Monday January 19, 2026 Martin Luther King Day
The theme for Nashville’s Tenx9 oral storytelling event is “Welcome.”
I’m telling two stories, two extremely different versions of being welcomed in a community.
Two Welcomes
TENx9 – January 19, 2026
A couple decades ago, when my husband Greg and I were living in WisCONsin, we discovered a sweet cottage on beautiful Lake Sinnissippi in the town of Hustisford — population about 1100.
To me - an outsider from the East Coast - this place embodied my romantic vision of a small Midwestern lake town.
There were just as many bars as churches.
And even a tiny bowling alley under one of those bars.
It was only an hour from our home in Milwaukee.
We had all-night campfires under the stars, friends over for holidays, and peaceful nothings. It even had a tiny island, connected by a footbridge, which we named after our dog, Lafayette.
It was our respite from city life.
We named her Serenity Cottage.
It was magical.
But during the first couple of years, I kept noticing something.
Whenever I went into one of the town’s convenience stores or the local cheese shop — I’d walk in cheerful, trying to make small talk. You know. The weather. The lake. Whatever.
Just not politics or religion!
I was a heavy smoker back then, so I went into those stores a lot. I always paid in cash.
And every single time — no matter who was working, no matter the time of day — the cashier never made eye contact with me.
Never.
They didn’t respond to my attempts at conversation.
And every time, they threw the change back at me across the counter.
I stood there, palm open, gathering quarters and nickels that skidded over the shiny surface, wondering:
What did I do?
What did I say?
How did I insult this person?
Not just one. All of these people.
And here’s the thing:
When Greg went into those same stores — same people, same counters — he’d come home smiling.
“Oh, that gal at the Tri-Par is so friendly!”
“Had the nicest conversation with the cashier!”
This happened over and over again.
So it wasn’t him. With them looking at us as Big City folks invading their small town community and raising the taxes on lakefront homes. No.
It was me.
Eventually, I stopped trying.
The one exception was Mike - at Hardware Mike’s.
Mike was always polite to me. As long as I didn’t mention gun control. Especially when he caught me looking up at the huge photos of him standing next to the grizzly bears he had murdered - or as he’d say hunted - up in Alaska.
Greg and I were fixing up the cottage, and Mike appreciated our business. Mike was no dummy.
But I avoided going to his shop early in the morning — that’s when the old-timers gathered. The town elders would sit around and gossip.
Greg would go anytime of day. One morning he needed to pick up some paint.
At Hardware Mike’s he walked straight into a heated conversation amongst the old timers.
There had been a grocery store just outside of town run by an East Indian family. Whenever we went there it was empty. Then it suddenly closed.
When Greg came home, he looked stunned.
In that discussion Hardware Mike insisted that the store didn’t close because the town failed to support it because of racism.
He claimed there was no racism in Hustisford.
And Greg — who is one of the whitest men you will ever meet — innocently said:
“Well… how would you know there’s no racism? It’s not like there are any Black people here.”
Without missing a beat, Hardware Mike said:
“Well, there’s that guy who works at the high school.
And then there’s your wife.”
“Brooke?” Greg asked. Just to make sure they were talking about the same person.
Yes.
Brooke.
And Greg, also without missing a beat replied - and every gossip monger within ear shot heard him say it:
“Brooke’s Italian.”
FRANKLY, I wish he’d said “Brooke’s Sicilian.” That would’ve really confused them! But that’s another story for another time!
And suddenly - everything made sense.
The silence.
The refusal to make eye contact.
The change they threw back at me.
Over the next few months, word got out. I give credit to the gossip mongers who were at Hardware Mike’s that morning.
Little by little, people were chatty.
Handing me my change.
You want to talk about change? I hadn’t changed.
Or did I?
Because now I had absolutely no interest in befriending people who were only kind to me after they realized I wasn’t black.
And I’m abiding by TENx9 guidelines here by not saying what I really wanted to say to them or the hand gesture that goes with it!
I bought my cigarettes elsewhere. I kept to myself.
Our cottage remained an island of Serenity for us, but we took a new route and avoided the town to get there.
Now, listen: I don’t want to end a Welcome story on this sour note.
I want to tell you about a real welcome.
Right here in Nashville.
Just three months after we moved into our sweet East Nashville neighborhood, the March 3rd 2020 tornado hit. We really didn’t know anyone yet.
Many of the houses around us were destroyed.
Somehow, our little MidCentury brick ranch survived — even though the roof was gone, all the windows imploded, a tree landed on my desk, and our car was crushed.
But everything was fixable. We were lucky.
A rag tag group of guys with chainsaws - including Greg - worked non stop to cut through the fallen trees and connect our street with the rest of the world. Meanwhile, we stayed in a hotel, contacted our insurance company and let our friends and family know we were safe.
The day after we drove to our house in a rented car to find hundreds of people.
All up and down our street.
In our front yard.
Our backyard.
People who took time off from their jobs.
Wearing work boots and gloves. They brought their own shovels and rakes. They hauled debris out to the street.
Little kids pulled red wagons filled with Gatorade and Moon Pies.
Handmade cards that said:
“We love you.”
“Nashville Strong.”
It was the first time I let myself cry after the tornado.
Everything else was just stuff.
And it hit me - standing there in the wreckage, the wreckage of what I had hoped my new life would be - isn’t easy it is to call yourself welcoming
when you’re surrounded by people who look like you?
But here, in Nashville —
on one of the worst weeks of this new life —
No one needed to know a thing about me or Greg.
They just showed up.
So now, when I hear the word welcome,
I don’t think about small talk. Or Hustisford Wisconsin.
I think of little kids,
pulling red wagons
over broken tree limbs and shattered lives.
I think about who shows up
when there’s no need to explain.
Thank you, Nashville, for welcoming me.
Thank you for reading my Substack, please consider a free subscription! Or paid!
copyright 2026 Brooke Maroldi
Check out this wonderful storytelling group in Nashville:
https://www.tenx9nashville.com/
Wow. You nailed this. So perfect.