58: Small Towns

Ira Glass

The question isn't, can you go home again? The question is, do you want to? From the day he left the small town he grew up in, David thought he did. He left Allendale, South Carolina for Princeton, then law school.

Ira Glass

Just recently, he was offered a job with a country lawyer back home. And so he and his wife have to decide, what are they going to do? She grew up on a farm outside Allendale. They were childhood sweethearts. And deciding where to go, it's the biggest question in their marriage.

Ira Glass

In a sense, their dispute comes down to a difference over how they view a central fact of small town life, that feeling that comes when you know everybody knows you and knows your business. He likes that feeling.

Ira Glass

Her views on abortion and race relations didn't square with the prevalent opinions in Allendale. The speech she gave as high school valedictorian, a speech critical of the school system, was a minor town scandal. People apparently talked about it for months. And so, for now, they're stuck living in Manhattan, trying to decide if they see small town life as cozy or as claustrophobic.

Well, from WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you a variety of stories on that theme. Today's program, Small Towns, the claustrophobia and freedom and yearning for small towns. Act One, Country Mouse, City Mouse, a family moves from a tiny town to the big city, or what seems to them, anyway, like the big city.

Act Two, a get-together of single farmers who are trying to get other farmers to stay in rural America by marrying them. Act three-- Three Chicago teenagers make the argument that the public housing project that they live in, a high rise building here in one of the biggest cities in the country, is actually a small town. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act one-- City Mouse, Country Mouse. One of the classic American stories is the migration from small town to big city, and all the personal growth, and dangers, and freedom that happen when you make that move. Our contributing editor, Sarah Vowell, went through that change yourself, with her family, but with one small catch. The big city that her family moved to wasn't New York, or Los Angeles, or Boston. It was Bozeman, Montana, population 30,000. Which sounds like a small town to anybody who lives in a city, but it was, in fact, 30 times larger than Braggs, Oklahoma where they started.

Sarah Vowell

We were hopeful immigrants from small town Oklahoma who set out for a better life in small-town Montana and became new people. Where else but America can an okra-eating, twang-talking, God-fearing, good girl like me be given the opportunity to turn into the liquored-up, opinion-mongering heathen I am today?

My twin sister and I were born Okies in Muskogee, because that's where the nearest hospital was. But we lived in Braggs, a dusty little Muskogee county nowhere, home to a 1,000 people, four churches, one school, a couple of stores, and a much vilified bar called The Little Oklahoma.

Our mother took us to Braggs' Pentecostal church three times a week, where I got saved, got baptized, and prayed with her and the others in the ladies prayer meeting for The Little Oklahoma to be shut down. And I sang, sang in church, sang at home, sang along with my transistor radio to the Tulsa country station. I sang for God, because I knew God was listening. When I was six, I got a tape recorder for Christmas. And here's the first song I sang into it.

I hate that song more than any other. Every time it pops into my head, I shiver, because it's a spooky reminder of the docile woman I might have become had I stayed in that town, in that church, where there are so many rules and so many eyes upon you. Not to mention the fact that God himself ran the biggest stake-out of them all, and you knew that, come Judgment Day, you'd account for every last slip your preacher and his minions had somehow missed.

Small towns are always hotbeds of surveillance, but when you add fundamentalist religion to the mix, the things you can't do outnumber the things you can. Sex is bad. Drinking's bad. Smoking's bad. Women standing up to their husbands is bad. Questioning scripture is bad. Not attending church is bad. Cussing is pretty damn bad. And, as my father would soon find out, moving away is really, really bad.

If you ask him why we left Braggs and moved to Bozeman-- and believe me, my mother's family has never stopped asking-- he'll launch into this whole song and dance about his health.

Sarah Vowell

My dad's being diplomatic. No matter how many times I reassured him that this radio program is not on any stations in Oklahoma, and that no one in our family would listen to it if it were, he still didn't want to come right out and say why he wanted to leave Oklahoma.

It was to get away from family, his and my mother's. They were nosy, and they were everywhere. Every summer, itching to get away from them and Braggs, he'd drive us to the Rockies. Oh, look at the pretty mountains, Mom would say. That Old Faithful sure is something. My mother, my sister, and I just thought we were on vacation. Turns out Dad was scouting out an escape route.

He still wanted to live in a small town. It's just that he wanted to live in a small town where he didn't know anyone. So he picked Bozeman. It was the right size, surrounded by gorgeous mountains, and best of all, had the vital statistics he was after-- Vowell family, 4, acquaintances 0.

