Finding My Family’s Bones

How visiting Appalachia helped me begin to understand my family

A photo of my dad and his family visiting Hillsboro, Ohio, in 1964. My dad is the little boy rubbing his eye, leaning on his grandpa’s knee.

There are no stars or skyscrapers in the suburbs. Even as a child, it felt like an in-between place to me. Suburbs were built for commuters — they leave them to work and come back to them to sleep. Maybe that’s why garages are the focal point of most suburban homes: They’re the portal for a morning exit and evening reentry. In the movies, suburban streets are always full of children playing. That might be true in other places. I lived on six suburban streets in California and kids never played on the streets. The sidewalks were always empty.

Before it was full of commuters, Chino Hills was full of cattle. Its rolling hills were used as grazing space for Mission San Gabriel and Mexican ranchos. There’s still a hill or two dotted with cows between stoplights and drive-thrus. Between the 1970s and 1990s it went from rural to developed, which means the hills were covered with tract homes. I could find my way through town using a Southern California suburbanite’s cardinal directions — Del Taco, ampm, Ralph’s, and Jack in the Box. There wasn’t one bookstore but there were a couple of gyms. Once kids could drive, they went to the mall one city over. It wasn’t enough to sustain a girl obsessed with folkways and fairy tales.