Kate Bowler: Sometimes home is where you’re born. And sometimes it’s where you end up. And sometimes, it’s when you begin again. I’m Kate Bowler, and this is Everything Happens. Today’s conversation is with Ben and Erin Napier. They are HGTV stars of Home Town, small business owners, devoted Mississippians, and two of the kindest, funniest, most down-to-earth people I know. Together, they built a life rooted in Laurel, Mississippi, a town they’ve helped restore house by house, neighbor by neighbor, soda bottle by soda bottle. You’ll see. This is a conversation about community and what it really takes to belong somewhere. You are going to love them. I sure do.
Ben Napier: We’re excited. You’re a really big deal.
Kate: Yeah, yes, yes. Yes, Ben, thank you.
Ben: I’m serious. We have so many friends when we were talking about doing this and they were like…
Kate: Aww, loves. Well yay! This is my time to be crazy nosy about your lives. Let’s start with you, Ben. I imagine this is exactly what you pictured for your life. This, that you would have a television show.
Ben: Yes, so, Methodist Preacher’s Kid from South Mississippi with a Duke alum as a father and an Emory Candler alum as a mother.
Kate: Oh my gosh, that’s a lot of ministry!
Ben: Yeah, it is, I’m steeped in it. And, uh, this, which is maybe why I’m not one, but no, I did youth ministry for 10 years and, um, honestly thought I was going to go into politics because I was gonna make a difference and that didn’t work out. And the producer who discovered us, told us, she told me, she’s like, I’m so glad you lost that election. Cause we couldn’t do this.
Erin Napier: He ran for City Council in Laurel.
Kate: Oh, I see.
Ben: Big deal, big deal.
Erin: Big Ben means business.
Kate: Was that your slogan?
Ben: It was, and then the election was on June 4th, and June 4 was Independence Day, I ran as an independent. Independent’s Day.
Erin: He ran as an independent, you see, it has an apostrophe S.
Ben: There’s a little too deep for a lot of people. English is hard.
Kate: I want this so much for you. What did you like initially about politics that made you think…?
Ben: Uhh…
Erin: I think he thought he could make it an honest thing.
Ben: Which is very difficult. I don’t know, I just liked the idea of being able to influence and make changes based on…
Erin: You’re good at making relationships and your goal was to get more business in downtown Laurel. That was his whole platform.
Ben: Yeah, Laurel was a big industrial town for years, and that is still sort of the case. It’s still an industrial town and we still have some huge industry here. But my idea was to encourage and bring it because our our ward was the, the central business district downtown footprint. And so I wanted to bring in more small businesses there. And now we’ve done it without me being in office.
Erin: Which is much, much better.
Kate: Oh my gosh. That is… When you were little, did you think politics is for me or did you have a different plan?
Erin: He’s supposed to be playing Duke basketball.
Ben: Naw, that would have been four years. Or three years.
Erin: Four years of his life, but then you’d probably just become a coach and just stay there.
Ben: Well, I’d have probably gone pro and by now I would be coaching somewhere or be a commentator. No, my grandfather was a politician. He was always involved in politics and he was a sheriff for a while, but then he started helping behind the scenes, which was an elected office, sheriff’s elected office. But then he was heavily involved in state and local politics our entire lives. And so me and my brothers would go to like these big political rallies and get togethers. And it was very exciting how to, and also, I mean, I grew up as a preacher’s kid. So I grew in politics, but yeah, that was, that was the plan. And then Erin was going to be a newspaper, not newspaper—magazine.
Erin: I don’t know anything about newspaper. I was going to be a magazine designer.
Kate: Okay, Erin, take me back to the earliest you’re like in elementary school collaging about your dreams.
Ben: It’s true. There’s literally it started that far back.
Erin: Yep. I literally had an accordion folder. And I would clip pages I loved out of magazines, which incidentally were only home magazines. My mom had Southern Living and Coastal Living and Cottage Living, and I had accordion folders of paint colors I liked and magazine layouts I liked. And that’s what I was into was design and pretty houses.
Ben: And here we are.
Erin: So I guess indirectly, this was the plan, but I got a degree in art. So.
Kate: Oh, wow.
