious lanes of Interstate 66 as you leave the nation's capital and enter Old Dominion. Roslyn comes into and out of view so quickly you might wonder if it was real or some figment of your imagination, created in the recesses of your mind so early in the morning. The interstate keeps going, so you drive the rented car containing you and the family approximately due west through some of the most populous places in the state, past Arlington, then Tysons Corner and Vienna, continuing past Falls Church, and through Fairfax. You might not even notice the gas station town of Centreville as you drive closer and closer to and through the Manassas metropolis. The Prince William County Bypass is a brief story told on the exit signs just before another gas station town, Gainesville, replaces it on the exit signs of the interstate. You notice the greens getting greener and the hills getting hillier, and you think to yourself how fortunate you are to get such great tourist advice from a perfect stranger. As you pass through first Marshall then Front Royal, you can no longer resist the urge to exit the interstate and partake in the bounty of Virginia's countryside. You and the family are excited to spend the day bravely exploring the expanses of the Blue Ridge Mountains, brushing up against the secrets these mountains hold for all who have the courage to trample upon them. Then you drive the rented car through the small country towns that make up Virginia's wondrous western border. From Front Royal to Winchester then through the Shenandoah Valley to Harper's Ferry, so many towns so little time. Virginia's western region provides a journeyman's journey that allows you and the family to behold much of the bountiful beauty of its lush green countryside, but like all good things, it must come to an end. Another long day of touristing awaits you and the family tomorrow.

Late in the day, you and the family once again find yourselves on Interstate 66 as you are driving back to the relative comfort of your hotel room. It's been a long day. You are all beat from the exhausting drive but still excited from the wondrous day you've had. About an hour from your journey's end, you notice something you missed on the drive out. Perhaps the green, grassy hills are a little greener and grassier or maybe the lush, rolling meadows are a little lusher and rollier. Not even sure yourself what has caught your eye, you leave the interstate at Exit 40 so you and the family can enjoy one last excursion through the wondrous Virginia countryside. This excursion takes you through the town of Haymarket, a sleepy little town that is not just any sleepy little town. Tucked away almost out of sight in the green, grassy hills and lush, rolling meadows of the Virginia countryside, Haymarket is a very special place indeed. But as you exit almost as soon as you enter the town of Haymarket, you might wonder what's so special about it.

Haymarket, Virginia is located about an hour west of Washington, D.C. and an hour east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Virginia's famous horse country, well known for its rolling hills and green meadows, is a short drive away. Haymarket is one of hundreds of small towns that make up Virginia's countryside, and there is very little that sets it apart from any other small town in the state or even the country. In fact, there might only be one thing that makes Haymarket special: it has the singular distinction of being my hometown.

A Brief History of Haymarket

Built on land previously inhabited by the Iroquois Indians, Haymarket was first named The Crossroads because of the networks of hunting paths and trails created by the Indian tribes. When Haymarket was founded in 1799, it consisted of 13 streets and 140 lots, and it occupied a total area of 0.6 square miles (US Census Bureau, 2024). A court and jail were constructed in 1805, and over the next several decades, the town grew in population and prosperity based on its connection to the court system. When the Civil War began, Haymarket became extremely vulnerable because of its close proximity to Washington, D.C., and just a few months after the war began, Union troops invaded Haymarket and set the entire town on fire, leaving only four buildings standing when they were done (Scharf, 2023). Unable to rebuild, Haymarket remained uninhabited for the remainder of the war. Once the war ended, it was able to rebuild and recover, and in 1882, completely rebuilt, Haymarket became one of the first towns in the state to become officially incorporated as a town. Shortly thereafter, the entire area entered a period of slow growth, so slow that most of the buildings in Haymarket remained virtually unchanged a century later, but beginning in 1980, the town experienced the biggest building and population boom in its history. This boom resulted from the opening of Route 66, a new interstate highway that connected Washington, D.C. to the Virginia/West Virginia border and all of the towns and cities along the way. This interstate ran right through the middle of the town, and little ole Haymarket, Virginia got an exit. That was the beginning of the end for my quiet little hometown.

