Big City, Sleepless Nights

The Big City

Part 14 of 28

O! What I wouldn’t give for one decent night, my brain settled, nerves calm, adjusted, without rancor, instead of this persistent, nagging, uncomfortable, infernal inflammation! All the time with the nerves. They're like explosions, brain eruptions. Plus, not only have I wet the bed by tossing and turning, I've managed somehow to wet the pillow, the curtains, and towels in the drawer. What'd I ever do to deserve this? I'm also screaming, shrieking ... Where'd my precious life go with the sleepless nights? To sleep is nearly impossible, excluding my delirious daydreams through the day.

(I'm currently in the process of changing doctors, leaving our dear old family doctor for someone closer at hand in the Big City. I'm sure she's seen everything, but I'm still afraid I'll scare her off when I list my symptoms, the Big City driving me mad. But I'll try to soften the blow.




So I stand before you, my bitter cry giving real testimony to the indescribable absurdities and troubling realities of what the Big City can do to a person’s life, his possibilities and shattered nerves. I’ll hold my hand out. Look at it shake. I’m not “just doing that,” but my hands have a life of their own. And when I do sleep, I’m blubbering through the night, with whatever sleep so unsettled it feels like I'm awake. With tossing and turning, calling out to the saints to preserve us. I've bargained with the Powers That Be to take me, just give me one night of actual rest to redeem myself at long last from this horrible place.

O! What I wouldn’t give for one decent night, my brain settled and quiet, my nerves calm, adjusted, dependable, without rancor, instead of this inflammation. All the time with the inflammation! What'd I ever do to deserve this? Again, I say, I scream, I shriek, where'd my precious life go with the sleepless nights? I bet I haven’t slept in a year. To sleep is nearly impossible.

I stand before you, then, my bitter cry giving mute testimony to the indescribable absurdities and troubling (though unbelievable) realities of what the Big City can do to a person’s life, possibilities, and shattered nerves. I hold my hand out. Look at it shake! I’m not “just doing that,” the SOB at this point has a life of its own. And when I do sleep, they say I’ve been blubbering, with sleep so unsettled it’s like not sleeping at all; instead, I’m tossing and turning, calling out to the saints to preserve us, and I've been bargaining with the Powers That Be to take me, just give me one night’s sleep to fulfill a devil's deal.

I swear on Grandma’s heart that I've never had this level of difficulty back in the small town, where the biggest impediment to a good night’s sleep was the occasional squeakiness of the outhouse door. Just the slightest breeze might set it off, but just an ordinary brick from the foundation would prop it in the mud in such a way that it didn’t budge for years. That was reliability, a standard I had, and recommended to neighbors many times. I’d tell people how truthful I was like this: dependable as an outhouse brick in the mud, baby, an outhouse brick in the mud.
Now look at me, a full blown toilet just down the hall, shared with eight others who come and go at all hours of the night. Two or three old ones die off and two or three new ones sign the lease. What they died of, whether they deserved it or not -- and probably they did -- these are things no one speaks of. Who do you trust? As long as they’re not blaming me, I’m OK. I keep on living, don’t think they've missed that, and one of these nights it could be me, apparently shaving when I'm suddenly sliced ear to ear.

It’s tough to sleep no matter how you cut it. And then the furnace will die, and someone will have “borrowed” a blanket, and unknown friends will be illegally sleeping in the basement. And there's a crazy guy down there who can’t sleep so he’s beating the pipes, trying to jump start the heat; you can hear it three houses over. This Big City life is not real life in the truest sense of the word.

The Freeways Are Terrible

 

The Big City

Part 13 of 28

During my time in the Big City and all the traveling I have to do, I’ve gone from the greenest blushing newbie to something of a critic, and since then to fancying myself a city planner. I could show 'em how to do it! That’s sounds like a lot of boasting, but expertise works like that; the expertise bug hits this guy, this guy, and sometimes even me. Really, though, how hard would it have been to install some decent way of killing road-hogs?

There actually are a lot of good ideas from those of us with the city planning gene, with the biggest drawback being there’s a lot of stuff set firmly in place, and that looks like how it’s going to remain for decades; they say we just can’t change. Now, I have nothing against my fellow city planners from 100 years ago, 50 years ago, 25 years ago, or even those from the last few years. Yes, they failed miserably, but they gave it their all, and now thanks to their great failure we’re that much more behind the eight ball and in the ditch.

Do I take responsibility for any of this? I actually don't, and if you find someone who takes responsibility, those are the ones you should never listen to. The rest of us can dissect the situation, carefully making the incision, gently anesthetizing the patient and opening the various folds of fat around the carcass, looking for problems wherever they're found. And later, we'll sew it all back up and either throw our hands up in desperation, cashing in our chips because nothing can be done or working our healing magic, making things right that have been askew for decades.

