THAT FALL, TWO GUYS showed up in Welch who were different from
anyone I'd ever met. They were filmmakers from New York City, and
they'd been sent to Welch as part of a government program to bring
cultural uplift to rural Appalachia. Their names were Ken Fink and Bob
Gross.
At first, I thought they were joking. Ken Fink and Bob Gross? As far as I
was concerned, they might as well have said their names were Ken
Stupid and Bob Ugly. But Ken and Bob weren't joking. They didn't think
their names were funny at all, and they didn't smile when I asked if they
were putting me on.
Ken and Bob both talked so fast—their conversation filled with
references to people I'd never heard of, like Stanley Kubrick and Woody
Allen—that it was sometimes hard to follow them. Although they had no
sense of humor about their names, Ken and Bob did like to joke a lot. It
wasn't the sort of Welch High humor I was used to—Polack jokes and
guys cupping their hand under their armpit to make fart noises. Ken and
Bob had this smart, competitive way of joking where one would make a
wisecrack and the other would have a comeback and the first would have
a retort to the comeback. They could keep it up until my head spun.
One weekend Ken and Bob showed a Swedish film in the school
auditorium. It was shot in black and white, and had subtitles and a plot
heavy on symbolism, so fewer than a dozen people came, even though it
was free. Afterward, Lori showed Ken and Bob some of her illustrations.
They told her she had talent and said if she was serious about becoming
an artist, she needed to go to New York City. It was a place of energy
and creativity and intellectual stimulation the likes of which we'd never
seen. It was filled with people who, because they were such unique
individuals, didn't fit in anywhere else.