My family moved to Haymarket when I was two years old. That was in 1970, and back then, Haymarket was small, very small. It was so small that my family, consisting of thirteen children and two parents, increased its population by 5.2%. When we moved there, it had a population of 288 people (Population, 2018). It remained a small country town throughout my childhood, but the population boom of the 1980s more than quadrupled its population. It has grown in population ever since. But that interstate highway and its brazen Exit 40 changed Haymarket in more ways than just how many people lived there. As its population grew, its open fields slowly gave way to busy neighborhoods and busier businesses as its rural landscape was replaced by D.C.'s suburban sprawl. Today, it has an estimated population of 1970 people (ibid). But when I lived there, Haymarket was small, very small.

And I HATED living there.

Why I Hated My Hometown

Boring. There was never anything to do in Haymarket. When I was a kid, most of the land in Haymarket was used to grow crops, corn and hay mostly but other crops, too. The "commercial district", located at the center of town near the town hall, consisted of a post office, a bank, and a small store that doubled as both a grocery store and hardware store. Haymarket eventually got a stoplight (yes, ONE stoplight). I remember when that stoplight was installed. It was one of the most exciting things that had happened in the town for years, probably decades, maybe even ever. The excitement was not for the stoplight, though. It was for the reason the stoplight became necessary, good ole Interstate 66 Exit 40. Shortly after the exit opened, the stoplight was installed to control the flow of traffic to and from the highway. The exit made life easier for everyone in Haymarket by greatly reducing the driving time to literally everywhere, but it also made the town accessible to just about everyone. We all watched as fields that had only ever grown crops suddenly grew homes. We sat idly by as rows of corn made way for rows of homes. By the time I graduated high school and moved away from Haymarket, the excitement caused by the highway had long been forgotten, replaced by the headaches caused by the problems it created. There was a lot more traffic but no new streets, there were way more people but the community was losing much of its character, and there were many new faces but the town seemed smaller. Throughout my childhood, Haymarket's population quadrupled, yet there never seemed to be anything to do.

Far Away. Before the interstate came to Haymarket, there was only one way to get there, and it wasn't a fast way. Haymarket was basically a outcropping built on a side road that was barely paved. Unless you needed to mail a letter, make a deposit, or buy groceries or hardware, you had to drive for at least 45 minutes, depending on what you needed maybe even an hour. My school bus route in middle and high school was an hour and a half each way. All the shopping malls, movie theaters, and anything that made life fun were an insanely long drive away. With the closest full-size grocery store being forty-five minutes away, when you finally got home with the groceries and realized you forgot something important, it would take at least an hour and a half before you returned with it. Most of the time, it simply wasn't worth the trouble. The interstate made this better but it couldn't fix the problem altogether, and Haymarket remained far away from anything fun or exciting.

Familiarity. Haymarket has always been a good place to raise a family. It's the kind of place people move to and don't move away. And because no one ever moved away, the people who lived there bought stuff at the same grocery/hardware store, mailed things at the same post office, and made deposits and other transactions at the same bank as everyone else who lived there...year after year after year. Being country folk, they were friendly by nature, so conversations were easy to come by. Over time, the degrees of separation between the residents of Haymarket slowly decreased. Although I admit it is an exaggeration to say that everybody knew everybody, it often seemed like they did. There was a sense of familiarity among the people who lived in Haymarket. If there was someone we hadn't met personally, we at least knew his family. And in a small town where it often seemed that everybody knew everybody, news travels fast. Nosey neighbors were everywhere, and everybody's secrets would eventually become the town's latest gossip. I learned this firsthand when I was thirteen and tried to steal a candy bar from the grocery/hardware store. It was a last minute decision that I admit was not thought out well. The store owner stopped me before I even made it to the door. He knew my parents, of course, and let me go without a lot of drama, simply telling me to ask my father to stop by the store on the way home after work that day. He even let me keep the candy bar. My mom received several phone calls about this tragic event before I made it home, and by the time my dad got off work and stopped at the store to talk to the owner, my mom had heard about it from just about everyone in our neighborhood, all of them eager to tell her that I'd become just like my older brothers.