The only responsibility I take is to admit the fact that had I been there, these various traffic jams on the freeway would’ve never happened. I would’ve recommended a wider road where bottlenecks are constant. Or a narrower road where hardly anyone goes. There's a mall or two where hoodlums hang out; I'd close those ramps entirely. If you can't keep your nose clean, we don't want to deal with you. The fact is, I can see the whole situation, not just half of it like so many of our uninformed city planners. I know what they say, with the gift of hindsight everyone’s a critic. But I'd just brush that off and take it a step further, fining the families of city planners from the past, or at the very least herding them together and banishing them from town, if there's an open lane for their deportation.

A lot of the freeway problems we have -- more cars 'round the clock than there’s room to keep them -- were put in place by functionaries at the highest level, the Feds. And the best you can say about them is “Cookie cutter!” They found a pattern that worked in one place, where basically five cars was a busy day, and foisted it off in various places around cities destined to have 10 times that. So now we’re bogged down in endless traffic jams, stacked like dominoes, just waiting to be tipped over and destroyed. I'm not sure what the penalty should be for them, although continuing to live in polite society is not among the options. So take your pick, banishment or death, whichever is most economical.

Big City Car Chases

The Big City

Part 12 of 28

Just a glimpse at my browsing history shows how I was briefly interested in car chases, but am now pretty much fed up with them. It started out I was watching every action-packed minute, then I started fast-forwarding through the many lulls in the action, then finally I was fast-forwarding through everything from start to finish to see how they met their fate.

Along the way I picked up a bit of trivia -- and I’m not sure of either sourcing or accuracy -- that a full 18% of car chase perps get away with it. Strangely, of all the chases I saw, 100% were captured, but they say a lot of chases are called off because of the greater danger to the public in pursuing it. In the ones I saw, there was no hope of escape. You would need the earth to open up and swallow the police, and so far that's never happened. But in real life, if you play it right and become a real public nuisance -- where it's more hazardous to chase the perp than letting him or her go -- that's all it takes to get away with it. (Although they still take down your license number and catch you in the early morning hours.)

Still, quite the lesson! I might not have ever been in trouble in school if I only knew how to maximize my wrongdoing. “You may as well let me dip your pigtails in the inkwell because if you don’t … Let’s just assume you appreciate having hair.” Pretty good lesson, the bigger the nuisance you are the more likely you’ll get away with it. Of course, it’s still hard to get away with it. And there's always the midnight knock on the door, a quick cuffing, taking you out in your jammies, how ya like THIS ride?

One of the benefits of watching car chases -- if you’re new to the Big City, and I’m relatively new -- is it teaches me the geography of the place. Plus, I’ve seen exits and ramps, twists and turns, that I haven’t got time to pay attention to when driving. The freeways are always clogged up pretty badly and if you take your eyes off the road for too long, you’re dead. Making any shortcuts you might find a moot point. Just the other day I saw a chase that ended in a neighborhood I have business in. It was great to see some familiar sights and a few shortcuts. I just don’t want to show up the same time as that guy, because he was badly lax with the standard road signals and rules.

There’s one compelling video on YouTube, and there’s no reason giving you the link because if you’re watching car chases it pops up so often that you’re tripping over it. A guy was in a chase, then got off the main drag but continued on, finding himself in the end blocked in a tiny parking lot that was also a dead end. This is the time for any reasonable person to say, “Clearly I’m not among the 18% who will get away. I’ll give up and try again some other day.” But that wasn’t his choice. He tried to squeeze past the last obstacles in his way, the fence and a police vehicle. When out popped the guns and the cops cut him down in his tracks. There aren’t a lot of shoot-outs to the death in chase videos, but this guy managed it. Sympathy to his family, if warranted. I hate seeing that one pop up all the time because I’ve already seen it three or four times. Warning, you can eat a whole bag of popcorn just watching this stuff.

Are you out there on the road? Keep your nose clean. Obey the rules. Don’t mistake the freeways for a playground. The rest of us want to live. The life you save might be mine. If you’re driving on your rims because you’re too stupid to pull over, you might want to look into life insurance. And so on and so forth. Don’t be stupid, because it’s obvious you are. The Big City hates you (1) but thanks you for the entertainment (2). It’s terrible to get any degree of pleasure in someone's wrongdoing, which is why I’m cutting back if I can.

I Fear Molestation

 

The Big City

Part 11 of 28

There’s nothing funny about the fear of molestation. As far as bad-ass crimes go, it’s classified with the hardest to overcome. Just the thought of it gives us the shakes. In part thanks to our upbringing, but of course thanks to our instincts for survival and avoiding pain; we know it has to be a bastard. And it's not just in the Big City, but the same fears are in the small town -- because anyone could jump out and do something and then it’s done. But the Big City has it over the small town, usually, because the threat’s always there, one molester after another.