Erin: I use it.
Ben: You do use it. Absolutely you do. The best thing about Erin’s art degree is how worried her parents were.
Kate: Totally. Every parent is like, when my little girl grows up, I just want to make sure that it’s a four-year BA or a two-year program in something I don’t feel confused about the output.
Erin: When I was in second grade, we found out that I was basically blind when I went to the eye doctor for the first time. And it was like, whoa, trees have individual leaves on them. And I left and I was so excited to be able to see. And I was just, I was like I want to be an eye doctor because it’s not scary, it doesn’t hurt. And it super fun to be to see. My dad clung to that the rest of my life.
Ben: I mean, we were like, junior year of college, and he’s still…
Erin: He finally, in the last three years, probably, just stopped saying, are you still thinking about going to ophthalmology school?
Kate: One of my favorite things about you guys is how rooted you are in a particular place and that for the two of you, it’s Laurel. Erin, I wondered if you could, like, this is where you’re from, right? It is. I wondered if you can tell me a bit about Laurel? I’ve actually, I don’t even know if I’ve ever been to Mississippi. So give me the lay of the land.
Erin: Okay. We have deep roots in arts and music first of all. And I think that it happened because it’s also a very poor state. It still is. It always has been. And i think that because people didn’t have a lot of financial means when they wanted things or needed things, they found ways to make them and they found ways to do it beautifully. And it’s food, music, art, we just have a really rich history. In art that most people don’t think of. That’s not the first thing you think of when you think Mississippi, but we are Elvis and B.B. King and Eudora Welty, and…
Ben: Faulkner.
Erin: Yeah, William Faulkner. So we know how to do art here.
Ben: So, when Erin talks about Mississippi being poor, it permeates everything, and you did have, you know, you hear about, like in the Mississippi Delta, for instance, you have landowners and then you have everyone else. And, like, there’s this very small, like group of people who did have, and then nobody else had anything. You know, like people talk about the Great Depression didn’t hit Mississippi because we had been in it. Like everybody lived the same life and lived it together and looked after each other. And, you know, there are terrible stories that happened just like there are anywhere else. But you know like for our parents growing up, they talk about, you know they just, they didn’t know any better. They didn’t know any different. Erin mom tells stories like, stereotypes exist for a reason, and Erin’s mom talks about she would get a new pair of shoes for school. And by the end of school, by the summertime, those shoes were done. And she just went barefoot all summer. And my dad tells the same story. My mom and, um, so it’s, and then also to the rest of the world, Mississippi is the Delta. Like when people talk about Mississippi…
Erin: They think of the Delta as what they see in their mind’s eye. But we’re in the pond belt. It’s a very different culture than the Delta.
Ben: My parents live in what’s called the hills, which is very comfortable to like the Durham area. It’s not very agriculturally rich because of the hills but where we live it’s a timber and industrial area and chicken farms. And then there’s the coast and and the Delta.
Erin: And we’ve given you way more than you wanted to know about Mississippi.
Kate: No, I’m so into that. I love the description because it does remind me of like Manitoba is one of the provinces that it’s historically not as rich as other provinces. And it also has a lot of small communities that never really expected to be in the center of things. And then because of that, there’s incredible maker cultures. I mean, I am from a Mennonite background where they do a lot in… Most make furniture all the time, like, and then all their artistic side comes out where they, like there’s so much like quilting and embroidering and, and like building and looking at something and then wanting to repurpose it into something else and out of that, I think has come a lot of like cultural richness that I really admire.
Ben: Absolutely, and pride in that. Because it comes from, you know, I mean, it’s it’s born out of necessity. Like you don’t have, you can’t afford to go and buy things. And so you make it, which is how I got my start in woodworking.
Erin: Yes, we couldn’t afford the furniture that I wanted.
Ben: And so I learned how to do woodworking, and I had started it in college and just became fascinated and enamored with it. And then when we got married and we didn’t have any money, we needed furniture, and so I built it. That’s the thing is the poverty creates this maker’s economy.
Kate: We’re going to be right back after a break to hear from our sponsors. Don’t go anywhere.
