It’s Still All There

 

Forgive me. It’s late and I’ve had a whiskey, and I really shouldn’t. But.

Sunday I went up to Fargo for a funeral. It had been a while. Your sister texts you that your last aunt died, and you throw a bag in the car and head up the old road.

The fastest way to get to Fargo from Minneapolis is the interstate, a friction-free road.  You can cruise at 80 – okay, well, 79, if you want to avoid the Smokeys – and slide through the farmland. You don’t see anything but crops and tall signs for gas stations and franchise burger joints. Faster is not better. Take the old road, Highway 10. Until the interstate was built, this was the only way to get from here to there. It winds through towns with names that span high and low – Royalton, then Motley. It skirts the perimeter of some towns, drives through the downtowns of others. A few years ago the highway department decided to do Staples a favor, and run a bypass on the south side, so trucks wouldn’t always be grumbling down the main drag. In compensation, the city got state money for local road improvement, and if you pull off 10 to drive through the downtown, you see nice planters and banners and new sidewalks. But the movie theater is closed, and the paint on the sign for Lefty’s Bar is faded and peeling. You wonder if people miss the trucks and traffic. It was a sign that you were connected to the world. The bypass is only two blocks to the south. But traffic is fast and no one stops.

I stop. It’s a ritual: get gas at Staples. I don’t need to get gas; a tank can take me from my Minneapolis front door to my sister’s house. But it’s a good spot to stop, stretch, hit the head – and if there’s anything I learned from being the son of a gas station owner, it’s that you’d best buy some gas if you’re going to use the restroom. It’s only fair.

The gas station has a fair-sized C-store (convenience store, in the parlance) with a Subway franchise. They redid their coffee station. It’s now brewed on-demand. The owner had to make a calculation: the on-demand system will probably break down now and then, but the old coffee urns had to be tended hourly. Someone had to make the coffee. Someone had to make sure the coffee hadn’t been sitting on the burner for six hours. The new machine was spiffy. It had an option for bold. Of course, I went with bold. Why wouldn’t you?

The clerk at the counter was pushing late 30s, or a fine early 40s. The tips of her hair were tinged with watermelon hues, and she had a nose ring. Cheerful as a June dawn. I told her the windshield wiper fluid on the second island was almost dry, and she appreciated the information and turned around and told the other guy at the register. Young kid, beefy, wearing the company smock. She told me to have a nice day now! and I wished her the same.

The next stop was Verndale, a tiny town with a park on the edge of the highway. There’s a faded LIONS CLUB plaque on the chain-link fence. A playground for the kids: a dad was wrangling two happy tots. A WWI memorial with the names of the local boys who went over there. A flagpole dedicated to a citizen who died in WW2. The flag was at half-mast. I sat in the shelter by a building that houses the town’s first fire wagon, smoked a cigar, had my coffee, thought of the last time I was here, and all the times before that. Sometimes a train comes through while I’m there, and the ground shakes. The effort of bringing the goods from the coast makes rings appear in your coffee go-cup.

Back on the road. Cruise control at 69, kiss the breaks when you enter a town, slow your roll. An old gas station, no pumps. Bar with a beer sign. Hair salon with a font from a 1990s Windows package. Lions, Elks, Rotary. State Champs, 2003. World’s Largest Turkey statue. Divided highway. 65 again; floor it.

Pulled in around five. Fargo was Fargo – bustling, prosperous. A new 20-story office tower and hotel sits on Broadway. A few blocks away, a new apartment complex rises, six floors. Downtown thrives while the outlying neighborhoods boom; West Fargo is still building. New houses, new shops, new restaurants. Amazon built an enormous facility in the industrial park. The area by the airport has huge new cargo buildings. Every gas station, fast-food joint, restaurant, and retail place has a sign begging for workers.  My brother-in-law laments the difficulty of finding and retaining help at the store. 

