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2002-07-23 - 8:51 p.m. I visited my mother the other day and she passed the papers on to me: the Dismal Seepage Press. We look at each other, rather sheepishly, and joke about the entertainment value of the poorly written small town newspapers. But when her hometown friend passes them on to her, she reads them, and hands them on to me. And I read them. For me it is something like driving past a really bad car wreck. You know what it is, and you know you don't have any business there, but you just can't resist slowing down to take a look. The weekly paper is, in every sense of the word, local. On the front page is a picture of the mayor, in overalls, and a challenger in the mayoral election, in a windbreaker. In an interview, the mayor answers these probing questions, posed by the press: Q: Is there currently a situation for which you oppose in our town? (sic) A: People are not responding to the dog and cat laws. Q: What educational initiatives would you like the city of Dismal Seepage to pursue? A: Maybe get something for the young people. The interview continues in a similar vein, and just so you know, that interview was enough to cinch re-election for Mr. Overalls, against the challenge of Mr. Windbreaker. Even better than local politics, though, is all the social stuff: Columns and columns of it. The denizens of Dismal Seepage like to know what is going on. Virginia Morris had lunch with Erma Barnhart on tuesday. Mr. and Mrs Delbert Swanson went into Cornville to do some shopping. Mary Ethel Gilley received lots of cards and calls on her birthday. And then there is an account of every club meeting, social committee, prayer group, carry-in dinner and school event complete with menu and astute editorial comment, such as "A good time was had by all!!!" (Small town press manual of style.... Lots of exclamation points indicate: you REALLY MEAN IT.) Every time a person is featured in a story, the names of his or her parents and grandparents are also included. Because that is who you are in a small town: the product of the generations. And even more important than what you do is who you are. I suppose that is what makes reading the papers so fascinating, because it is human nature to wonder what ever happened to the people you once knew, even if you don't want to stay in touch. Here is a paper from which I can deduct that our high school basketball star is now a grandmother.... of someone who went to 4-H camp no less. Our branch of the family left the small town of Dismal Seepage many years ago, but we still have some relatives there. Both sets of my wonderful grandparents lived their whole lives in this town, and we lived close enough for me to get most of my early education in the Dismal Seepage school system. Most of my school teachers were family friends and they expected the best from me, based on my family name. (And the worst from some other kids, based on theirs.) It is--or was--a town where your Brownie troop mates grow up to be your bridesmaids when you marry the boy with whom you went to the senior prom. Where nobody gets divorced or gets in trouble. Where nobody is really rich or really poor. Where everybody is comfortably the same. As the child of a well-liked family in town, it was a safe and welcoming place for me. At the age of six I was allowed to walk downtown by myself to buy candy from the Variety Store. Candy was two or three pieces for a penny, so I could get a whole bag of goodies for my ten cent allowance. The woman at the candy counter knew my mother and always gave me some funny little message for her, and usually threw in an extra gumball or two. It was an old town with quaint store fronts, and wide streets that still had hitching rails in some places. The stores were arranged around a large shady, central park with a bandstand where children played in nice weather and the whole town gathered each year for the fall festival. Maybe it sounds like a nice, maybe typical small town. The kind people sometimes dream of turning to when life seems hectic and impersonal and dangerous. But there is also a dark side to this small town, always peering from behind closed curtains, a certain eerie watchfulness, and in places a deeply flowing river of hate. Simply put: you had better not be different. Anyone who is different is driven away. I was horrified, as a teenager, to discover that they had a city ordinance prohibiting African-Americans (not the exact phraseology they used) from spending the night there. And horrified that nobody else was horrified. And while that may have been technically illegal in the sixties, the sheriff was just one of the good ole boys in a pickup with a gun rack, and I don't think anyone was foolhardy enough to test it. No, and you'd better not dress too nice, or have too much education, or god forbid have anything that didn't come from Around Here. Because things as well as people who are not from Around Here are immediately suspect. You'd better not pronounce too many of your verbs with the "g" on the end instead of the "a" at the beginning (Example: a-walkin', a-sittin', a-talkin'). The whole town ridiculed a lovely couple from Chicago who moved there to retire, because they kept trying to take public transportation. ("Look, Elmer, they're out there a-waitin for the goddam bus!") I got cross-wise with the town when I followed the lead of thousands of my fellow young baby boomers and became a hippie.... or at least looked like one.... and was seen in public with those Awful Boys with that Awful Hair. It was all very scandalous, and as anyone from a small town can tell you, once you get a Reputation, you can never live it down. By the time I got a Reputation as a drug-crazed hippie, I was long gone from Dismal Seepage, and just laughed at the reports that the local folklore had turned me into a pariah. But finally, my Mother's book forever sealed our fate as personae non gratae in Dismal Seepage. She wrote a biography of a man she grew up knowing and admiring, a man who made a name for himself as a writer of popular fiction, an adventurer and inventor. This man lived in Dismal Seepage, and everyone laughed at him and called him an odd ball. Because he was different. And then years later when they realized he was famous, they put up a sign at the edge of town: "Welcome to Dismal Seepage-- Home of L____ D____" But my mother's book exposed the mean little town for what it was. She wrote about how they had harassed and made fun of him, even though he was kind and generous toward the town. Basically about how his success came in spite of living in Dismal Seepage, not because of it. They don't have that book in the library in Dismal Seepage. And we don't go back there much any more. But we still read the papers. � |