Kate: Experience of wanting to be home, have a place that feels like home for people who aren’t familiar with the premise of your show, it touches such a deep need and connection about how we might feel like we belong to somewhere. So tell me about your show and that sort of need that it touches.
Erin: Everyone is from somewhere. This is something we discovered when the first person that ever spoke to us in public and said, I love your show, we were in New York City and it was a guy in a Yankees hat.
Ben: It was the first one that was shocking.
Erin: Yeah, he was in a Yankees’ hat, he was covered in tattoos, and he punched Ben in the shoulder and said hey man, I love the show.
Ben: It was like this moment of, you know, we’re in a sea of people. We’re on Fifth Avenue walking. It was Christmas time. We were looking, you don’t mean, so it’s like wads of people meeting. And this guy picked us out of the crowd. He was going one way. We were going the other and he, yeah, he stiff arms me into the show in the shoulder, which I turned in this like fight or flight.
Erin: He was ready to like, square up.
Ben: You know, what is going on here? Are we fixing a brawl on Fifth Avenue in New York? I turned and he was this really nice guy, you know, and also like talking about stereotypes, like, you know I’m preacher’s kid from Mississippi and this guy’s covered in tattoos and he’s wearing a flat brimmed Yankees hat and he has dark rimmed glasses, obviously a ruffian. He was cruising for a bruising and he loves the show. We were talking to a producer about it. She’s, you know, this Jewish New Yorker who’s born and raised in New York. And she said, well, you know, everybody’s from somewhere.
Erin: And we all want to see it do well.
Ben: Yeah, they, nobody wants to say like, oh, I’m from this place and it’s awful. And so that’s Erin’s from here. I’m a Methodist preachers kid. So I lived in a bunch of small towns and, uh, wasn’t really from anywhere, but wanted to be from somewhere. And so, yeah, we put down roots.
Erin: I am deeply, deeply rooted. It’s a miracle. I went four hours away from my mama to go to college, but only did it for two years. I did junior college for two before that. So I could stay close. Um, but yeah, and now my parents live two or three miles from us. And we see them almost every day. And, but that’s really what we realized is, when we were in college, we’re like, we’ll go somewhere, we live in Birmingham and I can work for a magazine and you can get a law degree and we’re gonna…
Ben: Change the world.
Erin: I don’t know, we just thought we needed to be somewhere else to have a great career that we love. And the truth is that the American dream was waiting for us at home, where we could literally buy the house of our dreams for $145,000. And then we fixed it up the way we wanted it. And we documented it in my little online journal, I guess it’s a blog, but I don’t know, it was just a daily journal where I wrote about the best thing that happened every day. So someone saw that and reached out about us doing a show. It was not our plan and it was not expected. And I don’t know, it’s the weirdest thing in the world. And if you’re gonna ask us this question at some point, where do you see yourselves in the next five or 10 years? People like to ask us that. And I won’t make plans anymore because every plan we ever made. fell apart and what happened was a lot better than that.
Ben: Which is, you know, you, you that’s not the way you’re raised. It’s funny because that’s the way my parents lived. You know, my parents were very Erin’s dad got a degree, started the rehab department at the hospital, did that for forty-four years and then retired and enjoyed it. My parents, like my dad has done everything. My mom has done every thing. They raised four boys.
Kate: Who can fight if prompted. Who for the record can fight if prompted.
Ben: For the record, just in case anybody wants to, we can.
Kate: It’s been said here.
Ben: I don’t know that anyone’s ever witnessed it other than my mother, but it’s happened. But it, uh, that’s the way they lived was very like, you know, loosey goosey and, you know, plans aren’t going to work out. So don’t make them. And, but then they wanted me and my brothers, like you get a degree, have a plan, have a fallback plan and, you know, it would work hard and then retire. And none of our brothers, except for the oldest has done anything like that. So, you, it worked and it’s it, you know, like Erin said, we quit making plans because none of our plans have worked at all.
Erin: Ever. Not one time.
Ben: Failed miserably at them.