My usual thought about everything is 'I’ll be OK.' Which I’m reluctant to sketch out, because it'll certainly put me in a bad light for being at my most calculating: ‘Please, if you're going to molest someone, take the next guy, but let an old burnt-out cinder like me pass.’ This is actually one of the glories of old age. By comparison, I am a has-been cinder, burnt out, too old to cut the mustard, and if anyone has choices to make, I’m obviously good for nothing and a reluctant last resort, like if you’re a molester and you’re dying and you simply have to fit in one more before arriving in Hell.

The wrench in the machine, though, is we have to go by the Big City standard. So you could be as old as the hills like me, and crustier than I ever expect to be, and if the perp is hopped up on the wrong combination of uppers, downers, and neutral substances -- vegging out can also put you in this frame of mind -- any creature would be susceptible to victimization. As unbelievable as it is, there’s still the possibility the molester would want me. I'd certainly be good enough if he were already delirious or in the death throes.

The main thing is, whatever it is, to be ready, and that’s why an in depth study of the Big City is so critical. Literally everywhere you go there's someone else you don’t know. Big, little, ugly, uglier. Demented, senseless, wasted, hopeless, ready for anything, rolling up a score, in some jaded state getting it on because he's not himself, and if he were it might be worse.

I'm presenting some good teachable moments in the graphic, which boils down to your stance. “I stand before you hopelessly inexperienced, a virtual innocent, never having pleased a single soul, more often than not given to uselessness, and if the truth be told, if you’re after me, it's bad news, because you’ve fallen low, you have no standards. What a remarkable past you may have had, that even this late in your life -- don’t think of yourself as a has-been, more like still a great person, only confused -- you have the ambition for socializing, but with what? A limp rag like me? You could stand here and do better in mere minutes and be proud of yourself, rather than lower yourself to my level -- a guy not proud but a loser."

OK, somehow I escaped that dreadful fate. But the Big City’s not always so easily swayed. You might have a strong self-image. Get rid of it. It’s better if you look like disease on two wobbly feet, if you want to escape, get on with your life, and share your favors elsewhere in a more gratifying, consensual way.

Twisting Toward Murder

The Big City

Part 10 of 28

All the characters are gathered for this perennial drama. They may have come from far away, even the ends of the earth. Or they may have come from right around here, the Big City. I’ll be direct and say that is where came from, right here in the Big City, because unless they’re missing several key chromosomes, there's very few characters like them back in the small town. Thank goodness, but now here I sit in the Big City, and this is what I’m surrounded with!? Right now there's a siren outside, maybe arson, maybe murder, could be mail fraud for all I know.

When I see a newborn baby, there’s something about that that gets me all sentimental, with a kind of warm feeling leading to optimism. Of course I know I won’t be around to change the child’s diapers and tend to cuts and bruises and steer that precious one straight down the primrose path. But in most cases, just being generous, he or she will turn out exactly like me, an honored member of society, someone who contributes, whether it’s a dime here or there to a worthy cause or some great societal legacy like this blog. But of course that doesn’t always happen.

I hate to dig into the sociology of it too much because there’s often a lot of tragedy involved. The FBI’s Top Ten Wanted List, they all started out young, too, and now what? They’re animals, hunted down like the vicious SOBs they are. Even they had a childhood. And had they only been born gorillas, they might’ve turned out halfway sane. Swinging from tree to tree, peeling bananas, mating in the veldt, beating their chest and protecting their turf. Which you don’t really have to be a gorilla to do, but you can get in trouble if those trees are in someone else's yard.

The way life works, I’ll give you two images, the blender and the mixmaster. Sort of the same, but blenders get a household job done fast and mixmasters (roads) are inert, depending only on the motorist to figure out the key to it and the key to success. Mixmasters in the Big City can be extremely complicated. When you first see a bunch of them stacked up with no clear rhyme or reason, you pull your hair out. But if you lived there, you’d have it down in no time. Then there’s blenders, put the fruit in and three seconds later it’s yogurt. Quite the contrast.

So what’s the cause of going from a bundle of joy to a glowering murderer standing over his prey with the smoking gun declaring his guilt? It’s a three-pronged thing, with the Big City constituting a sort of super prong. Something in his head is askew, something in his environment is askew, and no one taught him never to point a gun at another person in anger unless you’re prepared to use it. Which I guess he was prepared, but still it’s a situation askew. This is when the average perp runs, which is the best thing he can do. His chances of not being caught are slim, but they’re not none.

But I think the real lesson for a successful life has to be, Don’t be born in the Big City.

Bonnie & Clyde Types

The Big City

Part 9 of 28

Here we have a car that I likely would’ve given away, with all those bullet holes. As much as I'd love a car like it, it obviously saw its day, and had better days, like the day they drove it off the showroom floor. When they said, “This one's a beauty, a real nice model. Let's keep it in tiptop condition, and someday when it’s collectable, we’ll put it in a barn and only take it out to warm the engine, then back it goes. It’ll be worth a lot of money if the hood doesn’t fly up someday and ruin it. Which it won’t!”