Arriving in Bozeman at the age of 11, I felt like we had just moved to Paris, a town of culture and ideas, of libraries, and movie theaters, and record stores. I still celebrate the first day we got there, June 5, as a birthday of sorts. Bozeman had miles and miles of cement for us to rollerskate around on, instead of the stunted 50-foot strip of sidewalk in our Braggs backyard. My sister Amy remembers pulling into town.

In Bozeman, I thrived, my sister blossomed, my father found his thrill, but the move was hard on my mom. She missed her epic family. The thing that made my father squirm about small town life, being surrounded by people who know you, was exactly what she'd loved about it. Her family is huge and hilarious, with big mouths and bigger hearts.

And up north, she missed her fiery, southern-style church. There weren't any other Pentecostals in Bozeman, so we ended up at the most frigid, watered-down, nondenominational Protestant house of worship possible. We were used to this wrathful, angry, Old Testament Creator. And sitting through week after week of God is love got pretty bland. And after a few years, our church visits tapered off, which was fine by me. Mom, on the other hand, had to deal with not only her own loss of spiritual guidance and community, she had to sit by and watch her children losing Christian steam.

Sarah Vowell

There's so much mother-daughter history in the way my Mom says, I know you don't like hearing me say this, because she knows I don't like hearing her say that I'm the most important thing in her life sometimes because of the guilt that involves. And before I started working on this story, I'd always felt badly about the way she sacrificed her happiness for mine. I grew up believing she would've been better off in her little Oklahoma hometown, surrounded by family, embraced by the church. But I found out I was wrong.

Ira Glass

Sarah Vowell's move to big-city Bozeman was so successful that she decided to repeat the experience. She move to Portland, population 500,000, Washington DC, population 600,000, San Francisco, population 700,000, and then, finally, Chicago, population 2.8 million.

Ira Glass

Act Two. How do you keep them going down on the farm? Marry 'em. All across America, people are moving away from small towns and rural areas in steady streams. So if you have stayed in a place where there aren't many people, and the ones that are there you've know since birth, how are you going to find somebody to marry? Well, you might join Singles In Agriculture. They hold get-togethers for singles all over the country. Reporter Liz Weil went with This American Life producer Alix Spiegel to a recent get-together in Galveston, Texas, at the Flagship Hotel on the beach, jutting out onto the water. There were about 250 people from 26 states at meals and meetings, day trips, and dances.

Liz Weil

Jim's an extreme case-- smart, charming, 52, looks 40, living on a farm outside Iona, South Dakota, population four. It's 30 miles to the nearest grocery store. The weather is so punishing, cows freeze solid standing up. His dilemma, nobody wants to move to his ranch, and he doesn't want to leave.

Liz Weil

This is a typical problem for people in SIA. They're all farmers, all tied to their land, though Jim's situation is particularly harsh. He tells me he realized that a few years ago when the group's director went out to visit him. Even she was stunned by how isolated he was. She said it would take a remarkable woman to move to his ranch.

Liz Weil

Jim's own mother even admitted that, had she known where she'd been moving, she might not have married his father and moved to the land. It's Thursday night, the first night of the get-together, and we're all at a dance in a Victorian gazebo, with wood floors so old, women have been asked to wear boots, not heels. Everyone's so happy to be here. I have the sense I'm talking to people who don't get to talk to other human beings enough.

About 10:00, I sit down next to Martha, a twice-widowed woman from Indiana. She's small and nearly 60, wearing a sweatshirt she has decorated with glitter and beads. SIA is the focus of her life.

Liz Weil

Martha tells me that her favorite dance is The Waterfall. How it works is that the women form one line, the men form another, and the two meet in the middle like a zipper, couples dancing up the floor. Martha tells me she likes The Waterfall because you don't need a partner. You just stand in line, and the line moves. You pull a body close, get hugged.

The next day is Friday. Half the farmers board yellow buses for the NASA Space Center. The other half trek to Houston for a World's Fair-style livestock show. About every 15 minutes, over the course of the day, somebody tries to convince me, no, this group isn't about hooking up, it's about friendship, camaraderie, everyone's one big family. But later in the afternoon, I bump into a group of SIA women who are clearly on the make. One's just bought a t-shirt that reads, cowboy butts drive me nuts.

Liz Weil

So what do you look for in the jeans, Lee's, Levi's, Wrangler's?

Liz Weil

These girls are a rowdy, hardcore bunch. They're youngish, around 30, loud, constantly making cracks. Kate, the most vocal of them, is broad and strong, a dairy cow wrangler from Wisconsin. In this crowd, she plays the tomboy. She brags about telling the men she dances with that if someone wants to pick a fight, she'll do the punching. But once alone in her hotel room, her tough girl attitude fades away.

Liz Weil

She goes on to tell me about a friend of hers, a woman who prayed every night to meet somebody and eventually did.

