Journey to the Center of the Neck

I take note this week of our annual trek to Kilmarnock in the Northern Neck where there's a store which sells customized t-shirts, sweaters and jackets displayed on irresistable $5 racks.

It should come as no surprise to anyone, then, today I'm garbed in a Mr. Rogers-style cardigan which identifies the wearer as an employee of the White Stone Family Practice.

What may be unexpected is that the elderly cashier who rang up the sweater said she'd only been to Fredericksburg once in her life.

So, here I am, constantly regaling you with tales of our small town life only to find out, in relation to a really, really small town, we are a big city after all.

It certainly ties in with the Sinclair Lewis Main Street novel I've been reading this week - where the new Mrs. Dr. Kennicott attempts desperately to fit into her newlywed husband's hometown of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota.

A few months ago I'd disptached a resume via email to the Cal Ripken foundation. I was thrilled to see a response within an hour. Upon reading it, however, and finding the resume had been forwarded to the local Executive Director, I knew I'd never hear anything about it again.

While Carol Kennicott longs for the anonymous freedom she knew in St. Paul, the townspeople of Gopher Prairie boast, at the same time, of a friendliness not extended to her or any outsider. My offer to the baseball people of the city of Baltimore was doomed as soon as it was allowed to run aground upon the shoals of a small town clique (and children's sports cliques are the worst of all).

Our old sounding board, editorialist Rod Dreher, recently penned a paeon to Wendell Berry, noting, "who, as a young man, left a promising East Coast academic career to return to ancestral land to farm, write, and raise a family."

Dreher informs us, "most Republicans don't care for him because he is a harsh critic of industrialism, consumerism, and the unfettered free market as a destroyer of land, community, and healthy traditions," while, "most Democrats regard him as out of touch because he is a religious man who holds autonomous individualism, especially the freedom it licenses, to be similarly destructive of families, communities, and the sacredness of love."

--which leaves this Spotsyltuckian even more out of touch, if that's possible, as one who dwells in an undestroyed land of corn and soy farms no more than a dozen miles away from a wealth of welcome, much frequented, consumerism; and as a religious person, and member of a like-minded community, of autonomous individuals, who aren't suspected of destroying, or spreading license, but, instead are gathered together within an encompassing diversity which, through its inclusionary nature, strengthens our congregational family and its sacredness of love.

Having gone this far, we're taking it to the limit.

We're moving on to a place which'll make Berry's head explode.

-- Malltown, USA!

A wondrous place 15.5 acre plot in Glendale, California, in which to live and shop in faux locales as varied as Rodeo Drive, Rush Street, Vegas, Boston or New Orleans.

Developer Rick Caruso, in the NY Times, explains "the whole idea isn't just to shop or eat or go to a movie, it has more to do with recovering that which is lost in Southern California's car culture -- the sense of community that comes through street life."

Ah, there's the vaunted theme 'community' again.

While Dreher/Berry believe they've captured the essence of community with their value-laden, unrealistic-for-most-of-us, back to the farm schitk, Caruso offers something much more reachable within our grasp.

Fifty years ago my dad and I walked under the El tracks in Brighton Beach to a bakery which smelled like heaven if heaven smells like warm fresh bagels and biolis. If Caruso constructs the same quaint old New York scene in L.A. could it not jog genuine memories of those who've experienced, and still desire, the real thing, and, what's more, is available to millions more, creating a new/old world which no longer exists for anyone except in this mode if not at all?

It's the privilege of age to no longer pretend to ideals you don't hold even if it's self-serving to grandstand them for others.

I can actually admire farmer cum rugged individualist Wendell Berry from a distance without copying him just as I've admired Dorothy Day all my life for her ministry to the poor and voluntary poverty without ever aspiring to the latter.

I'm glad someone does it as long as it's not me.