Your friend Jim George thinks you'd be a great addition to Ricochet, so we'd like to offer you a special deal: You can become a member for no initial charge for one month!
Ricochet is a community of like-minded people who enjoy writing about and discussing politics (usually of the center-right nature), culture, sports, history, and just about every other topic under the sun in a fully moderated environment. We’re so sure you’ll like Ricochet, we’ll let you join and get your first month for free. Kick the tires: read the always eclectic member feed, write some posts, join discussions, participate in a live chat or two, and listen to a few of our over 50 (free) podcasts on every conceivable topic, hosted by some of the biggest names on the right, for 30 days on us. We’re confident you’re gonna love it.
Beautifully written MFR, and I happen to live and love the small town I live in.
Thank you, Midge!
Boy I hope the ignorant, backward, creationist rednecks remembered to overcharge their betters for absolutely everything.
Quoted because I can only like it once. Also because I might have a followup on it later.
Eh, it’s not overcharging if your guests are paying for convenience amidst congested crowds ;-)
Totalityville did not anticipate outside visitors – except, I guess, relatively familiar outsiders from the nearby countryside. Their festivities were more about Totalitivilians celebrating amongst themselves, rather than leaving town to join the madding crowd miles down the highway where totality would last a half-minute longer. So it was a normal municipal event, rather than a tourist trap.
I have very little reason to suppose that we were the only total outsiders visiting – after all, what are the odds that we thought of it, but no-one else did? But not enough of us outsiders descended upon the town for Totalitivilians to have to change their usual habits for summertime municipal festivities.
Wonderful. Thank you.
Hey, I found it!
Wonderfully evocative, @midge! Wish I had been there (instead of in the back parking lot for an 80% partial eclipse)!
I like the tumbleweed for 12 gp.
After skimming that Atlantic article you referenced, I am so pissed I can’t see straight.
But your piece is wonderful. I’m from Appalachia, and the snobbery and bigotry of suburbanites toward rural America makes me—laugh!
I say suburbanites, not urbanites, because I’m struck by how much more cities and rural areas have in common with each other than either has in common with suburbia. The cream, the money, the snobbery rise to the suburbs. Up here in the mountains, we can wear our work clothes all day, go shopping in’em–and nobody looks twice. Same thing in a city like NY. If I were to wear my barn clothes on the street in Wayne Pa., let alone try to enter a store, someone would probably call security.
Racial bigotry? You see more mixed race couples, and babies, here than you do in an area like the Main Line (to name the wealthy suburban sprawl I know best). And no one looks twice.
Religious fundamentalism? ‘Fraid churches here are no better populated–no,actually, less populated–than the wealthy status-marker Presbyterian and Episcopal churches of the Main Line (but then, you’d expect people to show more interest down there, since they don’t let just anybody in..)
We bumpkins also seem to have a lot more tolerance for physical diversity. When I venture to the Main Line, I’m struck by how thin everybody is. You gotta look that way. Not up here; we’ve got plenty of people who require mechanized chairs to get around–and even if not that obese, virtually no adults are thin. Oh, and if you’ve outlasted your teeth, we can handle that too. If even one of the many jagged toothed, , very large, overall clad gents I number among my intelligent, charming friends were to stroll down a suburban street, well, the area would probably go on lockdown.
Suburbanites’ attitude toward rural America: Total eclipse of the heart.
Hypatia, that should be another OP in itself. Wonderful.
Even if you’re not rich or cozy with elite powerbrokers, you can spend your life living in suburbia, thinking of it as the normal. I’ve lived in suburbia nearly all my life, especially when I consider that even cities and “rural” areas have corridors of relative “suburbia”, which I somehow end up in. And there are things I like about suburbia: I am very much not a city girl. I don’t thrive on all the congestion, noise, and bustle. We’re stuck in a city for now, but during the brief time when we thought we could pull up stakes and move cross-country to some small town, our first instinct was to check that whether likely small towns were “suburban” enough to host a classical-music scene, a scene which requires not just musically literate people, but enough of them close enough together to form a critical mass – something that’s just easier in more densely-populated areas, irrespective of how refined the musical tastes of those in the hinterlands might be.