We went out to eat at a restaurant that hadn’t existed eight months before. Loud calamitous din, fantastic food. No one wore masks, aside from a few. I asked my sister and brother-in-law how the whole mask-and-COVID thing was going. It’s not a pressing concern. So it seemed to me – the only time I noticed a mask was the face of the young Starbucks employee handing me an Americano from the drive-through window. 

It reminded me that the moment I left the Cities, I left the masked society behind. Everything felt like 2019. 

The next morning I went to the boneyard to visit my forebears. I’d forgotten that they’d laid out another cemetery next to the church’s graveyard, a military cemetery. All the headstones were identical, like Normandy, or Snelling, or Arlington. There were too many already – but surely many of those were vets, of which Fargo has many. They laid it out to accommodate many.

On the way back to the Cities I thought of some writers who are perfectly empowered to discuss the fate and foibles of the Fargos of America, but would probably twitch in their seat if you drove them around, first out of fear that Red Indians would come whooping over the horizon, and then out of dismay that none of this comported with their preconceptions. There’s the classic movie theater, still open, all the marquee bulbs flashing. There’s where the symphony plays. There’s the museum. There’s the central library. There’s the coffee shop with the rainbow flag. There’s the 30s office building with Moderne lines; there’s the dense housing; there’s the bright new big school, lavishly funded. There’s the big newspaper building. There’s the University. Oh, look, there’s the other University. There’s the historic architecture. Here’s the river. Beyond all this, endless grain and toil. 

But not in the old sense. My cousin gets Netflix in the cab of his tractor. The last time I saw him was at the VFW. It was a new outpost but had historical elements that kept up tradition. It was across the street from the funeral parlor where we’d both seen our fathers in the box. I learned a lot about the rural co-op he was in, and talked with his wife about family history. She’s the official historian, updates the genealogical sites about all the people who came here and carved straight lines in the dirt and grew things. It was a great night. I often feel like a lesser man because I knew all this, and I left. 

But there’s failure, and then there’s failure, and then there’s utter, uncomprehending, arrogant, fatuous, savior-complex failure.

Published in General
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  1. Ekosj Member
    Ekosj
    @Ekosj

    DrewInWisconsin, Oaf (View Comment):

    Ekosj (View Comment):

    The monumental hubris behind the Noah whatshisname tweet is just staggering. An entire population requires a new identity? And one that will be thrust upon them be a third party? That’s jaw-dropping.

    I really don’t think you want white people to develop a “white identity” and join in the identity politics fray. But that’s what these people seem to be pushing us towards.

    I think the assumption in San Fran is probably that the new “white identity” will involve sackcloth, ashes and self flagellation.   

    • #31
  2. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    James Lileks:

    We went out to eat at a restaurant that hadn’t existed eight months before. Loud calamitous din, fantastic food. No one wore masks, aside from a few. I asked my sister and brother-in-law how the whole mask-and-COVID thing was going. It’s not a pressing concern. So it seemed to me – the only time I noticed a mask was the face of the young Starbucks employee handing me an Americano from the drive-through window.

    It reminded me that the moment I left the Cities, I left the masked society behind. Everything felt like 2019.

    Fascinating stuff. There really are two Americas.

    • #32
  3. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Postmodern Hoplite (View Comment):

    Stad (View Comment):

    This post wopuld have made a great episode for The Diner.

    Here’s “I Am A Town” by Mary-Chapin Carpenter:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHAVjfURfrw

    I love this song, as I do everything Mary Chapin Carpenter has produced.

    I’m hoping she makes another appearance at the Newberry Opera House . . .

    • #33
  4. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Percival (View Comment):

    Rural Americans are to be fitted out with a new identity? I’m sure they will be thrilled beyond measure. Will there be a bureaucracy in charge of creating and assigning this new identity?

    And all this time I thought the problem of those operating with a confused identity were the city folks.