Kate: Yeah, I hear that. I think there’s a lot of people who have a real desire for home, but maybe, you know, when they do those like studies of how people’s associations work, and they talk about like primary ties, and then, and they have like, then they talk about weak ties, like the person you get your coffee from, or, I don’t know, the person you regularly see at the bank, and that people’s lives are really enriched by having all of these weak ties. But I think a lot of people noticed since the pandemic, really…
Ben: Third places
Kate: Yes, exactly right. Third places, yeah. And that we’re not very practiced in having places that make us feel connected. I know community is a very difficult to do in practice and you guys are very practiced at creating community. I wonder what advice you have for people who want to be more connected but are one of those many people who like moved one too many times, are a little bit too far away, have one of those jobs that just like, keep pushing you past.
Ben: Kate, this is a thing that we talked about a lot.
Erin: I can’t speak on this from a… I grew up here, so I’ve known every person in this town my whole life.
Ben: But it, it takes everyone. This is the thing that we talk about, like community takes everyone and that sounds very like, “Oh yeah, it’s takes a village,” you know. But it, what I mean is like everyone has a part to play and it may be such a small part that you don’t even feel like you’re playing a part, but you are, and then also it takes, you now the leaders letting other people take part. And that’s the thing that we see a lot when we go to other towns is, you know, there’s somebody who is working so hard and they’re doing so much. And it’s like, you’re kind of being a dictator here. You’re not, you not letting anybody else participate in the, and you’re trying to make it this thing that you want and it’s never going to be that. And that we actually, when we first moved to Laurel, everyone was, you know, the goal, they were trying to make it…
Erin: More like Hattiesburg.
Ben: Or Oxford.
Erin: Those are college towns, but Laurel isn’t.
Ben: Yeah, Laurel’s never going to be that. And that’s the thing that like, if you’re, we tell people all the time, if you’re young and single, Laurell is not for you and I’m sorry.
Erin: That’s, yeah. This is old people and young family town.
Ben: Rather, I should say, if you’re young and single and you’re looking for the, you know, the Mr. Or Mrs. Right and…
Erin: It’s gonna be tough. We’re importing though. We are definitely importing. We know some amazing single ladies.
Ben: Yeah, we know so many young single ladies.
Erin: We want them to meet good guys and bring them here! Don’t leave.
Kate: So what I hear you saying is a strong message for all attractive marriage material accomplished men.
Erin: We need some single men in Laurel, that’d be great. If you’re listening, please.
Kate: I totally think this is the place to find them.
Erin: I think for people who are looking for community, finding a church family, those are some great initial weak ties that become very strong primary ties. Then finding organizations, like, we have Laurel Main Street and it was a small thing when it began in 2008 and now it’s so huge with so many committees, but those committees become friend groups and those friend groups are the ones who make all the great events happen in Laurel.
Ben: I mean, you’ve got like chambers of commerce and you have economic development authorities, you have all these groups and I think it’s different now. Like when our parents were young or when our grandparents were young, you had like Kiwanis and Masons and…
Kate: Oh my gosh, Ben, I get so whipped up about this topic. I like, won’t stop explaining to people how they should join the Rotary Club.
Ben & Erin The Rotary Club!
Kate: Not so sexy to tell people to join voluntary associations, but I really believe that, like.
Ben: It’s, it is a huge part of what has kept Laurel alive and what has made it great.
Erin: The thing is, there were a lot, I think, then, fewer responsibilities. I don’t know what has happened, but we all overcommit ourselves. And maybe that’s why these volunteer societies are not, you know, they’re not growing, but I think we’re all overcommitted. The people our age, certainly.
Ben: So we’re overcommitted, but we need to commit more.
Erin: We do. We need to re-paritize our commitment.
Ben: Yeah, we do need to read and that’s another thing is like like I can remember, you know, the old men in our churches, “I got Rotary this week,” or “I got Kiwanis” and they went, they were in everything. And maybe it was because they didn’t want to be at home and I don’t know why like I don’t know that whole dynamic but Erin and I work crazy hours, but we also, we, our family dynamic is that we will be home by five no matter what, we’ll be home on the weekend no matter what. And so we’re in a, in a season of life where we don’t volunteer as much. And so, we are constantly trying to reflect any, cause I mean, we, we’re from a very small town and there is a very big spotlight on what we do. And so. We’re constantly trying, trying to, reflect that back on our town because, you know, you have great people here who, they are the ones making this town great, we were just the ones who are magnifying what they’re doing. Yeah, I think get involved in something.
