Bingo Night at the Fire Hall: The Case for Cows, Orchards, Bake Sales & Fairs by Barbara Holland

Reviewed by Kristin

Barbara Holland’s books have been featured in the BPL Bookblog in the past, notably when humor-minded Nancy wrote reviews of The Joy of Drinking in 2012 and Hail to the Chiefs: Presidential Mischief, Morals, & Malarkey from George W. to George W.  in 2013.  I had forgotten those entries when I picked up Bingo Night at the Fire Hall, but it was a pleasure to look back and laugh a little as Nancy regaled us with tidbits that had her snickering, if not downright rolling in the library aisles.

Holland inherited a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains in 1990, made the decision to leave her fast-paced advertising career in Philadelphia, and headed for the hills near Bluemont, Virginia.  Once away from the big city, she learned that there are degrees of isolation:  living in “town” in the valley is certainly not the same as living “on the mountain.”  Coming from away, as she did, Holland met a tight-knit community where everyone knew everyone else, as well as everyone’s parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and third-cousins.  Eventually she finds her place at the diner, the tavern, the newspaper office and the post office counter.

Just close enough to Washington D.C. to appeal to the city workers, Holland’s little piece of the country began to attract commuters.  The tug between the more developed eastern part of the county and the wilder western part became less balanced over time.  Living in the western mountains, Holland began to lose the desire to be among the suited commuters rushing to their all-important jobs from their suburban/rural homes.  A particularly touching passage describes this phenomenon:

“I go east less and less.  All my life I’d lived on the eastern edge of the country and all my inner compasses pointed toward the Atlantic.  Now I can feel the heavy pull of the interior of the continent, that great bulk looming between the coastal slices and widely believed to be unpopulated.  Flying over it, civilized people pull down the shade and watch the movie.  From here, it tugs at my shoulder blades from the other side of the mountain.  I can see it from my mailbox up on the road.  It begins to feel more familiar than the east.”

While I didn’t find any laugh-out-loud passages in this book—Holland’s mentions of her attempts at gardening, her adventures plunking herself down on a bar stool in one of those places where everyone knows everyone, her job writing flowery obituaries in the local paper—all those brought this volume together into a very pleasant read.  The chapters are shaped as essays describing the slow pace of life on the mountain, and what was being lost as residential developments crept further and further into the former fields and foothills.  Published in 1997, I can only imagine what the area looks like now over twenty years later.  Holland passed away in 2010, by all accounts a feisty old lady till the end.  May we all be feisty until our final days, and may we all find a place like Holland’s gentle mountains to be our home.