The View from Market Street Hill
From the top of Market Street hill, things don’t look quite as different at forty-two years old as I thought they might when I lived there at seventeen. The two-lane road sloping steeply into town looks virtually the same. Although it has noticeably aged twenty-five years, the same few rooftops and steeples still rise above the treetops. The relative permanence of it all is much less comforting than it is crushing. I thought the town would be different. I thought everything would be different. I thought I would be different.
The siren song of the outside world was too strong and too alluring in my teen years, and I couldn’t even bring myself to wait out my twelve-grade sentence. Maybe it was the tumultuous, unsettled style of my childhood that made it too difficult for me to find comfort in the consistency and tranquility that arises from a lack of options. I ventured outside of the dreaded bubble of local shelter too early and was beaten into submission by a world that was crueler than I could have possibly imagined. Yet, when I returned to Market Street hill with my tail between my legs and a head full of new and exotic horrors, I found its cow-eyed denizens even less tolerable.
I remember thinking that the hills that rise out of town in all directions seemed to trap or at least funnel its natives inside. It was as if there was a gravitational center tirelessly pulling them back to the intersection of Market and Main, where shoplifting from the Five and Dime was a rite of passage, and the price on the sign of the closed gas station hadn’t changed in years. They lived lives of odd jobs interrupted by deer seasons and high school sports rivalries. Jimmy bought Tommy’s old truck, Heather got pregnant, and I was voluntarily sequestered in my bedroom becoming increasingly convinced that Sartre had it all figured out. When I felt like those around were too comfortable accepting me as one of their own, I thrust my affected eccentricity out at them in wide arcs, scattering and alienating anyone and everyone who might wish me peace.
When there was finally no excuse to stay save a pretty farm girl, I stole her away and headed for the furthest coast. I dragged her around the country and abandoned her in unfamiliar places when even those borders felt too constrictive to me. It was only due to her relentless pleas that we visited our former home at all, and when we did, I thumbed my nose at Market Street hill in spiteful vindication. So large were my stories that even their retelling was unintelligible to those in town. Accounts of chaotic Asian markets and the fishy smell of distant harbors were met with anecdotes of homemade fishing lures lost in local farm ponds. Each short-lived, disdainful visit only seemed to validate my teenage assertion that I never belonged there in the first place.
When my children had enjoyed what I assumed was a satisfactory amount of culture and diversity, I moved them into the sleepy little town where I hoped they’d be sheltered but experienced enough to blossom into superior adults. I sneered at my former Market Street hill residence as we zipped by it on the way into and out of town, explaining in my head to it and myself how I had turned the tables and was now making the town work for me instead of against me. I didn’t take the time back then to stop on Market Street hill, to gaze down into the town, and to see that nothing had really changed at all.
My children rooted and vined in their new environment. My weary wife settled into the uneasy comfort of one who returns after a long absence to a place she never meant to or wanted to leave in the first place. I faded. I told myself that the Friday night football games and sad little yearly carnivals had a priceless charm that I just needed to work harder to appreciate properly. I began accepting less — less money, less excitement, less culture, less diversity, less energy, less demand, less passion, less love.
I stand at the top of Market Street hill now, and I can see that, like the town, from a certain distance and a certain vantage point, I’ve not really changed much at all. I’m older now, and I’m more run down. Aside from occasional visits to the more attractive world outside, I’ve dedicated precious little thought or time to rejuvenation. A friend and expatriate tries to coax me into climbing up and out of the town once again, past Market Street hill and into life, but my barstool here is too easy to find, and the bottle reminds me of the gruesome lessons I once learned beyond those gently rounded peaks. As I always have, I’ll offer stories of the places I’ve been and attempt to illustrate how different I am from those who spent their entire lives in town. From high atop Market Street hill, though, the view is still essentially the same.
