By Stephen Smoot
Somewhere between Flag Day and the traditional Independence Day festivities, an unlikely event has helped Americans to see national greatness reflected in the surprised eyes and expressions of others.
And that is the “discovery” of the everyday aspects of life in the United States between the major cities of the coastlines by European soccer fans.
World Cup official games are meant to showcase not the host country, but the major cities in which the games are played. This year, the United States, Canada, and Mexico all host. The usual suspects of New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, Boston, and others received the honor of hosting the official games.
A number of what Americans would call “tune-ups” or “exhibitions” took place in college stadiums, such as at Auburn University. Europeans, who love soccer as fiercely as Southeastern Conference football fans, took to the highways and byways of the South and discovered an entirely different America than what they learned of through the media.
The world watched with astonishment as the American South welcomed European soccer fans like family or old friends. It watched with even more astonishment as Europe fell in love with all things Southern.
It started with “Freddy,” a German social media travel correspondent. He and his friends achieved viral status when they said with wide-eyed awe “this is a freaking gas station!” when first encountering Buc-ees. As widely known in Texas and the Deep South as Sheetz in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, these stations have dozens of pumps, legitimately excellent food, and massive shops for tourists.
Freddy then got a taste of what the South’s most exciting days look like. Auburn gave soccer fans the full SEC football gameday treatment with fireworks, music, tailgating, and even a flyover by the Auburn War Eagle. Europeans marveled over a network of stadiums larger, more modern, and more fan friendly than most on the Continent set in small American cities that treated fans like royalty.
A tsunami of videos swamped the internet. Japanese fans meticulously picking up after themselves wherever they went, Europeans awed by American fast food and diners, midnight Waffle House meals, their enjoyment of the haunting beauty of the Deep South as they drove through state after state, noting that each one was as large or larger than a typical European country.
And everybody, everybody, raved about the miracle Americans call “ranch dressing.”
.Some just filmed themselves walking in small city middle class neighborhoods, impressed by the cleanliness, the size of the yards, large pickup trucks, and almost everything Southerners love about where they hail from.
First this represents a victory for the South, whose culture, history, society, and people have for too long worn the stigma of slavery that ended over 160 years ago and from the short-lived Confederate States of America. The South also bears the perception of the full onus of Jim Crow and Ku Klux Klan terrorism, despite that Rising Sun, Maryland was long known as a center for KKK activity and that Boston fought school integration with violence while semi-Southern West Virginia did not battle integration at all.
Southerners are also wrongly vilified for continuing to honor the men who marched to war under their battle flag to protect not slavery, but their homes, farms, families, and communities. History remembers, if the media forgets, that most rich slaveowners bought their way out of serving their country when the draft called on them to serve.
. The American media has almost seemed to see it as a sense of duty for them to remind all in the United States and the world of Southern misdeeds while glossing over what makes the area truly wonderful as the culture of cretins and Philistines. Indeed the New York Times predictably sought to pour cold water into the South’s sparkling champagne by pooh-poohing the gushing of love for the region.
In the past several years, the South has been relieved of the sanctions rightfully placed against it during the Civil Rights Era, but that had remained in place far too long as the South’s views on race came into line with the rest of the nation.
The South has earned a place in the sun during the World Cup.
Second, this represents a key opportunity for the West Virginia Department of Tourism.
Almost everything that European tourists raved about in the South, the Mountain State offers and more. Those who enjoyed the sublime beauty of southern Alabama would be overwhelmed by the encompassing ridges of the North Fork Valley in Pendleton and Grant counties and the Trough in Hardy and Hampshire.
Nowhere in Europe can one see truly “dark skies,” but Calhoun County Park, Spruce Knob, Dolly Sods, Watoga State Forest, and many other areas offer great viewing for amateur astronomers, photographers, and enthusiasts.
Those who prefer to explore small cities and towns will find a true variety of offerings. From Shinnston’s Community Band, weekly parties, and regular arts events to Franklin’s Warner Drive In Theater and Arts Center to every single fair and festival held in the state, Europeans will find vibrant and dynamic experiences they could enjoy almost nowhere else.
And from mom and pop diners that every town takes pride in to wonderful finds like the Hutte in Helvetia, the Mountain State is a food lovers’ dream.
West Virginia Tourism has built a foundation that has made the tourist economy grow here when it has stagnated in most other places. Now a whole new potential market has opened to bring even more fun seekers.