Then it turned out to belong to Bonnie and Clyde -- making it eventually collectable anyway -- who got it so shot full of holes that their main goal wasn't to preserve it but to run for their lives. Of course Bonnie and Clyde lived in a time when you could get away (a relatively long time) robbing banks and shooting people. These days they would’ve been nailed five minutes after the first job.

But here in the Big City there's a lot of criminals who do get away with it for a long time. But they’re not as blatant and in the open as Bonnie & Clyde were. They’re holed away in an office, pulling the strings for a series of jobs by low-level thugs, criminal wanna-bes, and they’re doing jobs that spread their realm out like many tentacles. That’s how I picture the drug business. It’s not just one guy but a network, and you fit in the network -- a secretary, a guy who buys plastic bags, or a mule -- or you don’t. If you fit in, you prosper. If you don’t, skritch, the noose takes another guy by the neck. And they find you hanging from a tree, your DNA telling a mute but plain tale, this guy was a crook.

At this point in my life I’m not trying to be a crook and I’m not trying to be a hero. But the Big City’s obviously so completely rife with crime of every caliber that we could use a dozen super hero do-gooders out there cracking a few skulls. That'd be a good life, to be the hero. But I can see both sides. If it’s not hurting anyone, and in some cases actually helping people with glacoma eye pain, what’s the harm? And if the crimes are more or less technical, they themselves could be a crime against nature. Which is no good. But society has come along with certain dictates and, whether relevant to anything or not, we’re stuck with them. Say no more, I know. Mum’s the word. Let them shoot it out at city hall and every block from there to here, I’ll just sink out of sight and mind my own business.

My recommendation, for your own good avoid every criminal influence, whether genetic or not, and if you didn't avoid it, please go straight before it’s too late.

Big City Criminals' Backstory

The Big City

Part 8 of 28

This one has great interest to me because it’s rare to get in on the ground-loor of people’s lives. Usually when we get to them, whether in prison or old age, we have no idea what they went through. What was their journey? How'd they arrive as they did on death row, with a hideous smile and the vain hopes to carve just one swastika on the warden's back? What's the backstory?

But then there’s the rare case where you have not only the resources but the clearance to really get in there and study the quick disintegration that life sometimes manages -- evolution in hyper-drive -- that drops the whole enchilada, from juvvy hall all the way to the electric chair. For which I guess we can only thank the gods above, who know all but tell little. In this case they’ve shown plenty…

I will, however, cover it somewhat with a veil, because the families are still out there, ashamed as they rightly should be, for having raised two pea-brains like Dirk and Dingbat. And even by unleashing them among the other goofy-assed SOBs in the Big City we have, at least in a roundabout way, condemned their family as well. Because it’s true that no matter how bad you are there’s a back story, a system that failed you along the way. The idea that we’re always wholly responsible for our outcome is crap. Show me a thoroughbred and I’ll show you a breeder and trainer. And the same goes for every pernicious runt.

Dirk and Dingbat had their run of the Big City. Their story has been told a thousand times, not always with the same names. But it always essentially boils down to the same conclusion. Neither one was any good, but put together they were twice as bad. It would’ve been enough if each had acted on his own, Dirk without Dingbat or, if you prefer, Dingbat without Dirk. The only change I see is neither would’ve had the same bad influence of the other, and without a strong influence the situation might’ve been entirely different.

Let’s think how it might’ve been. Dirk with his obvious advantages might’ve gone in for his kindergarten physical. And instead of being drawn as he was later to a life of crime, have been inspired by the kindly physician and set an early goal for himself that he too would be a doctor. It’s true, doctors come from somewhere. They don’t just get old and pop into a fully blossomed doctor. I was talking with a doctor literally just yesterday about my downhill slide, being a few years older than the average person. And I had to think, a doctor, there but for the devil that could’ve been me. I wouldn’t have minded getting rich mapping veins or whatever he does. And cheerful, too! But forget about me, that could’ve been Dr. Dirk.

Then there’s Dingbat, a little green around the gills, with severe disadvantages, the other kids berating him mercilessly as Baby Hulk, etc., the kind of nasty nicknames we hate hearing. But when you’re a kid it seems to come with the territory. Again, thinking of me, I might’ve been Dr. Dingbat but for my lack of green skin and the fact that no one encouraged me to look into doctoring. They didn’t exactly say I’d never amount to anything. Whatever, it had to be even worse for the actual Dingbat.

Both were obviously disciplined, as seen in the graphic. The full extent of that, I guess we’ll never know, but we know the influence toward crime was even greater. This sad state of affairs led to a sad conclusion, as they became the terror of the Big City, and ended up, not vein-mapping doctors, but rock-pounding criminals, and took their place among the goofy-assed SOBs who do those sorts of things and end up tragically, slamming a wrench on someone's head or worse.

