IN MY hunt to find a fine turkey to bring home to New York this past Thanksgiving, I took a few words from the wise -- the women who work so diligently day in and day out at the Pavilion in Newcomb Hall. They mentioned that I should try a little known store called Reid's, a pint-sized supermarket down on Preston Avenue, in what many U.VA students might call "the other side of town." Granted I had never been to Reid's before, but I had passed the establishment on a number of occasions when I made trips to the Downtown Mall, or on expeditions into what I consider the true heart of Charlottesville.
In their four years here, most University students never even venture far passed 14th Street and from numerous conversations, I can understand how comforting the limits of our bubbled-in world can be.But I took the advice, and after just one tour of Reid's Supermarket, I realized that there was definitely something about Charlottesville that I had been missing for a long time.
Though this little supermarket wasn't exactly perfect, it reminded me a lot of things back home -- a more relaxed atmosphere, attentive customer service and affordable prices, values I hadn't experienced in some time at the ever-changing rubric that this University encompasses. For those us of from urban centers where the stocked shelves of supermarkets are always piled high but still in cramped quarters, and for those of us from small rural towns where there's still a butcher in the backroom, this little haven from the high-politics, high-priced world I had been so accustomed to was the perfect combination and showed me another side of Charlottesville I had yet to see.
Often, students at the University can get so caught up in the hustle and bustle of their daily lives, and get so hooked on the fraternity or bar scene, that we fail to see beyond our world on Route 29. After a couple of years in Charlottesville, many of us learn that breaking the bubble of our limited scope is the key to our own growth, and exploring beyond the boundaries of our fold-out map is essential. Although most of us hop in our cars and sprint to a coastline or the nation's capital for the weekend, we shouldn't be so convinced that we have to look so far to find more, when there's another world right outside of our campus windows.
Besides the fact that the city of Charlottesville is home to festivals, schools, parades, restaurants, museums and stores that we can all frequent, the city is also home to thousands of people who are part of our University community, too. How would you feel if thousands of students converged on your neighborhood at home for nine months out of the year, and didn't frequent your businesses, but rather only patronized the businesses affiliated with their school? Surely the results would show some miscommunication and misunderstanding between the town and the school, and if ignored, the tension could last generations.
Little-known history tells us that many of the first African-American students who attended the University weren't even allowed to live on Grounds, and therefore had to find housing among families in the Charlottesville community who would take them in -- a history that holds true for many predominantly white institutions that didn't open their doors to people of color until civil rights came charging in. Although many of us at present take the time to mentor in Charlottesville city schools, tutor or play big sibling, how many of us can truly say that we are making all of the Charlottesville area, from Monticello to Cherry Avenue, our home by the end of our four years?
Some may say it's naive of me to think that venturing into one supermarket might make a difference in one's college career. But ultimately most of us will come to find that our most valued learning is often done outside of the classroom, and shying away from a community and collective history that is ours, even if just for now, can sometimes become one of those growing pains you can't escape.At least for me, I know now not to underestimate the importance of what I might learn from an establishment that is in the real Charlottesville, where the people who work hard to keep this University clean and operating live out their daily lives: What you learn might give you a much better understanding of what this place, and what this University, is really all about.
(Kazz Alexander Pinkard's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at kpinkard@cavalierdaily.com.)
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