I treasure Wendell Berry’s work and have since I was a kid who read The Unsettling of America. One of my favorite scenes in his Port Williams series was when the river was flooding and people were worried about two old bachelors who lived in an area prone to flooding, so they got together a rescue team and fed out rope attached to boat in the flood to get near enough to the old men to find out if they were safe. “Are you okay, “ they shouted into the storm. During a lull, they heard the old men shout back. “We’re okay.”
And how about Garrison Keillor and Lake Wobegone? Or is it too soon?
I am also a fan of William Least Heat Moon, and his Prairyerth: A Deep Map, where he explores intimately and in great detail a small Midwest county. It doesn’t get more local than that.
I could write volumes about my little town, er, village. It’s got a feisty history. Back in the late ‘40s, the state legislature passed a law that allowed slot machines and hard liquor sales if a place had 125 residents and incorporated as a city, so they incorporated our “city.” Since we are ten miles off the main (and realistically, the only) north south road in the state, a little settlement at the junction of our road and the the north south highway thought they deserved a shot a slot machines and liquor sales to meet the needs of the traveling public. In some dark, smoke-filled room somewhere, a plan was hatched to annex the little settlement to our “city” via a ten mile long, one foot wide easement. (I am told the easement is still in effect.) The arrangement was even noted nationally by Life Magazine in the early ‘50s.
I also know the story of how a Model T Ford pickup ended up in our river (it’s still there), about the soft coal seam early residents used for home heating, and the location of the remains an ancient potato storage cellar back when our valley grew produce for gold rush miners. I know where a family and their goats lived in a hand dug cave and no one knew who they were other than as the goat people.
The Scottish family who settled the homestead where my house stands had several sons who left home during the Great Depression to find work. One son joined the Army Air Corps. Another went to work for Morrison-Knudsen, a locally based construction company that did projects around the world, including Hoover Dam. The son who worked for MK was sent to Wake Island to help build an airfield as part of a government contract to build airbases on American possessions in the Pacific. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese attacked Wake Island and the 900 civilian employees of MK helped the US Marines defend the island until it was finally invaded. Most of the men spent the rest of the war in pow camps and the son on Wake Island survived the war. The brother in the Army Air Corps died and is buried in the Philippines.
And we have a great literary tradition around here. Tara Westover grew up in eastern Idaho, Vardis Fisher was the Cormac McCarthy of the ‘30s to the ‘60s. Kim Barnes from northern Idaho continues to make us proud with her novels and non-fiction memoirs. And Ernest Hemingway is buried in Ketchum, Idaho, where he killed himself.
And until he died a few years ago, Paul Revere of Paul Revere and the Raiders, lived five miles down the road from me.
Don’t tell me big cities are the places where all the interesting things happen, not when I live in a town one foot wide and ten miles long.
Amazing stories! A family with goats living in a hand dug cave! Wow. I love how every small town has those characters that we just take for granted--oh, yeah, the goat people--until you try to explain them to someone else and they’re like, what?!?!
So much truth in this essay. I can't imagine writing about a place that I haven't lived in, or at least have had a connection that makes it feel as if I had lived there. I grew up in a small town but lived for several years in a big city, and now I'm living in an average (but growing) city. But the stories/novel I'm working on now all occur in a fictional small town, usually one that's in decline. Life can be quite raw when you know your town is dying.
Thanks, Marie. It is a painful thing to live in a place that's dying. But also in a place that's changing in any way, which places always are. It makes you feel like the ground is shifting under your feet.
I love that idea of the ground shifting under my feet. And it’s apt because I used to live in the San Francisco Bay Area where I experienced my share of earthquakes 😁
If I used anything other than "like"/thumbs, I'd use a heart about how I felt about your post.
Aw, thanks, Sandy. ❤️❤️❤️
I treasure Wendell Berry’s work and have since I was a kid who read The Unsettling of America. One of my favorite scenes in his Port Williams series was when the river was flooding and people were worried about two old bachelors who lived in an area prone to flooding, so they got together a rescue team and fed out rope attached to boat in the flood to get near enough to the old men to find out if they were safe. “Are you okay, “ they shouted into the storm. During a lull, they heard the old men shout back. “We’re okay.”
And how about Garrison Keillor and Lake Wobegone? Or is it too soon?
I am also a fan of William Least Heat Moon, and his Prairyerth: A Deep Map, where he explores intimately and in great detail a small Midwest county. It doesn’t get more local than that.
I could write volumes about my little town, er, village. It’s got a feisty history. Back in the late ‘40s, the state legislature passed a law that allowed slot machines and hard liquor sales if a place had 125 residents and incorporated as a city, so they incorporated our “city.” Since we are ten miles off the main (and realistically, the only) north south road in the state, a little settlement at the junction of our road and the the north south highway thought they deserved a shot a slot machines and liquor sales to meet the needs of the traveling public. In some dark, smoke-filled room somewhere, a plan was hatched to annex the little settlement to our “city” via a ten mile long, one foot wide easement. (I am told the easement is still in effect.) The arrangement was even noted nationally by Life Magazine in the early ‘50s.
I also know the story of how a Model T Ford pickup ended up in our river (it’s still there), about the soft coal seam early residents used for home heating, and the location of the remains an ancient potato storage cellar back when our valley grew produce for gold rush miners. I know where a family and their goats lived in a hand dug cave and no one knew who they were other than as the goat people.
The Scottish family who settled the homestead where my house stands had several sons who left home during the Great Depression to find work. One son joined the Army Air Corps. Another went to work for Morrison-Knudsen, a locally based construction company that did projects around the world, including Hoover Dam. The son who worked for MK was sent to Wake Island to help build an airfield as part of a government contract to build airbases on American possessions in the Pacific. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese attacked Wake Island and the 900 civilian employees of MK helped the US Marines defend the island until it was finally invaded. Most of the men spent the rest of the war in pow camps and the son on Wake Island survived the war. The brother in the Army Air Corps died and is buried in the Philippines.
And we have a great literary tradition around here. Tara Westover grew up in eastern Idaho, Vardis Fisher was the Cormac McCarthy of the ‘30s to the ‘60s. Kim Barnes from northern Idaho continues to make us proud with her novels and non-fiction memoirs. And Ernest Hemingway is buried in Ketchum, Idaho, where he killed himself.
And until he died a few years ago, Paul Revere of Paul Revere and the Raiders, lived five miles down the road from me.
Don’t tell me big cities are the places where all the interesting things happen, not when I live in a town one foot wide and ten miles long.
Amazing stories! A family with goats living in a hand dug cave! Wow. I love how every small town has those characters that we just take for granted--oh, yeah, the goat people--until you try to explain them to someone else and they’re like, what?!?!
As one of the "Gays Against Fun" footnoted in this article, I can attest that her statement about the types of gay people is extremely accurate.
Thanks, Randy.
So much truth in this essay. I can't imagine writing about a place that I haven't lived in, or at least have had a connection that makes it feel as if I had lived there. I grew up in a small town but lived for several years in a big city, and now I'm living in an average (but growing) city. But the stories/novel I'm working on now all occur in a fictional small town, usually one that's in decline. Life can be quite raw when you know your town is dying.
Thanks, Marie. It is a painful thing to live in a place that's dying. But also in a place that's changing in any way, which places always are. It makes you feel like the ground is shifting under your feet.
I love that idea of the ground shifting under my feet. And it’s apt because I used to live in the San Francisco Bay Area where I experienced my share of earthquakes 😁
And a lot of gentrification!