True. Fitness and teeth. Especially the teeth. The habit of appearing well-kept to others – with well-kept selves, children, and homes – has much good in it. Keeping up appearances often keeps up more than just appearances. But it cannot help its risk of self-parody. Dunno if you’ve ever seen the comedy “Keeping Up Appearances” (a British comedy, so they’re a bit more relaxed about weight and teeth) but it nails the absurdity you allude to.
A great family moment, Midge. Thanks for another piece of clear-eyed but sympathetic cultural coverage.
In my generation of kids, there was something of that sense of cosmic awe and wonder, if decidedly much more second hand, in shared viewing of live coverage of space launches.
(It seems funny or crazy now that every single launch attempt from 1961 to about 1964 led to regular classes being cancelled or postponed in elementary and secondary schools across America as big, heavy black and white TV sets were wheeled to many of the classrooms to see history in the making.)
Families made popcorn and stayed up, sometimes even up to daring hours like ten pm if needed!
I thought NBC’s Frank McGee and Roy Neal were the absolute best when it came to explaining what was happening, and going to happen with the launches.
It was always exciting to sit with two or three other classes and watch the TV the teacher had brought from home so we could watch the rockets. The picture was snowy because of the rabbit ear antenna but you could hear what was going on and that was pretty good.
Thanks for bringing this memory back.
Great post Midge. A friend of my sister was on her way from Chattanooga to Sweetwater, TN to see the eclipse there. She posted a picture on her Face Book page. Sitting in stopped traffic on I-75. Apparently, everyone from Atlanta was trying to do the same thing. :)
My sis lives in Walland, TN. She and a buddy relaxed in a pond near her house, drank Margaritas and watched the event. Had a wonderful time and no traffic.
One of the downchecks for Colorado when we decided to relocate from the big city was that everybody was so…healthy!
Bet you enjoy the movie October Sky almost as much as I do.
Such a lovely post, @midge ! So very glad that you and your family had fun, and it sounds like one of those days you’ll look back on fondly for many years.
Sarcasm aside, this hits home for me. I went to law school in a small town an hour away from the nearest airport. (Those airports had one runway, six gates, and a food court that was a vending machine.) The town itself was rather nice, and I got to know some people who lived there. The owner of the ice cream store and I became friends, and I tutored some of the high school kids. The university itself is also rather special: steeped in history, with a lot of strong traditions dating back over a hundred years, and a student body that passionately loves the school.
At any rate, when my dad came for graduation, he commented that he never would have had reason to see the plae – which he thought was really special – if I hadn’t gone to school there.
Back in 2015, I decided to do a destination half marathon in 2016. In lots of searching, I found one that was billed as “America’s prettiest half marathon,” and it also had events tied to it – bourbon tastings, Thoroughbred pettings, a swing dance party. The race also featured local products (Sword, which is a better version of Gatorade, local craft beer, etc.) to showcase what this small city had to offer.
I had never even been to the state, but the whole thing sounded like such fun, so the first non-family vacation I took in six years was to this random place in middle America. It was gorgeous, completely different from Boston, and the race was really an excuse for the people who put it on to show off Lex. Some of my friends thought I was out of my mind. “You’re going to Kentucky for vacation?” But… it was like what you described at the eclipse: a lovely part of America that I would otherwise not see.
Getting out of the city bubble is good for the soul.
Oh Midge . . .
I’m just recovering from the adventure two states away to experience ‘totality’ and am waaay behind on my Ricochet notices. You did it right! Your account was so similar to ours that I kept thinking we must have been in the same place, but our situation didn’t have a pond :) Oh. And no firecrackers.