    • #34
  5. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    Rural Americans are to be fitted out with a new identity? I’m sure they will be thrilled beyond measure. Will there be a bureaucracy in charge of creating and assigning this new identity?

    And all this time I thought the problem of those operating with a confused identity were the city folks.

    Correct.

    • #35
  6. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    The Reticulator (View Comment):
    Batcher’s V Store used to advertise on the Wadena radio station.  (I’m pretty sure it was a V, but I never knew what the V stood for)

    It was a common term, and all I can think of is “Variety.”

    Great recollections; nice to know someone else has memories of the old road. 

    Verndale:  It’s a speed trap.

    Still is. There’s usually a highway patrol car in the church parking lot. 

    Between Verndale and Wadena is the sign for Oink Joint Road

    I always give it a thumbs-up when I pass.

    You forgot to mention the statue of the dog by the place that’s run kennels for 50 years. So did I, of course.

    • #36
  7. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    Thanks for all your kind comments, by the way.

    • #37
  8. RandR (RdnaR) Member
    RandR (RdnaR)
    @RandR

    Noah Smith’s biggest problem is that he has never been outside a city or met and talked with anyone from outside the city or read or seen sources not of the city. So, like the cartographers and early reports about the New World, he fills up the unknown space with monsters and strange peoples, using the only source of “facts” he has, his fear-filled imagination. So has it been, so will it ever be.

    • #38
  9. Django Member
    Django
    @Django

    Made me think of this song. 

    • #39
  10. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    England is very much the same as us. Their rural areas are populated with wonderful villages in which people have the freedom to be themselves, away from the conformity-enforcing cities. I’ve been watching a wonderful series on Amazon Prime that tours quite a few of them. It’s life as it should be. :-) 

    • #40
  11. DrewInWisconsin, Oaf Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Oaf
    @DrewInWisconsin

    MarciN (View Comment):

    England is very much the same as us. Their rural areas are populated with wonderful villages in which people have the freedom to be themselves, away from the conformity-enforcing cities. I’ve been watching a wonderful series on Amazon Prime that tours quite a few of them. It’s life as it should be. :-)

    It’s almost as if they’re proud of their villages, whereas we’re embarrassed by ours.

    At least, our elite class is. I’m not. I find small towns and villages to be wonderful, charming, and very, very diverse.

    And now that’s a subject that I suspect could be expanded on. Are the urban areas that consider themselves achievements in diversity actually capitals of conformity? Is real diversity to be found in the patchwork landscape of flyover country?

     

    • #41
  12. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    DrewInWisconsin, Oaf (View Comment):
    And now that’s a subject that I suspect could be expanded on. Are the urban areas that consider themselves achievements in diversity actually capitals of conformity? Is real diversity to be found in the patchwork landscape of flyover country?

    Definitely.

    • #42
  13. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    DrewInWisconsin, Oaf (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

    England is very much the same as us. Their rural areas are populated with wonderful villages in which people have the freedom to be themselves, away from the conformity-enforcing cities. I’ve been watching a wonderful series on Amazon Prime that tours quite a few of them. It’s life as it should be. :-)

    It’s almost as if they’re proud of their villages, whereas we’re embarrassed by ours.

    At least, our elite class is. I’m not. I find small towns and villages to be wonderful, charming, and very, very diverse.

    And now that’s a subject that I suspect could be expanded on. Are the urban areas that consider themselves achievements in diversity actually capitals of conformity? Is real diversity to be found in the patchwork landscape of flyover country?

     

    The cityfolk in England and America are a humorless bunch of ninnies and scolds. I’m pleased to report that in the backwoods of England and America, a sense of humor still lives. 

    • #43
  14. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    MarciN (View Comment):
    The cityfolk in England and America are a humorless bunch of ninnies and scolds. I’m pleased to report that in the backwoods of England and America, a sense of humor still lives. 

    It’s a mixed bag in both places.

