I Am From…

I am from the vestiges of the old west. Main street — one of only two streets comprising “downtown” — boasts storefronts that would be at home on a movie set. Metal rings are embedded in the sidewalks with which to tether horses.

Rings are still there, though the horses are rarer than an off-off-off Broadway play performed by adolescents desperate for, or forced into, culture in the high school auditorium on the Saturday after the ubiquitous Friday night lights of football worship.

I am from that football worship culture. Dressed in the green wool of cheerleader or pep squad outfits the majority of my tween-through-teen years of forced acolyte stature.

Forced by a mother who partially lived vicariously through me, by the Texas culture, and by the realities that there was nothing — endless nothing — else to do in small town Texas on an interminable succession of Friday nights before I could escape.

I am from small town dances in a center we painted ourselves, and decorated with huge drawings of paisleys, glaringly colored. Even living in obscurity, we could pretend we were part of the psychedelic sixties. Some were more than others, although huffing glue was the meth of our day. Not for me, but for some.

I am the oddity. The one who asked for the autobiography of Andy Warhol for Christmas. The one who would rather stay home and read on a Friday night, even though I never did.

Some of us listened to Arlo Guthrie and Frank Zappa. We analyzed “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It,” and we memorized the lyrics to “Alice’s Restaurant.” We related to Arlo’s town with” three stop signs, two police officers and one police car.”

I am from a place where our tribe was ostracized. We protested the war in Viet Nam and made speeches in support of the Civil Rights Movement. All eight or so of us. Most of us were from the same liberal church which championed social justice. Maybe not every one of the members in that tiny slice of the denomination, but the denomination itself, some of our Sunday School teachers, and our minister.

I am also from a place where we chased and caught tiny pieces of starlight in the form of fireflies. We put them in a jar, marveled at their lightening power, then set them free. I’m from watermelon eaten directly from the rind, sticky-sweet juice staining faces and hands. From learning to milk a cow without ever having the need or the real job of doing so.

I am from a place that has grown from 4,000 population in my time to the current 6,583. Black and Brown people live there now, unlike then.

You can buy beer and wine now. There is a new ampitheater and hiking trail next to the lake where my 12-year-old friends and I once heard someone being raped in a car and had no idea what to do. We ran home and hid when the car pulled away.

I am from a place I’m embarrassed to be from. And yet, after I moved to the big city, and a truckload of rednecks drove by us in our gallery-hopping finery, yelling “Go home yankees!” I stood in the middle of the street in stiletto heels shouting,

Horse tether rings still wait for horses who never appear. There has always been and still is only one stop light in the town where I grew up.

I am from a town that is dying while building amphitheater and liquor stores. The denomination that gave me my voice and my progressive values is no longer there. The city bought the building for administrative offices.

Tweens and teens who grow up there now won’t have the balancing influence of that vision of living exactly as Jesus taught — caring for the poor, the widowed, the orphaned, the disenfranchised.

Will their music and TikTok and YouTube, and what books they find outside of conservative vetted libraries, influence them to venture into a bigger world as I did? Will it be enough to balance football worship and the elevating of boy-players to godlike status? Will they stand against the status quo and fight for justice and equality?

I am from a place whose future is uncertain, yet likely to always be conservative. I hope it’s not ridden with MAGAites, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

It’s where I’m from, not where I am or will be. Not even where you would guess I was from if you met me. Maybe, someday, if I’m as brave and foolhardy as I was then, I’ll go back and help tip the balance.

But probably not.

. . .

Thank you to Rebecca A. Barrett for her poem which inspired this story.

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This post was previously published on Contemplate.

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