Dear Grandma Therapy Letter

 

The Big City

Part 7 of 28

The same thing happened to me that's happenedd to small town immigrants to the Big City through the ages. I got down in a funk, and had to go to one of the raging hyenas who sit in their ivory palace mental clinics just waiting for easy prey, a quick buck, from supposedly "counseling" us, tamping down our desires toward a popular uprising because we’re so desperate for the old ways.

And, yes, my eyes were closed to the situation, that’s how desperate I was. Then, like sheep to the slaughter -- They still slaughter sheep, right? I haven’t had a sheep and biscuit breakfast in 30 years -- the guy had me with the teary-eyed Big City therapy exercise of “writing home.” In dark moments of life like that I don’t fight back as I should. I wish I would’ve seen through it immediately and literally gone "full terrorist" on that guy’s office, which you can do and get away with it. Counselors love bragging to other counselors about clients who completely erupt and destroy their office. The main problem is that there’s very little you can do to piss off a counselor, so they win.

Anyway, the dude roped me into the simplest, stupidest technique -- what am I paying the guy for when I had to write my own letter -- the Dear Grandma letter they make you write. Since she was the main authority figure in my upbringing. And who could win me over, back to sanity, any more than Grandma? See what the Big City does? I sort of support the idea of writing to Grandma, but the idea that these worms forced me still rankles.

“Just pour out your heart and spirit,” the counselor went on, his straining weasel voice giving me the creeps, like someone or something that just slithered out of Eden, a snake from central casting if I ever met one. Yet with all that, the wool was still pulled over my eyes somewhat. It was a battle royale, really, as I saw the truth that I should reject The Big City, but I also knew that under the circumstances, Grandma’s house being moldy, pulled down and hauled to the dump, I had very little choice. “Go along to get along.” So I did my best, putting the letter in my own words, not copying out of a book:

"Dear Grandma, This is your old sonny boy here, hoping you haven’t forgotten me during your stay in the heavenly palaces. You probably haven’t. You may know more about me than I know about myself, from your perch above, so I’ll tell the truth. The counselor has narrowed down most of my trauma to the loss of our house. Remember, it was already very old. And the construction seemed to be a jumble. Starting like a small shed, then being built on over the years, whenever the mood struck our ancestors. It was always a patchwork. Weird cracks between pieces, and the wind would blow and separate everything even if just slightly. Those places where the roof didn’t join perfectly then took on water. Drizzle was no big deal to the better houses, but in your house it was Public Enemy No. 1. Then you and Grandpa gave up the ghost, leaving me as the caretaker/resident. On a limited income and with no knowledge of maintenance beyond patching the obvious. Which over time can be hard to catch up on. Well, eventually, the city came by and shut the place down, and came in with a court decree that I vacate, and finally carted it off to the dump wall by wall, everything from the floor to the roof, in that order.” My last tender words over the rubble were, 'It was nice while it lasted.' Which was a tribute to you and Gramps. Who probably could've done a better job maintaining the place when it was new."

Beware of The Big City

 The Big City

Part 6 of 28

I don’t give a lot of advice. Of course I’ve done it, but it’s never been anything too intrusive. Mostly just everyday advice that everyone should already know, so I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that if someone missed the basics of life. Plus, they’re just regular no-nothing people who are always happy to be taken by the hand and led down the primrose path.

There’s actually a lot of people who fall into that category that I’ll never meet. I think of that sometimes and worry how they'll make it. But I also see wisdom in just keeping my mouth shut. I can’t save everyone, so why should the others get advice and have their lives changed for the better? How's that fair to the ones I’ve never attempted to guide? Is life really just a matter of the luck of the draw? Those who happen to meet me are helped, but that extremely unlucky few are doomed. You’d think there'd be a better system.

Of course I am always happy to help. Ever since I was little I’ve had a helpful spirit. “Grandma," I said, "Grandpa said don’t stick your finger in the socket, it’ll kill you.” And she never did, however she did die a natural death later that try as I might I couldn’t steer her clear of. A guy can be very helpful and still not manage to save everyone. Which honestly is not really a mission of mine. I’ve been staying at a place just a little ways from the freeway, and I hate like hell hearing the tires squealing, cars flying silently over the embankment, and coming to a quick collision with people and buildings in the area. True story, first day I was in the Big City, someone collided midair with a guy’s shed.

I would’ve loved to sit down and discuss the near future with that driver. But again, I can’t be everywhere at once. If you’re reading this, though, that’s good, because I could very well be being used right now by the powers above to save your life. Which puts a lot of responsibility on my shoulders. What do you think? Your life is even now in my loving hands. And whether you believe me, that’s something I can only hope to be convincing enough to make happen.

