It's Junky Town - But It's My Town

I rolled into town just as I have a thousand other times, coasting down from the current speed limit in my car or truck. Heading for my garage and my own little piece of paradise. And like all the other times, I ask myself why? Why live in the midst of the accumulating heaps of salvaged car and truck parts, scavenged and scraped, with the remains cast aside to host the weeds and shelter whatever small animals are looking for a home. Why live in a town where the only positive growth rate is in ramshackled houses and unmanaged vacant property and cemetary plots. Where every view in any direction is populated by the individual expressions of "my property rights" and the testimony of a philosophy that says "I want it all now; but I can't afford any of it yet". And it's not limited to the city limits boundaries. Even the major highways choking traffic down through town are being lined with ranchettes and hobby farms. It's a ground-swell of momentum towards helpless and hapless mediocrity and ambling aimless vacuous senseless posing. It's no longer about managing a burgeoning community of common interests powered by an advancing railroad and an expanding agricultural economy. It's no longer about bettering one's self. It's all about being yourself - whoever that is. To paraphrase the Pogo line, "I have seen the enemy, and he is me."

So, where does that leave me? Pockets empty of solutions? Maybe for now, but I haven't given up yet. I can still walk on the same sidewalk where I learned to ride my bicyle as a small boy and walk atop the remaining portions of the rock fence built by the WPA to surround the city park they had built for the community. For themselves. I can still go in the post office building and wonder at the Jerry Bywaters mural depicting the changing times of the early 20th century and the areas economic engines driving a sense of progress and hope. There must be value in that brand of nostalgia. There must be a spark in that rubbish pile. There must be a useful part in that junk heap. A building block.