I am a small-town boy at heart, no matter what my pretensions to worldliness would suggest (and trust me, I have them). This realization occurred to me last year when, on a Sunday afternoon in New Orleans, I stumbled around Bourbon Street not drunk but bewildered by all the plastic penises hanging from souvenir-store windows. Yes, that's right: plastic penises are apparently for sale in New Orleans, even on a Sunday, which is the Lord's day.
That's when I knew I wasn't in Walhalla anymore...
But small-town living has its advantages, to be sure: everyone you meet can't possibly be a stranger, unless you're an unfriendly bastard who lives at home and rarely ventures out to see anything besides the library or the local fast-food place for cheap-ass dinner. I fear that I may have become that unfriendly bastard at various times in my existence in my small corner of the world, but every now and then I take the time to try and expand my small-town horizons.
A small town can be a drag when you're an ambitious kid with dreams of unrealized potential in the arts, a desire to write and be recognized for all your brilliant insights or your grasp of the human condition. Then again, it's a great sample for what ails the world around you, the crush of modernity threatening the core values that you are assured from early on have always been there and always will be, despite the fact (as you learn later) that things sometimes were worse, sometimes better, but always in flux. "Tradition" is a hollow word to me, as it should be to every Southern white person who has any sense about them and knows the real history of this region (and not the version taught in our public schools). I actually know of someone in one of my college-level classes saying that blacks were better off on the plantations, or at least happier there. Because her parents told her that.
But coming from a small town doesn't mean you're doomed to repeat the prejudices and hatreds of that small little place. It can actually be a catalyst for trying to do better in life, aiming to be something more than just the sum of your parts. And when you're from a small town, you have a sense of awe at the wider world around you that (I hope) never really leaves, no matter how long you might end up in a big city or just traveling around, seeing what's out there. I know that, for my sister and brother-in-law and I, we stayed pretty much on Canal Street in the Big Easy in terms of where we went sight-seeing, and while we saw a lot I'm sure we didn't see everything there is to see in New Orleans. When I went to New York in 1997, my high-school drama club got to see the big skyscrapers of Manhattan, but we steered clear of Brooklyn (not yet a hipster paradise). Brooklyn is where one of my idols, Woody Allen, was born, and in Eric Lax's brilliant biography he writes about how Allen (the quintesential New York film-maker) first encountered Manhattan from the relative distance of his neighborhood and how, even though he lived in Manhattan for several decades, he was always in awe of all that it had to offer. I hope, if I ever get to live in a big city (or even a moderate-sized one), that I never get so used to it that I lose that newcomer's sense of awe.
But if I'm to remain a small-towner (like John Mellancamp, perhaps, though with less ex-supermodel wives), I could always get active in local activities such as "teach kids to read!" and "keep the Muslims out!" There is something to the notion that small towns, far from being Andy Taylor-supervised Mayberrys of civic restraint and respect, are actually hotbeds for the sort of intolerance that fuels the figures Ray Davies pokes fun at (or does he?) in this song. The Village Green Preservation Society is shorthand for keeping the past alive at the cost of the present and future. It's a town that has a Civil War monument (believe me, every town in the South has one) and a Hardee's or two. It's a town that begrudgingly welcomes outsiders to do the jobs we don't want to do, but will be damned if those same outsiders can mingle with us in our houses of worship or date our daughters. In the case of the song, the things that the society opposes (Mickey Mouse, among other things) are comical, but the point isn't: small towns can be stultifying and toxic to anyone who dares to be different, even if that difference is simply the desire to get the hell out.
Sometimes, in my darker moods, I feel a little like Jimmy Stewart in It's A Wonderful Life, stuck in Bedford Falls despite every effort to get out (and I don't get Donna Reed as a consolation prize, either). But I have been too harsh on my fellow Walhallians in the past, and Lord knows I ain't walking on water myself. I think that the small-town mentality (be wary of strangers, keep a sharp eye on what's yours, never compromise what's right) can be beneficial, if it's not used maliciously. I could be full of hot air, of course, but I think that I'm lucky to come from a small town, and equally lucky to have seen something of the outside world (even if it's plastic penises). If I ever get to live in a big city, I'll have to discard some of the things that make me a small-town boy. But I hope I retain that sense of awe, even if it's just for a trip to the Big Easy with a return to sleepy Hogwaller awaiting me when it's over.
No comments:
Post a Comment