Liz Weil

Down the hall from Kate are Ernie and Sally, a couple who met through SIA. He's 50ish, from Oklahoma, grows sesame and delivers mail. She's a school teacher from Kansas, incredibly hot, in a short, tight dress and baby-doll tee. At this point in their relationship, they only book one hotel room. And right now, Ernie is in there fixing Sally's boot. The smell of epoxy is mind-numbing. They detail their first date.

Liz Weil

OK, let me explain. Ernie had brought over a blue flapper dress. His former wife had made it. Sally wanted to look at it, maybe wear it as a costume.

Liz Weil

Both Ernie and Sally lost their spouses. They both felt sparks five or six months ago when they first met. They live a reasonable distance apart by SIA standards, but, and this is the problem with a national organization of rural singles, the logistics make it nearly impossible to date.

Liz Weil

Sally and Ernie have this little routine. Like most set pieces couples have, it's only half in jest. She ribs him constantly about getting married, he hedges. They love each other, but they're at different points in their lives.

Liz Weil

Ernie didn't expect to meet somebody so quickly. In fact, he wasn't sure he'd meet somebody at all. He married young, didn't have many girlfriends before that. Right now, this is his first round of dating. It's a heady experience, and one he's not ready to give up yet.

Liz Weil

Friday night is the second dance. And when I bump into Ernie, he's passing out these business cards. They have rainbows on them, and they read, Ernest Ernie W. Schmidt, married 32 years, widowed, I'm attracted to you, let's be good friends. Sally, as you might imagine, is not so thrilled about this. She has enough good friends, at least for the time being. While Ernie mingles, we talk to her in the back room.

Liz Weil

Sally stops her interview, saying she better get back to Ernie. She's worried that he'll miss her. A moment later, we head out from the back room. I see Ernie with a blond woman, two-stepping on the dance floor. Half an hour later, we run into Ernie and Sally kissing on the veranda. Sometime after this, Sally sends me a note. On the envelope she writes, in all capitals, I WILL MARRY ERNIE SOMEDAY.

The night starts winding down, at least I think it starts winding down until I realize something, nobody's planning on going to sleep. The people who come to SIA spend a lot of time alone. They crave company, affection, basic human contact. It's past midnight when the farmers leave the gazebo and return to the Flagship Hotel. Everybody's tired, but they don't go to bed. The hit the beach.

Liz Weil

Jim, the first guy I talked to back at the first dance, drags a fully clothed women into the water.

Liz Weil

There's something really high school-esque about the whole SIA experience. Like right now, the moon is out, the air is salty, and we're in this huge awkward group. And what do people do to cash in on the moment? Pair off? Nope.

Liz Weil

They sing.

Liz Weil

Note, none of them has had a drop to drink.

[GENERAL APPLAUSE, HOOTING]

Ira Glass

Evening winds down, and the couples at SIA head toward the climactic night of their weekend, in a minute, when our program continues.

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week we choose a theme, of course, and invite a variety of writers, and reporters, and documentary producers to take a whack at that theme. Today's theme, Small Towns. Liz Weil's story continues about a four-day get together of SIA, Singles In Agriculture.

Liz Weil

Saturday, we wake up to some incredibly tedious meetings, which, by some heroic faith, people manage to love. It completely undermines all critical standards of what's compelling, what's fun.

Liz Weil

Later Saturday afternoon, I catch up with Martha, the woman who told me that SIA gives her reason to live. She's in her room, sewing the final beads on a sweater she's making for tonight's banquet and flag ceremony. The handiwork seems to relax her. She's got this other sweatshirt, her hug sweatshirt, that she wears at the end of every SIA retreat.

Liz Weil

Martha tells me she's a recovering alcoholic. She tells me that one of her children, her daughter, died in 1981. She works evenings at Kmart, because she can't stand to spend her nights alone.

Liz Weil

Martha goes on to tell me that before SIA events, she gets so excited that she worries that she'll have a heart attack or a stroke. People spend a lot of time getting ready for Saturday night's banquet. Women wear dresses with slits and sequins. Men wear jackets, bolo ties. This is the big event, the final showdown. The evening starts with a prayer.

Liz Weil

What's going on here is really rather incredible. There are 50 men and women lined up in long aisles by twos. Each person is bearing a flimsy, nylon handkerchief-sized flag on a long, thin pole. It would be campy if people's eyes weren't so reverent, so serious. They march towards the front of the room. After dinner, a man gives a very boring talk on Russian agriculture. Plaques are awarded to old board members. Election results are announced for the new. At the end of the banquet, Eldon, the outgoing president, gets up to make a speech. He's good-looking, jovial, in his 40s. He beats the podium nervously with his hand. A smile creeps across his face.