Kate: Yeah, and I hear you saying too, that when you want to become more involved, that so much of it is figuring out which season you’re in. Are you in a season where you have a little bit more to give and give it? Erin, I love it when you say bloom where you’re planted because blooming assumes like flourishing. So I wonder, what does it mean for you to bloom in the season in which you’re planning right now?
Erin: Um, right now I’m just pouring everything, everything I have into Helen and May. And that it takes an enormous amount of energy and effort to make your kids feel like you’re engaged with them when you have these [holds up smartphone] are constantly trying to pull us away from the only thing that matters, which is playing Barbies. Maybe right now, I’m not kidding. Like, we need to focus more. In our season right now, me and Ben specifically, we’re trying so hard to give more attention to our girls than to that that tries to pull us away constantly.
Kate: We’re going to take a quick break to tell you about the sponsors of this show. We’ll be right back.
Kate: You’re like so focused on how phones are an element of distraction and you’re very committed, too. I mean you’ve had all kinds of, you’ve really educated yourself and other people in the in the dangers of social media at a young age and it sounds like sucking back our focus has been a huge source of I guess like inspiration.
Ben: Cell phones and social media and it’s…
Erin: They’re great tools if we keep them as tools.
Ben: They’re amazing. We have a career because we were discovered on social media. So, like, we totally get the irony that we are…
Erin: Pushin’ back.
Ben: Pushing back and yet it’s and we’re using our influence through our social media and our phones to push back so it’s you know it’s incredibly ironic but we think it’s really important that’s that is where our focus is like in this season of life as far as like what we were doing what we are doing to give back it’s that. And then also trying to raise, you know, amazing young womem.
Kate: I love the themes though of like disconnection, loneliness. It’s such a beautiful encouragement to people that there are small things that we can do to bloom where we’re planted, to feel more at home in our own lives and in our own like bodies. When I, if I want to walk and I look at my phone, I could be genuinely in the middle of the road for five minutes and not realize. Cause we just become so alien to ourselves. I really like the idea. I read an article yesterday that was just called, “Can we have our attention please?”
Ben: Ooh.
Erin: Can we? Really, I feel like my attention span and my recall is just not what it was 10 years ago. And it’s, I’ve had two kids in those 10 years. So that’s probably a lot of the reason why, but phones don’t help.
Ben: Talk about blooming where you’re planted and you can look at that from like the big picture of we live in Laurel and we’re in this season of life, but also like in the moment, it’s very… I love to talk to people in the subway in New York and it’s very jarring to them.
Kate: Sorry, I just hear like, I love to talk to—at—the people of New York.
Erin: And I get very uncomfortable.
Ben: But we have not been on the subway as much as we used to. I used to love being on the subway and would talk to people. And 30% of those people ignored me. I mean, like, as if I was not even there, much less speaking to them. But 70% of them were really excited to talk and tell me what they were doing and what they’re working on. One of them was this young man who was from small town in Tennessee and he heard me talking to someone else and he recognized that we were southern and he was so excited because he was really lonely. He was in New York, he was going to school, he’s going to Julliard, very accomplished. I have no idea what his name is, but we had this like special moment and we…
Erin: He was like, it’s so good to hear someone that sounds like home.
Ben: Yeah, and so that that’s you know, that’s our soapbox and that’s why you should talk to…
Erin: You should talk to strangers.
Ben: And that’s why you should always talk to strangers.
Kate: And if they open their van door, get right in. You get right in there.
Erin: Get that candy. Yeah. Get that free candy.
Ben: Free candy for everybody.
Kate: I do really love that you’re so open to surprising connections and also just the open-endedness of a life without plans right now, just to try to do the very best with the most that you have in the moment that you are in. I think that’s something a lot of people can really do.
Kate: I mean, that’s not to say that we don’t…
Ben: Have wishes.
