Living In The Outer Provinces
So it’s late summer, late seventies when my wife and I and our two little kids pull into the dirt driveway of our new home — an 1820’s farmhouse in need of much repair. Perhaps it was our long hair or the fact that we drove up to the house in two (not one) VW vans replete with tie-dyed curtains that caused our one neighbor across the way, “old” Mrs. Jones (name changed to protect the innocent), to offer a hesitant wave. No matter. We were soon welcomed into her world — barely younger than I am now, and legally blind, she lived alone in an old rambling house that kept her dry and warm. All she wanted. She loved our kids. And they loved her back.
The so-called town we moved into had one country store and some six hundred residents spread out over dirt roads, rambling meadows and thick woods connected by sweet streams and a few glacial ponds. Either lovingly or disparagingly, the town was referred to as “slab city” because many of our neighbors had a penchant to lay down a slab of cement and plop a trailer down and call that home. No matter. Where you lived did not count as much as how you lived — not a burden to anyone but always willing to lend a helping hand. Pay your taxes, attend town meeting (the first one we went to featured a swinging brawl between two feuding neighbors), and buy local if you could.
And so it has gone for the past forty years or so. Our kids went to the local schools, played sports, went off to college, and now have families of their own downstate. “Mrs. Jones” has long passed on. We have gone from heating with three wood stoves and ten cord of wood to two stoves, four cord of wood and heat pumps that run off of our solar panels. We have both quit our day jobs, so to speak, spending much time working in our organic gardens and tending our greenhouse. When an elderly Vietnamese peasant is asked by visiting Americans if she or he has retired, the answer is: “ We don’t say that; we say we are returning to our gardens.” Exactly.
We also engage in politics and political discussions. My wife attends book discussion groups at the local college and is on a committee that regularly meets in Augusta. I edit one national newsletter and co-edit another that are devoted to veterans’ issues. I also volunteer at Togus VA hospital. We read a lot. We stand vigil every Friday in front of the post office encouraging passers-by to “resist war” and work for peace. We have been doing that for thirteen years now. People may not agree with us, but we have earned their grudging respect by not missing a single week throughout these years.
So now the darkness has begun to descend upon us. I’m not talking about the seasonal vagaries of Maine — we have weathered plenty of them — but, of course, the political atmospherics of the day. To say that our political beliefs do not necessarily align with many of our fellow District Two neighbors is an understatement. Each day I drive into town I pass by a shed with a confederate flag proudly attached to it. If I go in the other direction, I drive by a house with a clothes line adorned by American flags and a sign that proudly announces the owner’s devout allegiance to the Donald. When we put up a yard sign calling for stricter gun laws, we were careful to place it down the road a bit so that a drive-by shooter wouldn’t send a round into our house if he was upset by our attack on his rights to arm himself to the teeth. No such incident occurred. Even our mailbox remained in tact. Life goes on.
Which leads me to the point of this rambling discourse. Some will claim that the great divide rippling through this country is not only along racial fault lines but also along urban/rural ones. Forget blue versus red. Think city snobs versus country bumpkins. Liberals versus conservatives. Egg heads versus red necks. And on and on, as if these neat little cultural packages can tell us anything. They can’t, and what’s worse, they encourage us to tap into myths that keep those of us in the lower caste 99% at each other’s throats. This is by design. Sure, there are real racists, misogynists, and homophobes walking amongst us. But as long as we think that those people make up the majority of our citizens, then we will never turn our justified, status quo-busting attention to where it belongs — toward the corporate vampires and their lackeys that run our local, state, and national governments. Instead, we might be convinced to moralize against, preach to, even yell at those neighbors who seem to be different than we are. But most of us up here don’t, really. Why not?
First of all, because we are neighbors. And that still means something. But I think another answer to that question can also be found in a recent essay entitled “We Are All Deplorables” written by the war correspondent/peace activist Chris Hedges. His grandparents lived in Mechanics Falls, Maine, so he has witnessed this town’s decline into boarded up storefronts as the paper mill closed and his stressed out, over-worked relatives fell into deep despair. These people do not want our pity nor any self-righteous platitudes. They want economic justice. We all can relate to that.
Unfortunately, they have often sought solace from those snake oil salesmen Hedges calls “megachurch pastors” — you know, cable channel, AM radio preachers who “…manipulate despair to achieve power and wealth” (Hedges). Followers of these scum often adopt an apocalyptic vision that compels them to think of “the other” as disrupting their journey into justly-deserved earthly and heavenly rewards. Of course I don’t agree with them, but rather than talk “identity politics,” and archly point out the folly of their ways, I suggest they consider the old adage — “follow the money.” Who foots the campaign bill for your state senator and congressional representative? When the paper mill up and left, who was left behind and why? What manufacturing operations should we woo? Aside from the moral issues, why should we go after military contractors with their less labor-intensive projects than, say, alternative energy developers? And so forth. Questions like these can open up dialogue that is essentially devoid of personal recriminations.
If we want to join forces and beat back the real demons, then let’s talk economics. Let’s counter the Milton Friedman, Chicago School, Neo-Liberal free-market scavengers with a dash of, say, John Maynard Keynes value-based, community-oriented monetary policies. But however we frame our economic discussions, let’s not be divided. Let’s not stand astride the fabricated gullies concocted by the Wall Street media hacks. They want us to tear each other apart while they reap the profits of wage-slave companies and heartless, profit-driven health plans. Ignore them. Let’s sit down and talk like neighbors who care about each other’s welfare. Let’s build up our local economies. Let’s act like the best Mainers we can be.
Doug Rawlings retired four years ago from university teaching. He is a veteran of the American war in Vietnam.