Let me explore the case a little more. Let’s say you’re the average guy, clean-living, you love your family, but you’re in the small town and feel like you need to stretch out a bit, get some “leg-room” in life, be on your own, make your own decisions, and maybe pick up a few thrills along the way. I hope you don’t. I sincerely hope you decide for yourself to forget the thrills and merely live a good boring long life. (Just now I'm hearing a siren speed by, so somebody loves thrills.)

May I be more direct? Thrills aside, sir. If you come to the Big City, you will die from that decision. This is no joke. You believe I can’t call it like that? I will narrow the actual situation down before you. If you move to the Big City you will -- WILL -- die on the ninth day that you’re here, or sometime between the eighth day and a tenth day you'll never see. So if you come to the Big City, I implore you, leave sometime before the ninth day. I'd probably leave before the seventh day, because I might be off a couple days. And it'd be smarter to leave the fifth day just to be on the safe side, leave a little buffer. Though the third day, too, would be ideal, or even the second, or simply don’t come. You’d ultimately be better off if you just forgot it all together.

Beware, beware, beware of the Big City. It's so big that literally anything can go wrong. The sad truth of the matter is no one should live here. Right now everything's bigger and farther away, but if no one lived here that'd help shrink things and make it safer.

Yeah, Big City Strippers

 The Big City

Part 5 of 28

I’ve finally got something nice to say about the Big City. They do strippers like nobody’s business, whereas the last strippers I ever heard of in the small town came through when I was underage. A little more on that later.

Concerning the Big City, of course I'm shocked by nearly everything about it. The amount of land it consumes to house it. The great resources pumped into its daily life, seemingly commensurate with the immensity of its population. The nameless, faceless society it’s established for itself, which proves the adage that the more people there are, the harder it is -- even impossible -- to know everyone’s name. Although in some social settings even in the Big City I’ve noticed a few people do call me by name. Get deep enough into the flora and fauna of the Big City and you’ll notice a few debt collectors in every dark alley. Once you get an invitation to check in with them, they receive you graciously, call you by name and seem to know your history, Social Security numbers, etc. The downside about them is it always turns nasty.

So let’s hear it for the small town in this regard. Even the debt collectors back home sleep at night, and they’re happy enough if you give them an occasional fruit pie -- and this goes double if it’s one of Grandma’s recipes you’re exploiting -- to show you a few more days of grace.

The Big City has it over the small town in one regard, as I mentioned, strippers. The last time strippers came through the small town was the centennial, and they were shut down after the wrestling team (minors) held down the entire front row, and finally rushed the stage. But the downfall came when the wrestling coach’s picture was on page one of the newspaper, with lots of kiss marks all over his big stupid face. A friend of mine had a single small red hair that he kept in a jar by the door, a little token of lost love, or love gone astray, or promised love where it just fizzled out. We think it was from one of the dancers, or maybe a hair fell out of a guy's nose. Whichever, it certainly helps recall a night of passion and craziness.

So that's how it is, I’m in the Big City. And whenever I can afford admission, even if it’s a pie I baked for the nice ticket man, I’m picking up a few eyefuls of stripper magic. Ummm, I can see it now in my nicely erect mind’s eye, two of the loveliest (but wildest) performers to ever hit the big stage, Flora and Fauna, one left-handed and one right, but however you shake 'em out, they look the same on both sides. Each side a mirror image of the other. Bodies perfectly proportioned, the top looking as good as the bottom. And the right side equal to the left. Very nasty, perky, responsive, absolutely no shame.

It’s a great thing, and I urge you, if you’re ever in the Big City, this is the best thing we’ve got going --- purrrrrr --- by farrrrrr, all the way! Live a little.

I Buy Tires With Home Cookin'

The Big City

Part 4 of 28

Now that I’ve seen both sides of the equation in this deal -- how it is in the small town and The Big City -- I can finally say with pretty good authority that the Big City, for all its bragging, hasn’t got anything over the small town. I'm able to see what’s good and what’s bad, and I’m telling everyone who’ll listen. And there's a lot of stubborn idiots out there. But no one can talk me out of it once I’ve made up my mind. Consider this a one-man stampede over the Big City!

Immediately when I start thinking of the baker, the butcher, and the new tire pusher back in the small town, I first think of the values I learned there. I think through all this stuff and you know how tears well up in your eyes? That’s what it is for me, except they're gushers. I get sentimental, then my whole life sweetens, then reality hits me squarely in the face -- the Big City I foolishly moved to -- and I go whole hog ballistic, with the terrible consequences of punishing myself. Crying and complaining that things aren’t what they used to be, to the point of denying myself supper and going to bed hungry.

I let my mind drift. The small town, gotta love it. It’s incredible now when I think back on it how much money I owe to so many people. And today I have the new tire guy in mind for some reason. Mostly for the many ways I deprived him of a good living by never having the exact change in paying for a tire. And he’d always shave a little off the price, giving me the comfort of riding on tires not bald or knobby while I only put out a few shekels.