    • #44
  15. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    Imagine what could be done with a federal department for identity dispensing – we could issue them with SSNs. We could even randomize genders so kids wouldn’t feel pressure to default to the simplistic primary sex characteristic assumptions that are such a burden to so many. 

     

    • #45
  16. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    TBA (View Comment):

    Imagine what could be done with a federal department for identity dispensing – we could issue them with SSNs. We could even randomize genders so kids wouldn’t feel pressure to default to the simplistic primary sex characteristic assumptions that are such a burden to so many.

    And maybe we could use them for things like voting to make sure people were citizens? Nah, that’s just silly.

    • #46
  17. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    One man, One vote has brought ruin to America. 

    The reality is, a nation is more than a mob of individuals (something libertarians don’t get either). It is families and communities. We have robbed smaller communities of an equal voice because they are not jammed full of people. 

     

    • #47
  18. DrewInWisconsin, Oaf Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Oaf
    @DrewInWisconsin

    And this Twatter thread puts a nifty bow on it.

    • #48
  19. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Bartholomew Xerxes Ogilvie, Jr. (View Comment):

    My wife and I grew up in smallish cities in the Carolinas, and after we got married we moved to a five-acre piece of land in a rural county outside a town with a population of 3000. Like a fish that never notices the water it swims in, I have to admit I often don’t really see where I live; I just go through my daily patterns and live my life, not really considering what I have and take for granted.

    It’s nice to be reminded once in a while how extraordinarily lucky I am, and how sorry I feel for people who don’t get it.

    It’s not just luck, it’s also planning and deliberate action.  Lots of people don’t HAVE TO live in big dumb cities, but they CHOOSE to.  They could choose otherwise.

    • #49
  20. DrewInWisconsin, Oaf Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Oaf
    @DrewInWisconsin

    If you read other crapola written by that Noah Smith person, you come to understand that his vision for America is an America that has gone entirely woke. Where woke is the chief religion of the United States, having gotten that way mainly by wearing everyone down with overbearing woke nonsense until they just give up and accept it. Woke, he insists, will become the main worldview of even the most isolated villages, because social media allows it to spread to every corner of the nation.

    If he sounds like a creepy cultist, perhaps he is.

    • #50
  21. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    DrewInWisconsin, Oaf (View Comment):

    If you read other crapola written by that Noah Smith person, you come to understand that his vision for America is an America that has gone entirely woke. Where woke is the chief religion of the United States, having gotten that way mainly by wearing everyone down with overbearing woke nonsense until they just give up and accept it. Woke, he insists, will become the main worldview of even the most isolated villages, because social media allows it to spread to every corner of the nation.

    If he sounds like a creepy cultist, perhaps he is.

    Does he not know that Wokism makes people unhappy?

    • #51
  22. DrewInWisconsin, Oaf Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Oaf
    @DrewInWisconsin

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):

    DrewInWisconsin, Oaf (View Comment):

    If you read other crapola written by that Noah Smith person, you come to understand that his vision for America is an America that has gone entirely woke. Where woke is the chief religion of the United States, having gotten that way mainly by wearing everyone down with overbearing woke nonsense until they just give up and accept it. Woke, he insists, will become the main worldview of even the most isolated villages, because social media allows it to spread to every corner of the nation.

    If he sounds like a creepy cultist, perhaps he is.

    Does he not know that Wokism makes people unhappy?

    No, . . . no resistance to wokism makes people unhappy. You need to learn to love Woke.

    Which may take a few sessions in Room 101, but you’ll get there eventually.

    • #52
  23. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    DrewInWisconsin, Oaf (View Comment):

    If you read other crapola written by that Noah Smith person, you come to understand that his vision for America is an America that has gone entirely woke. Where woke is the chief religion of the United States, having gotten that way mainly by wearing everyone down with overbearing woke nonsense until they just give up and accept it. Woke, he insists, will become the main worldview of even the most isolated villages, because social media allows it to spread to every corner of the nation.

    If he sounds like a creepy cultist, perhaps he is.

