A PAGE FROM A SMALL TOWN LIFE
March 17, 2001
Fairfield, Iowa, pop. 9,509

[This account is not fiction, nor is it a composite of multiple days. To those who have asked me how I could spend my life in a small town out in the middle of nowhere, this is my answer.]

Saturday morning. As usual, I get awake around 5am. I lie in bed for a few minutes thinking about the fact that my ex-wife Debra is turning 50 today, and that I'll also be turning 50 in another month. I thought we'd turn 50 together, but it wasn't to be. My life hasn't turned out the way I thought it would, but then, does anyone's? When I was 25, I couldn't have imagined that when I was 50 I'd be in this place, with these people, doing what I do. Now that I think about it, I don't remember what I imagined when I was 25, but it sure couldn't have been this. Don't get me wrong. I'm very glad I'm here.

I get up, shower, meditate, enjoy a hearty breakfast. Weather report says it's going to be a beautiful day.

I'm a computer programmer and, since I work from home, my work is always near at hand. Morning often brings fresh ideas to me, and I settle at the computer for an hour or two to work a little more on something that I thought I had finished Friday afternoon, but in the clear light of morning appears to need some improvement. I'm glad I've found a paying job where the decidedly compulsive streak in my personality is actually of value.

At 8am, I go over to John F.'s house to help with the bluebird nestbox project he's running. John works in the contracting and construction trades, and I met him when Debra and I first moved to Fairfield nearly a decade ago and were scoping out our housing alternatives. Since then, John and I have been becoming friends inch by inch. When he recruited me to help with the bluebird boxes, I said yes in part because I looked forward to getting to know him better. He's a friendly, open fellow, very community minded, very connected with others. He's one of those people that helps glue society together.

I find him in his driveway, tussling with piles of metal posts and other nextbox paraphernalia in the back of an ancient pickup truck. He smiles and waves as I walk up, and I tell him the odometer on my car was at 99,999 when I pulled up to his house. "Well, it's a big day for you then", he says with a twinkle in his eye. John's wife Deborah comes out of the house, gives me a sunny greeting to go with the morning, kisses her husband, and drives off on an errand. John puts me to work preparing the predator baffles that will go around each post while he prepares the posts and other parts. We soon find, of course, that a trip to the hardware store will be necessary. We go in his pickup, which has some pipe in the back that we'll be returning. Since I've proclaimed the day to be odometer awareness day, I notice that the ancient truck has well over 200,000 miles on it. "This old truck has taken us a lot of places," John says. "A couple of trips to Mexico. I'm real attached to this old truck."

At the hardware store, John greets the owner by name and gets directions to the item we want. At the register, we run into my friend Lee L. She and her husband like to write about public policy issues, and I compliment her on a letter to the editor of hers that just appeared in the local paper. She is opposed to releasing genetically modified organisms into the food supply and the environment until we've thoroughly studied the effects and know what we're getting into. I couldn't agree more. She doesn't subscribe to the paper and didn't realize the letter had already been published, so I promise to save her my copy.

Back in John's driveway, we soon finish preparing the posts and baffles, and John suggests refreshments before we go out to erect the boxes. In his kitchen, he serves me tea, toasted whole wheat bread from a local baker, and plum jam. He says Shirley N. made the jam with plums from the tree that grows outside her door. Next time I run into Shirley, I hope I remember to tell her how much I like her jam. It reminds me of my grandmother's plum jam. I tell John this, and that I sometimes long for one more piece of my grandmother's elderberry pie, which I savored when I was a boy. John says he likes to bake pies, and offers to bake me one if I can come up with the recipe and the elderberries. I know a fencerow just outside of town where lots of elderberries grow, and tell him I'll get the recipe from my mother and take him up on his offer this summer.

Photo by Paul Delisle

We pile into the ancient truck again, and rattle off to place some bluebird nest boxes in native prairie remnants along a newly built segment of the Fairfield loop trail, a bike and pedestrian trail that will completely encircle the town when it's complete a few years from now. The weather report was right. It is a beautiful day. There are a few inches of new snow on the ground from yesterday, a wet spring snow that clings to twigs and tree trunks everywhere. The temperature is approaching 40, the sky is cloudless, and the world is dazzling blue and sparkling white. We spend a couple of glorious hours in the brilliant prairie morning trudging about locating good spots for bluebird homes -- the right combination of meadow, shelter, and perches. We talk about how the bluebirds can never know that they've been brought back from a serious decline by hobbyists like us in small towns and rural areas all over the country, can never know how much work we've done for them in the waning winter, can never know how important it is to us to see their blue flash on a summer day and hear their cheerful voices announce that the world is full and life is full.

As I drive away from John's house after our labors are complete, I ceremoniously watch my odometer slowly turn over to 100,000. And then it just goes right on to 100,001. Nothing so special about 100,000 when you're just a machine. Just another turn of a cog. I think about the fact that I'll be 50 years old in a month. I could say it's nothing special, just another turn around the sun, but I'm not a machine. The years keep turning, my body keeps aging, without any pause, just like that odometer. I'm a life attached to a relentless mechanism; consciousness stuck in the clockworks.

I drive home and clean up, and then meet my friends Barney and Ava S. for lunch at the Thai Deli, a favorite gathering place just off the town square. Barney is one of my best friends. He lived with me for five years until he married his delightful Ava last spring. Having just been laid off from her job as a technical recruiter, Ava is going through something of a career development spasm, and it gets us talking about work. My friend Hayden H. orbits past our table a couple of times, apparently looking for someone. He seems to be at loose ends, and I wave him over and introduce everyone. He sits down and joins the work discussion. Hayden, like me, is a computer programmer, and Barney is a writer and publicist. Ava and I are early birds, Barney and Hayden like to work at night. But we all agree that there's nothing more satisfying than attacking the job whenever inspiration strikes, be it day or night, and really making things happen.

