I found this piece to be interesting, but rather odd too. For example from the middle;
I took the first option. As a child, I accepted without thinking that my small town, a city of 9,383 people, contained within it every possible human type; if I could not fit in here, I would not fit in anywhere. (“Fitting in” I defined as being occupied on Friday nights and, sooner or later, kissing a girl.) Every week that passed in which I did not meet these criteria—which was most of them—became a prophecy. Every perception, every idea, every opinion that I could not make immediately legible to my peers became proof of an almost metaphysical estrangement, an oceanic differentness that could not be changed and could not be borne. ... I knew that cities existed, but they were all surely just Michigan farm towns joined together n number of times, depending on population. Owing to a basically phlegmatic temperament, and the fear of hurting my parents, I made it to college without committing suicide; there, the thing solved itself. But I worry what would have happened—what does often happen—to the kid like me, but with worse test scores, bad parents, an unlocked gun cabinet.
This sounds like the general lament of an intelligent, intellectually curious person growing up than anything specific to the midwest. Of course ones ideas aren't understood, and if too many big words are used then one marks themselves as "talking funny". There are a great many under the 75th percentile after all.
The one thing I found missing from the present article was the nearly total absence of oppurtunity in all these rural midwestern towns. A whole lot of my peers put a trailer on Mom/Dads (or Grandma/Grandpa's) land, and eked lives somehow. I honestly don't know how. The poverty, the grinding hopelessness is endemic for the region. So yeah, there's nothing else to talk about, so you talk about the neighbors, or that strange kid at school who wear's the sweater with puff balls. And don't by any means be different lest you be gossiped about as well.
That part about the 10k person town containing every type of person really resonated with me. There was a real sense of isolation in the small midwestern town I grew up in simply because it was pre-internet and there just wasn't a decent way in most cases to see that the greater world existed.
But that has little to do with being in the Midwest. You'd meet a bigger variety of people in Cincinnati than 29 Palms, CA. People seem to conflate "small town America" with Midwest while overlooking their own rural backyards and ignoring Midwestern cities.
>>> ... and eked lives somehow. I honestly don't know how.
Drugs? Or some other invisible economy? I had the same impression of late-90s Vancouver. No real growth outside of real estate, but lots of people with piles of cash and a huge population who never seemed to work but still made rent each month. In BC pot brought in, by some estimates, more money than forestry and mining combined. Now it's purely real estate.
It's probably a combination. Truckers often live in small towns because it's cheap and has a culture they like. Multigenerational rural families often have plenty of farmland and a large positive net worth. There's still some manufacturing jobs in many of these areas, though most places are still continuing to decay due to outsourcing and globalization.
I took the first option. As a child, I accepted without thinking that my small town, a city of 9,383 people, contained within it every possible human type; if I could not fit in here, I would not fit in anywhere. (“Fitting in” I defined as being occupied on Friday nights and, sooner or later, kissing a girl.) Every week that passed in which I did not meet these criteria—which was most of them—became a prophecy. Every perception, every idea, every opinion that I could not make immediately legible to my peers became proof of an almost metaphysical estrangement, an oceanic differentness that could not be changed and could not be borne. ... I knew that cities existed, but they were all surely just Michigan farm towns joined together n number of times, depending on population. Owing to a basically phlegmatic temperament, and the fear of hurting my parents, I made it to college without committing suicide; there, the thing solved itself. But I worry what would have happened—what does often happen—to the kid like me, but with worse test scores, bad parents, an unlocked gun cabinet.
This sounds like the general lament of an intelligent, intellectually curious person growing up than anything specific to the midwest. Of course ones ideas aren't understood, and if too many big words are used then one marks themselves as "talking funny". There are a great many under the 75th percentile after all.
The one thing I found missing from the present article was the nearly total absence of oppurtunity in all these rural midwestern towns. A whole lot of my peers put a trailer on Mom/Dads (or Grandma/Grandpa's) land, and eked lives somehow. I honestly don't know how. The poverty, the grinding hopelessness is endemic for the region. So yeah, there's nothing else to talk about, so you talk about the neighbors, or that strange kid at school who wear's the sweater with puff balls. And don't by any means be different lest you be gossiped about as well.