    Sounds like he’s a playground bully. 

    • #53
  24. David Foster Member
    David Foster
    @DavidFoster

    The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences of men. The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized societies groups come into existence founded upon what is called sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing that is really narrow is the clique….The men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul, and their narrowness is a narrowness of spiritual coherence and contentment like that which exists in hell.

    –G K Chesterton

    • #54
  25. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Bartholomew Xerxes Ogilvie, Jr. (View Comment):

    My wife and I grew up in smallish cities in the Carolinas, and after we got married we moved to a five-acre piece of land in a rural county outside a town with a population of 3000. Like a fish that never notices the water it swims in, I have to admit I often don’t really see where I live; I just go through my daily patterns and live my life, not really considering what I have and take for granted.

    It’s nice to be reminded once in a while how extraordinarily lucky I am, and how sorry I feel for people who don’t get it.

    It’s not just luck, it’s also planning and deliberate action. Lots of people don’t HAVE TO live in big dumb cities, but they CHOOSE to. They could choose otherwise.

    I don’t think it would ever occur to them. 

    • #55
  26. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    DrewInWisconsin, Oaf (View Comment):

    And this Twatter thread puts a nifty bow on it.

    “Dude! the Man is stealing my lunch money!” 

    • #56
  27. DrewInWisconsin, Oaf Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Oaf
    @DrewInWisconsin

    David Foster (View Comment):

    The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences of men. The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized societies groups come into existence founded upon what is called sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing that is really narrow is the clique….The men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul, and their narrowness is a narrowness of spiritual coherence and contentment like that which exists in hell.

    –G K Chesterton

    That is wonderful! I’m saving that. It describes something I’ve long tried to put into words.

    I grew up in a tiny town, and I have repeatedly defended it for the way people tolerated each others’ differences — even embraced them. Because as Chesterton notes: “our companions are chosen for us.” There aren’t really enough people to create any sort of homogeneous group of particular types. I have joked that our high school didn’t have any cliques because it wasn’t big enough. Rather the entire school was one big clique. The nerds, the jocks, the band geeks, the brains, or the stoners weren’t really separate groups. The Venn Diagram that describes them would look like a single circle.

    • #57
  28. lowtech redneck Coolidge
    lowtech redneck
    @lowtech redneck

    Like NeverTrumpism, susceptibility to Wokism almost always seems to correlate with anti-Southern bigotry.

    • #58
  29. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    DrewInWisconsin, Oaf (View Comment):

    David Foster (View Comment):

    The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences of men. The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized societies groups come into existence founded upon what is called sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing that is really narrow is the clique….The men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul, and their narrowness is a narrowness of spiritual coherence and contentment like that which exists in hell.

    –G K Chesterton

    That is wonderful! I’m saving that. It describes something I’ve long tried to put into words.

    I grew up in a tiny town, and I have repeatedly defended it for the way people tolerated each others’ differences — even embraced them. Because as Chesterton notes: “our companions are chosen for us.” There aren’t really enough people to create any sort of homogeneous group of particular types. I have joked that our high school didn’t have any cliques because it wasn’t big enough. Rather the entire school was one big clique. The nerds, the jocks, the band geeks, the brains, or the stoners weren’t really separate groups. The Venn Diagram that describes them would look like a single circle.

    I love this quote as well. It surprises me that Chesterton could detect this phenomenon related to cliques in his time period. He was really remarkable. Makes me feel solid on my comment #34.

    • #59
  30. CuriousKevmo Inactive
    CuriousKevmo
    @CuriousKevmo

    Moved out of the city to a rural area in the mountains.  Haven’t regretted it a bit.  I am surprised to find that I’m not feeling nostalgia for any aspect of my old life either.  I thought I’d miss some of the cultural aspects and maybe a few restaurants but nope, 4 years in and my life is infinitely better.

     

    • #60
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