Liz Weil

Everybody stands up and claps and hollers for what seems like a good 10 minutes. People are so exquisitely happy, wistful, jealous, and proud. The scene feels oddly like the end of a Miss America Pageant. Women cry and clasp hands over their mouths. When the ovation fades, they gather around the bride-to-be.

Liz Weil

In the crowd, I see Martha looking overwhelmed. She embraces Eldon's fiancee.

Liz Weil

By tonight at the dance, any reserve the farmer's had has pretty much faded away. There's more winking, more flirting, more moving of hips, less chat about seed corn around the edges of the room. When the "Macarena" cues up, Jim shakes his South Dakota booty with heartbreaking deliberateness and intent. Meanwhile, Kate, the tomboy with the eye for cowboy butts, remains in the back of the room. She spent most of her evening tangling with Rod, a tall, crazy-haired rancher who apparently does not like to dance. From 10:00 to 11:00, they pull and punch each other, get to know one another's bodies by yanking skirts and stealing hats. It's classic mating, junior high style. When they head out on the veranda, my producer and I follow.

Liz Weil

Kate's been working on Rod since early this morning. They have similar ages, energy levels, goofy karmas. While Kate's been talking to us, Rod's been leaning on the railing, a couple of yards away. Just now, though, a tall brunette walks over and starts chatting him up. Kate doesn't move. She just gets quiet, and loses interest in our interview entirely.

Liz Weil

Kate snags Rod, and the two of them walk back into the gazebo. It's clear that this is only a minor glitch. The dance ends at midnight. Kate and Rod hop in a cab and head downtown. We make for the hotel. Jim offers us a ride in his van, which he bought especially for SIA events, and which feels like a huge babe trap. The van is dark red and finely upholstered. Riding shotgun is Marie.

Liz Weil

Major plans decided, the moment gets more personal. This is the time for putting on moves, to make something happen tonight.

Liz Weil

Later people, mostly men, sit around the hospitality suite. Jim pokes his head in. He grins and tells us that he's going upstairs with Marie. At 5:00 in the morning, Rod and Kate sheepishly come back from downtown. In the morning, the weekend ends with an egg and sausage breakfast, "Amazing Grace," and the SIA tradition of everybody hugging everybody else in the room.

Everybody looks exhausted, like students after exams. Martha spends a long time crying at the window, watching the cars pull out, talking about how she already misses the hugs. She's wearing her special hugs sweatshirt, the one with the poem sewn on the front. The loop appears to be starting over. Martha's returning to her empty trailer in Indiana, where she'll be lonely, and work evenings at Kmart, and save up her money for the next SIA event. But then something happens. A man pulls a game store coin out of his pocket. He gives it to her. She reads aloud.

Liz Weil

When the two come out of the kiss, they both seem surprised. At the outset, they both expected a peck. But in the middle, something else kicked in. Something so basic, that when it hits you, you don't ask why.

Ira Glass

Act Three, Small town in the big city. The fact is a small town can be anywhere, even in the heart of what many people see as one of the harshest urban environments in the country. Paul Johnson, Carlos Appleby, and Sanantonio Brooks are teenagers living in public housing on Chicago's South Side at 4120 South Prairie. People who live there just call the building, 4120. It's a highrise building, 16 stories tall, 10 apartments on each floor, with an open air hallway on each floor that people who live there just call a porch. We sent them out with a tape recorder to their building to record what happens there, and then talked to them in our studios about how their building is like a small town.

Now that we are on the 12th floor at the candy store. They have, like, six different varieties of potato chips, all for $0.25 each. They have penny candy, meaning white candy, Laffy Taffys, and chews and things of that sort. They sell food too. They got Italian [? beefs ?], pizza puffs. The people on the 12th floor, they don't want to do our interview, because they refused. Because they ain't licensed. They didn't have, so we're going down to the fifth floor right now.

Ira Glass

If their building is, in fact, a kind of small town, then when they move away, Sanantonio, and Carlos, and Paul will probably experience what Sarah Vowell's mom experienced, what the couple I interviewed at the beginning of this program experienced when they moved away from their small towns, which is, they find they don't exactly fit into the new worlds they move to, but they no longer fit in their hometown anymore, either. As Letta Sneed, the wife of the couple at the beginning of the show said--

Ira Glass

Well, our program was produced today Alix Spiegel and myself with Nancy Updike, Julie Snyder, and Paul Tough. Contributing editor Sarah Vowell, Jack Hitt, and Margie Rochlin. Production help from Christina Stephens.

[ACKNOWLEDGMENTS]

[FUNDING CREDITS]

WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who could be heard most days wandering around the office singing this song.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life.