I still have to think he was always glad to see me coming. Him with that small town grin you can't help but love in small town merchants. It conveys a lot, that he and I are friends, with there being no doubt that we go together -- merchant and customer -- and if anything threatens the fragile balance of that relationship everything could go to hell and we’d both be in a pickle, and not just us but the rest of the population that depends so much on keeping the system in place. Because, really, we might not survive through the day if we veered from it so much as a silly millimeter!

In the Big City, however, just to offer one stark contrast, it’s dog eat dog till the last dog’s dead, which is any minute now! How do they avoid the fragile balance of the small town? There’s always new population they've never heard of washing up on the Big City’s shores. Rubes like me from the small town as well as immigration from other Big Cities, mostly lowlife cheapskates who don’t pay their bills showing up to take advantage of the Big City largesse, more fraudulent in the long run but manageable in the short. Because everything they do depends on volume. If the tire dealer loses half his inventory to vandals, he makes it up on volume. But in the small town, a vandal takes one tire it takes the dealer a full nine years to make up the loss.

I needed a couple new tires just a few weeks ago. And, yes, I went to the Big City sharks, who wouldn’t look the other way and give me the tires as loaners for a six-month test drive. These despicable sharks wanted cash, or worse, credit. It knocked me for a loop and that night I fell asleep longing for the glories of the small town, where I might ride on free tires till they popped. Because in the small town a few promises and an occasional apple pie goes a long way. Gets me from place to place.

I Reign A Small Town King

The Big City

Part 3 of 28

Even as a small town king myself, so often I find myself rejecting the prejudice small town morons have about the Big City, essentially that it’s evil. That goes against my competing small town values of prejudging any case. I had the impartial justice bug even as a kid, anytime I was accused of something. “Take your hands off me, you filthy devil,” I remember saying as a kid to one of my accusers, the school principal. That's what I should've said.

Another way to look at it is, Hey, we’re supposedly small town kings! If that’s what they call us, shouldn’t we embrace our royal identity and live out the truth how we have it over everyone else. It’s an injustice, it cries for legal help, to believe anything else. Although a lot of this language about us being small town kings was likely just a cheap shot by the main proponents of the small town vibe against the Big City. Meaning, yeah, sure, you’re a “small town king,” but apart from the debate with the Big City the message was always, “Don't embrace it as a thing,” or “When push comes to shove, we make the rules, we can change them.” A terrible thing as a kid to recognize. “You set up the parameters of my supposed royalty and you can knock ‘em down. 'We’re the ones calling you kings, We giveth, We taketh away.'"

Obviously in a situation like that, where the propaganda is widely touted even as you see how shabby it is -- like finding that all your birthday presents were just cardboard cutouts of the real thing, or your surroundings a Hollywood set when the director yells “Cut,” are things no kid wants to face. “But, but, you said!” “Yeah, kid,” the cynical adult says, “We know what we said. Stick around, clean your ears, there’s no telling how much more you’re going to hear about your so-called promise. You’re promise equals exactly this: The principal bares his ass and everyone lines up on their knees in lockstep to symbolically kiss it.  These are the insights the typical kid doesn’t know what to do with. Maybe just grow up to parade his own backside around the town, with one of two motives, to expose the apparently false teaching that every small town kid’s a king, or to keep embracing it, with the fear that to reject its truthfulness is to make even the promise vanish. Then what are you left with? Shambles, a small town vibe little better than the hated Big City.

I’d love to find the documentation on this stuff. It could be, given their low opinion of us, they were very careful to collate together all the documents, distributing them at meetings and then storing it all somewhere secure. But it could actually be easier to find than we think. A man serves as mayor or principal or even flunky only so long. I’ve seen how these meetings go, in unrelated fields. “We’re going to collect all the papers, etc.,” and the reality's often different. A guy’s talking and accidentally packs his papers home, they’re misplaced, they’re forgotten. Only to be discovered years later in an estate sale. “What have we here? A Nazi plan to make us think we’re all royalty, when, in fact, we’re peons from the word GO? This is what the exalted small town thinks of us, so desperate to keep us from the possibly true Big City propaganda that the Big City turns out the best kids, the true royalty!"

At the very least, friends, it’s disappointing to grow up and suspect your entire youth was a carefully nurtured lie, and now you're left to counsel a bunch of widowed children in their old age. But I simply got out, and here I sit, now a resident of the Big City. And I've seen one big difference here, they don’t even tell you you’re a king. The subject never comes up! Which explains a lot.

My Hillbilly Hat

 

The Big City

Part 2 of 28

You have to know I hate the old attitude cosmopolitans have of making fun of a guy’s hillbilly hat and laying it on thick. In my world, that’s just plain rude. And if it weren’t me on the receiving end of their “fun,” but some other put-upon innocent guy, I’d be first in line to take them on and put them in their place.

