Freedom isn’t for free, and so is agrarian society

Driving with Nicole in nearby Peru, Illinois the other day, we listened to a brief broadcast announcing the news of town residents who had recently passed away.

“This is the kind of place where you live now, baby,” says Nicole, “They provide obituaries of the local dead over the radio.”

In addition, this part of America is BEAUTIFUL.  Can’t believe that before now I’ve never spent more than a couple of weeks away from major metropolitan areas.  We drove out of California on Tuesday, June 26.  We passed through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri and arrived in Deerpark Township, Illinois on Saturday, June 30. 

Despite having been here many times in the past, I’m still having good culture shock.  The sky is gigantic.  There are many places where you have to drive your car over bridges to cross rivers and large streams.  Little country towns, little country roads.  Endless miles of farmland, sunsets and sunrises.  Old falling down barns, brand new barns.  I love the Walmart.  In Los Angeles you would only find the peasant population at Walmarts, but here the Walmart is like the town square and everybody goes there.  I’ve already bought too many t-shirts from Walmart.

One negative is my new allergy, something in the dust or pollen.  Could never relate to people with allergies before this.   Since I arrived, a lot of the time I have, to some degree, been blinded by tears and suffocating with congestion.  Our friend Dixie suggested that I inoculate myself by daily ingesting the area’s locally produced honey, which I do now and gladly.

Another negative is scarcity of jobs, job hunting continues to be quite the challenge.  It is a blessing to be far, far away from the horror that my last job became, but the price is many hours in the Wi-Fi coffee shop scrolling through job postings on the internet.  If only I was a truck driver or an occupational therapist I could take my pick of opportunities.  Not much in the way of library or audio visual gigs.

Several weeks ago I thought that, just to keep busy, I could shoot and edit a video about the midnight showing of the new “Batman: The Dark Knight Rises” movie at the local theater.  I made some half-baked plans to interview folk as they stood in line and to ask them how they liked midnight shows in general.  In the end I lost my nerve.  I thought, “This is a small community and I’m probably more of a recognizable new entity than I realize.  The last thing I need is a reputation as the weird guy who sits in the Wi-Fi coffee shop all day and then videotapes people as they stand in line at the movie theater when the new super hero movies come out."  I just stayed home and cursed myself for my lack of boldness.

The next morning I joined my father-in-law for 5:00 a.m. coffee.  He notified me that a maniac had massacred a crowd of people at the midnight showing of the new “Batman” movie in Aurora, Colorado several hours earlier.  I think this may spell the end for midnight movies in small town America.  Most likely I’ve lost my chance to videotape interviews with folks standing line for such shows.  Nevertheless I am so very grateful to retain whatever anonymity I have here and to have avoided being branded as the freak with the video camera the night of the Batman movie midnight massacre.