The conversation begins to wind down and, as we get up to leave, we run into Eric S. and his wife. They're my neighbors, and Eric owns the business Barney works for. The conversation takes off again. Soon my friend Ernie S. and his daughter Sara, who were also just finishing lunch, join us. Ava and I have a brief sidebar with our mutual friend Powell W. as he goes by. It can be tough to reach escape velocity from the Thai Deli on a Saturday afternoon, but eventually our impromptu party of -- how many have we accumulated now? -- eight or so spills out into the street and we go our separate ways.

It's about 2pm and I go to Everybody's, the local organic grocery, to do some shopping. In the juice aisle, and again in the bulk foods aisle, I run into my friend Felicity F. Of course, we stop and visit a little while each time. She and her husband have colds; she's happy that her sister has moved to Fairfield with her family; let's get together soon. I spot Ernie S. and his daughter in the video rental section and stop to talk again. Ernie tells me that his DVD player begins skipping after it's in use for about an hour, but is OK if he turns it off for a while and then restarts the movie from where it started skipping. A stranger standing nearby (there are a few, but they soon become friends) chimes in and says his DVD player does the same thing, and we men fall into speculation about what the problem could be and how to deal with it while Sara browses the selections.

At about 3pm, I eventually make it out of the store and head home. As I walk into my house, my arms full of groceries, the phone is ringing. It's my neighbor John V. His wife and two little girls are all napping, and would I like to take a walk, just the two of us? I tell him to come on over, and I stow my perishables while he crosses through the backyards from his house to mine. I drive us to a new section of the Fairfield loop trail that John hasn't walked before. The only tracks through the new snow in this section of the trail are those of rabbits, mice, and a lone mountain bike.

John is one of my closest friends, and on our walks, there's always an opportunity for a heart to heart talk about the things that matter in our lives. Self, health, family, dreams, work, finances, spirit, relations with others who are close to us. Everything can and does get discussed. This walk is no different, and we explore the trail and our lives for a fine hour or two.

Approaching 5pm, time to go home, put on some dry socks, meditate, spruce up a little for the evening. I put on my best green plaid shirt and, around 7pm, walk over toward the town square to see what's happening for St. Paddy's day.

I drop by Revelations, a gathering place that offers used books and light fare downstairs, more books and a room for small musical events upstairs. I get a veggie BLT and join my friends Joanne G. and L.B.S. who are sitting together at a table. "L.B." is his actual given name, not his initials, although it's based on an ancestor's initials. Joanne tells me she's now writing for the Ottumwa Courier, and they just finished running a series she did on alternative energy. Iowa is rich in wind power potential. She goes upstairs to hear the St. Patrick's Day jam session that's apparently been in progress all day, and L.B. and I talk for a while.

L.B. is always an interesting fellow to talk to. He's a writer, highly intelligent, with a distinctly philosophical outlook. I mention I'm turning 50 next month. He tells me that, when he turned 50 a couple of years back, he finally faced his mortality and realized that there were a number of things in his life that he thought he might do some day that were just never going to happen. He says it felt good to let go of those things, that it freed him up to focus on what really matters to him. He goes on to say, "One problem at this point in life is that I know too much. My head is full of all these things that I've already decided are true, and that keep me from seeing the world in fresh ways." He also says that he's also becoming very aware that the world is being turned over to another generation, that his generation is sharing the world with younger people now who are shaping it in their own ways and aren't particularly interested in his generation. He doesn't feel he understands their outlook on life, and what they want to do with the world. "Not that it'll turn out like they envision it anyway," I think to myself.

I say, "I realized that there's a big gulf between me and the younger generation the other day when I watched some MTV. First, I had a hard time telling the commercials from the programming. And then, when I did figure out that something was a commercial, I couldn't always tell what was being advertised. Here's this collage of shots of young people wearing baggy clothes and dashing around presumably having fun, although from the expressions on their faces I'm not completely sure. Then a brand name that I don't recognize jiggles on screen for two seconds. What were they selling? Shoes? Contraceptives? I have no clue."

Being in a mood to hear some Irish music, I bid L.B. a good evening and wander upstairs. A group of 8 or 9 musicians, most of whom I know, are making the air come alive with their fiddles, guitars, Irish drums, and voices. A small but enthusiastic crowd of fans is grinning and tapping and clapping along. John and Mary Ellen M., birding friends of mine, wave me over to join them. I lose myself in the hypnotic, ecstatic jigs for a while, and then gradually realize that dreamland is beginning to beckon. I say good night to John and Mary Ellen, and as I'm making my way out through the first floor, I encounter my friend John S., who's sitting at a table with a companion having some tea. He rises when I approach and gives me a hug. John has been very much under the weather with a severe case of kidney stones lately, and I haven't seen him in a while. He invites me to sit down and introduces me to his friend, a young woman who's learning graphic arts from him. John specializes in beautiful handmade calling cards and greeting cards. He makes his own paper, and has an old fashioned hand printing press in the middle of his living room. He and his apprentice are working on some wedding invitations this weekend.

Again I begin to feel dreamland calling, and take my leave. I walk home through the clear night as that mysterious clock, the prairie stars, turns slowly overhead. I want to get a good night's sleep, because I have a full day tomorrow.