First, there’s nothing wrong with a hillbilly hat. On simple practical grounds, it fits loosely, it covers a lot, and it’s quite comfortable. So I don’t know exactly what their point was. It might be that one of the idiots decided hats like that are behind the times and started the pointing and laughing. Then the others, who honestly didn’t see anything wrong with it thought they needed to jump in on the festivities so they wouldn't be teased. So none of them except the first guy really knew what they were laughing at but did it anyway out of some crazy immature group-think.

That conclusion completely minimizes their fun and puts me in the driver's seat. Although it's equally possible that all of them knew exactly what they were doing and knew it was wrong. So it's likely they did respect me but were unsure of the opinion they should show, which should have been just common sense good judgment, but they couldn't do the right thing because they weren't sure the others would go along with it. So that's it, these dweebs knew better, but with a roughhouse group dynamic like that it always seems good to jump on someone. Let’s say there’s just one or two of them who started the fun. The others have a problem to resolve: “How can the rest of us stand back and not get the joke?”

Or it could've been the joke was obvious and they were just looking for a little validation -- anything would do -- before erupting in one boisterous mass. It’s a clash of civilizations, and naturally they think their civilization -- the Big City -- is not just the dominant but the only valid one. Anything varying from their mode of dress and head covering, allowing for slowly shifting fashions over the years, is too quaint, too Hicksville to tolerate in this more enlightened present. So ... “Dog-pile on the Hillbilly!”

It’s really despicable, but unfortunately a thing I’ve seen over the years in various social settings. One year I showed up at the family Christmas celebration in gold psychedelic button bib overalls, and you’d’ve thought Liberace had come to town. With my own family! Who had one hell of a time razzing me, getting up in my grill, fingering my bibs, wondering where the candelabra was (!) and if that brand of newfangled overalls came with tails! That was the Christmas I ruined. Grandma gave one of my cousins some deodorant for Chrstmas, which I promptly took outside on that frigid night and pushed the button. It stuck open and fizzed and spun in the snow, giving him another year of smelling bad to endure.

As for my hillbilly hat, they had to think I was a sight, a regular troll under the bridge, with a fashion sense pretty stale for the Big City scene. I reject their mean-spirited attitude (in these understanding times!) and hope someday they get theirs. Curses on them, actual curses! May their homes burn to the ground, and may all their dates lead to various diseases for themselves and their partners. And may their stumbling parents fall and not be able to get up.

My Move To The Big City

 

The Big City

Part 1 of 28

The day I moved to the Big City was a busy one. I'm not sure how I did it, whether it was timed according to my personal fate or if there really is a big hand in the sky guiding everyone’s ant-like destinies lockstep, but the day I showed up a bunch of others did too. We didn’t exchange names and addresses. I barely knew my own address and had it written on a slip of paper so I could recite it.

Now everyone in the world wants to know where I live, the specifics of which I don’t want to get into anymore, being a public person somewhat in demand on the speaking circuit. I just tell everyone it’s somewhere east of Shanghai and also west, depending which way you go. I was drunk one night and they needed to help me home and on that particular night east of Shanghai was closest, only a few blocks. West was prohibitively far.

There were others that day, all of us getting driver’s licenses and worrying about transfers of insurance policies, etc. There’s always more to it than you hope for. But once here they don’t want you easily shrinking back and leaving the Big City, because the whole place runs on people power, the more the better. Which is also true of my small town, and they feel the pinch greater there because taxes are what keeps the place afloat. So it was tough saying goodbye. On the other hand, you might recall, Grandma’s house (where I lived) had become a hell hole, leaking, molding, then there was a fire which made it even less habitable. The rules on rotting domiciles, especially after they've been on fire are strict. They came with bulldozers and trucks and hauled the house in pieces to the dump. So whatever they're losing on taxes is partly their fault.

I even tried camping on the site in a tent, but that’s also against the rules. Stupid place, very picky. They're just very strict, whereas in The Big City you could camp anywhere you want, if you find some trees with nobody around (good luck), and it'd take quite a while for them to evict you. The only things on the property back home that lets me know it was once my home are the big maple tree and the water pump Grandpa installed sometime in the 1920s. I stopped by my grandparents' cemetery a few months ago and felt some relief in the thought, "Everything goes to crap sooner or later, it’s not my fault." We parted friends.

Still, me a Big City guy? It’s hard to believe, but indeed I took the plunge, plighted my troth to the place and I've still got a ton of fears to prove it. Especially when I have to range so many miles from my current place to get anywhere. The traffic is terrible, the only familiar faces I ever see are the neighbors and employees at the grocery store. I had sort of a semi-close friend very briefly, then his cat got pregnant, pissing off the landlord, and he vanished one night. It was me and another neighbor, "Black Steve," conferring at his door, both of us deciding, “He’s gone!” But I have not vanished. And if I do, not even Steve will notice, because we literally haven’t spoken since that day.