Ben: Yeah, but what we’re working on, it’s we’re not having to think about like, you know, hey, when this is over, what if we try for this. We can focus on, okay, these are the things that we have committed to. Let’s do the very best of these. And if that if that opens the door to something else, great. And if it doesn’t…
Erin: That’s where we are. Do the best you can, don’t worry about it.
Kate: Hey, um, one of my deep overwhelming loves is world’s largest things.
Kate: Yes, we know!
Kate: If I were to come to Mississippi, is there anything extremely large I could see?
Ben: The largest glass bottle soda collection in Mississippi is in my general store.
Erin: And by the way, we’re not sure if it’s the biggest, but we think it probably is.
Ben: We think we’re probably selling more than anyone. We definitely have the largest selection. So that’s, Erin and I are big fans of fake it till you make it. And so.
Erin: We’re gonna be if we’re not the biggest, the world’s largest, glass bottle, soda.
Ben: When I was president of Laurel Main Street, the lawyer for the group, he was on the board, but he was an attorney and that we added him because we needed an attorney. And then we were trying to come up with a slogan and he was like, he said, why don’t we just call it Laurel, Mississippi, Mississippi’s downtown. And I said, are we? Can we be? Is that…? And he was, like, who’s going to stop us? And I was like oh, and to hear a lawyer say that you’re like, yeah.
Kate: Who’s gonna stop us?
Ben: Who’s gonna stop us?
Kate: That’s amazing. My dears, I love that you are so open to fun and surprising connections, so intensely obsessed with your hometown, so loving to the people that you meet and to the faces right in front of you. Thank you so much for doing this with me. I insist we do it again.
Ben: We should! Yeah.
Erin: But come here, it’s time for you to visit Mississippi.
Kate: I don’t know about you, but sometimes it feels like the problems of the world are so big and so unfixable that it’s hard to know where to begin. But Ben and Erin reminded us today that the first step might just be right outside your door. Asking yourself, what would it look like to make this place, this neighborhood, this block, this life, a little more like home? Maybe, you start by getting to know your actual neighbors. Or the crossing guard, the grocery clerks, the garbage collectors, and city council members. Yes, maybe even the people you sit next to on the subway, even though they might not respond and it might come off as weird and unwanted. But just maybe you have a little more to give, more time or energy or resources just to the people around you so that we can volunteer locally, like sign up to serve at a food bank or become a CASA. Find a way to get invested in an issue facing your community. Maybe it’s time to join a local civic association or go back to a church you like, even if it’s not perfect. Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do in the world that we can’t control is just to start small. Because at the end of the day, there really is no place like home.
You can watch all of our episodes on YouTube, just search for @KateCBowler, and we would love to hear from you. What does home mean to you? Who are the people in your community that you’re noticing or celebrating? Leave us a voicemail at 919-322-8731, or find me online at @KateCBowler. We would love hear from your. And reviews on Apple podcasts or on Spotify really do make a difference, especially. Well, especially the positive ones. But hey, I’ll take what I can get. But if you do take a second to leave the show a review, it would help so much. This episode was made possible by our generous partners, the Lilly Endowment, the Duke Endowment and Duke Divinity School. And we are so thankful for their support. And thank you to the team that makes all this work possible. Jessica Richie, Harriet Putman, Keith Weston, Baiz Hoen, Gwen Heginbotham, Brenda Thompson, Haille Durett Anne Herring. Hope Anderson, Kristen Balzer, Elia Zonio, Anna Fitzgerald-Peterson, Katherine Smith, and Megan Crunkleton. This is Everything Happens with me, Kate Bowler.
Erin: Okay. Well, I have to do an important thing right now. If you’re about to let us go, I need to say something very important.
Ben: Oh gosh, I have no idea.
Erin: I need to say hello to Sarah Hickner and Katie Blackledge, my two friends who love you so much.
Kate: Oh, that’s nice. Yeah, they’re going to be excited when they hear that.
Ben: Well, I’m going to say hello to John Scheyer and tell him that I still have four years of eligibility.
Erin: If you need him.
Ben: If you need a good strong forward.
Kate: And a man who can fight on command.
Ben: I can fight, if he told me to.
Erin: Put ankle braces on both ankles.
Ben: Both ankles.
Erin: But he can do it.
Leave a Reply