Notoriety. My family was pretty well-known in the town of Haymarket. One reason for this was our fall harvest. We were not rich, by any stretch of the imagination. I remember many times my aunts and uncles, cousins, and sometimes our neighbors would help us with food or money. What we did have was a very large garden. It wasn't so large at first. Year after year, my father slowly grew the size of the garden, adding different vegetables, improving the vegetables we were already growing, and it eventually began to produce far more vegetables than one family could ever need. October was harvest season, and rather than letting the extra vegetables go to waste, my parents invited everyone who had helped us throughout the year to take whatever they wanted. Another reason for our notoriety was that we were the largest family there. I don't know why my parents had so many children, but considering I was the twelfth child born, I'm very happy they did. The third and perhaps most important reason for our notoriety had to do with my older brothers. I had seven of them, and they were all troublemakers who took pride in the trouble they made. Everyone knew of my older brothers and assumed I was like them, but I wasn't. I was the good kid. Except for the above-mentioned candy bar incident, I never did anything wrong. I suppose that's what was so satisfying for my neighbors when they all called my mom that day. They finally got to say "I told you so".

Tractors. Before the interstate got its Haymarket exit, most of the families who lived there owned a piece of farm equipment that was large enough to drive on the main roads but too slow to move at the speed of traffic. And I always seemed to get stuck behind one. The school bus (which never passes anyone) would get stuck behind a tractor on the way home when I was in a hurry to watch my favorite TV show. My father would get stuck behind a tractor on the way to the store where I knew he'd buy me something sweet. My brother would get stuck behind a tractor when we were going somewhere to do something fun. No matter where I was going or how quickly I wanted to get there, it was more likely than not I'd get stuck behind a slow moving tractor. This small town problem continued to vex me well into my driving years, but it mostly took care of itself when Haymarket began to grow. Crop fields became cul de sacs as new neighborhoods seemed to be built overnight. A whole new type of home began to be built in Haymarket. These new homes were large but lacked the land that had characterized most Haymarket homes in the past. Throughout the 1980s, as more and more of these new homes were built, farmland became home land, and the tractor problem just faded away. Except, of course, when I was in a real hurry...there always seemed to be a tractor in my way.

Friends. I had only one friend who lived within walking distance, and we could not have had less in common with one another. He was an only child who was sometimes a little mean and always a lot spoiled. I was next to the youngest of thirteen children who wore hand-me-downs from my older brothers until I was old enough to get a job and buy my own clothes. He always got whatever he wanted. I never got anything that wasn't already used. So, we didn't always get along. When a subdivision was built on our road, creating a brand new neighborhood where there had been only empty fields before, my pool of possible friends greatly increased. But, even then, most of the kids I went to school with lived too far away for me to walk there, and I had a very limited pool of kids to choose as my friends.

Rednecks. This is the worst thing about living in a small country town, and it happened before my very eyes, without me even realizing it. Sure, I'd noticed members of my family exhibiting a small town mentality, but I did not (and could not) see it in myself. At least, not until I moved away from Haymarket and began socializing with people who had never heard of it and who had never gotten stuck behind a tractor. We are all products of our environment. Our experiences make us who we are. When a kid grows up in a small town, surrounded by a bunch of small town folk, he can't help but become small town folk himself. The thing is this: as I began to see the redneck in myself, I saw how it conflicted with another part of my identity, one that had become the most prominent part of my personality, my homosexuality...but that's a story for another day.

Haymarket has come a very long way since I grew up there. It currently ranks #1 in the county for best place to live and best place to raise a family (Best Places). I'm not surprised by this. Haymarket has always been a really great place to live. Many things in life are different from a kid's perspective. I hated living in Haymarket when I was a kid, but as an adult, I am very grateful I grew up in such a nice place, a place where everyone knew everyone, making the whole damn town a comfortable place to be. Haymarket helped make me the person I am today: simple, friendly, laid back, and easy. I've moved all the way to the other side of the country, but Haymarket will always be my hometown.

Works Cited

United States Census Bureau. (2020). Demographic and housing estimates. 2020 U.S. Gazetteer Files. Retrieved March 19, 2024 from https://www2.census.gov/geo/docs/maps-data/data/gazetteer/2020_Gazetteer/2020_gaz_place_51.txt

Scharf, John Thomas (2003). History of Western Maryland: Being a History of Frederick, Montgomery, Carroll, Washington, Allegany, and Garrett Counties from the Earliest Period to the Present Day. Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Co. ISBN 978-0-8063-4565-9.

Niche. Haymarket 2024. Retrieved November 15, 2018. https://www.niche.com/places-to-live/haymarket-prince-william-va/

Census. US Census Bureau, retrieved October 30, 2018.

Population. Population of Haymarket, VA. Retrieved November 15, 2018 at https://population.us/va/haymarket/

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