The unfamiliar is familiar.
written by Julie R. Neidlinger 7 comments link this postThe usual debate, country mouse vs. city mouse, continues.
Rod Dreher blogs about an article in an Austin paper that talks about the dying plains of America. The article theorizes reasons why people in a small-town diner stared at the author, and were, apparently, quite unfriendly. It's an interesting theory:
These people are watching their towns die. Watching their way of life die. They are living the end of their dream, and they didn't believe that could happen. Like their ancestors, they've worked hard and hard and hard. They've played by the rules, believed the right things, worshipped the proper God, lived as they deeply felt life should be lived, and they're losing everything that matters to them. And there's nothing they can do about it except to keep working hard, because that's all they know. They're losing a way of life because of forces beyond their ken. Giant agribusiness, globalization, politicians selling them out, a tidal wave of history sweeping them away. Republicans and right-wing demagogues play to them, so they vote for Republicans. But it doesn't help. Liberals and Democrats rarely come to talk to them, and still more rarely talk with them – why, then, would they vote for liberals and Democrats? "Blue state" snobs make jokes about the stupid "red states." These rural people are not stupid. They're furious. Time has passed them by, and they don't know why. They've done and been everything that they were taught to do and be, and it's come to nothing. That's what liberals don't get. These people are furious, and they've got something to be furious about, however much their fury may be misdirected. They want somebody to blame – a useless but human need.
So I walk into their Kansas diner, and in my differentness I become an instant symbol of what's pulling them down. Their kids are leaving town, their towns are dying, their leaders are failing them, they're helpless to stop it. They expected to live prosperously in these places for centuries – their courthouses were built to last centuries. They're losing it all, and there's no one to give a damn. They didn't believe this could happen – could not conceive that their time would be so short and that their toil would be futile and that their dreams would die so hard.
Of course, there are other possible explanations that are less dramatic. As always, the plains are depressive and dismal. I've already covered that ground, i.e. the proper way to do a story about the dying plains.
But back to the issue about how a newcomer was treated walking into a specific restaurant in Kansas. I know the reason I stare when an out-of-towner walks into the Hampden Cafe, and I'll get to that point taking a written path that leads through the comments section of Dreher's post.
Yes, I'm going to comment on the comments. Actually, I'm going to comment on one set of comments.
First, there's this:
"So I walk into their Kansas diner, and in my differentness I become an instant symbol of what's pulling them down."
Emphasis mine. My conclusion after reading this is that these agrarian crybabies live in the same hollow dream kingdoms that they think these "outsiders" symbolize. Their "cake and eat it" childishness is what gives birth to their failure to adapt, failure to accept the "different". They themselves ultimately kill their own communities; they pull themselves down. No wonder their kids leave.
"Who are ya coming 'round here? You with yer big idears....." That's the way their world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.
Pauli | Homepage | 04.03.07 - 9:52 am
So after this little bit of uninspired colloquialism, this fictional dialogue in which the ruralites say "yer" and "idears", the comment immediately following reassures the reader that:
living in nyc, i never hear anyone sneering at the 'stupid red states' or at nascar or at fundamental christians. we live our lives and are perfectly content to let others live theirs. this coulterish urban myth of unending derisiveness is absurd and does not stand up to scrutiny.
Then, a bit later, this:
Dymphna: "If I went to New York and pointed and stared at all the freaks I would expect a hostile reaction too."
But you wouldn't get one because New Yorkers have better things to do. That's the irony; city folks for the most part leave people alone and don't care where they're from. People who waste time in country diners whining about how someone from the east coast bought up a big tract of land ten miles down the road are the biggest snobbish bigots in this country in my experience.
Pauli | Homepage | 04.03.07 - 2:28 pm
I wonder what city people whine about in their diners. Is it more glorious and noble? Thank god for New Yorkers and/or city folk who possess the uncanny luck to be constantly in love with their own perfection. Here we have a couple of people who mock the Midwestern accent and word usage all while pretending to be e. e. cummings.
I left a comment on the post, noting what I would think would be an obvious point to consider when talking about how a small community reacts when someone new or different arrives:
I'm from rural North Dakota and yes, if someone different walked into the local restaurant, I would note that he was different. Not out loud, maybe, but I'd note it unconsciously for the mere fact that there are so few people in the area. Everyone knows everyone, and someone new is...someone new.
"Well, he's new. I wonder who he is, and why he's here?" I might ask myself, not out of malice, but really, just wondering.
People from a large city might not have the same reaction, not because they've evolved into some higher existence and no longer make note of differences, but because they don't know everyone and unknown people are the norm. It would be unsettling to them to know everyone and perhaps some take comfort in knowing very few and writing off all differences or unfamiliar faces as the familiar.
I rather prefer knowing people. It doesn't mean I spit out some insult because someone is different or "not from around here"; one woman's -- one small town's -- reaction is no measuring bar for everyone, just as there are plenty of people in a city willing to insult someone not like themselves.
Really, generalizations about how people react and treat others are just that: generalizations.
Small towns are like a Cheers bar. New guy? We notice. And the extroverted will be vocal.
"Well, you're new in town. Where are you from?"
That is not code for "I hate you for destroying rural america you ponytail-wearing freak."
Why does there seem a higher premium on not noticing people who are different or new? Why do you think people do bizarre things to themselves in an order to be noticed? It's a magnificent Catch-22: the bizarre that used to get noticed became normal and now no one notices anyone. It's a strange dance, trying to be the Topper in both being noticed while not noticing.
How in the world does that even work?
I'm not sure why there is such an implied problem to notice that someone is different. Pretending that you don't notice someone new in town or that a guy is in a wheelchair or has an eye missing or is wearing high heels with his construction outfit doesn't make you anything but useless in a crime investigation. The mere act of noticing a difference is not inherently bad; it's what you decide to do once the difference is noted.
At what point has it become required to not even notice differences?
For those in the evolution camp, this should seem abhorrent. Not noting the difference between an herbivore and a carnivore, for example, would have been deadly for the early ancestors. Now, obviously, that's an extreme example because an out-of-town stranger (unless he was Clint Eastwood and wearing some kind of poncho) probably doesn't bring death to a small town just because he's different. My point is that we lie to ourselves if we claim we don't notice differences and that there is probably a valid reason to note someone who is different or unfamiliar to us.
If you snobbishly dismiss me because I might gawk at the girl with a Mohawk and kilt walking down the street when you no longer notice such things since you've seen it many times before, I'm sure I can come up with some rural nicety that would have you gagging and gasping and inwardly screaming all kinds of redneck-based phrases in your head. That, of course, would be more Garrison Keillor material and completely acceptable for a city dweller to mock.
What's not new to you is new to me, and what's new to you is not new to me. We all notice what is different and unfamiliar. Some just pretend they don't and hide behind the skirts of urban anonymity.
Please. Being urban doesn't mean you are somehow more evolved or erudite just because you don't take exterior note of people who are different, strange, or new to the area. It just means you're unobservant, possibly lying, and used to the unfamiliar being familiar.
Of course, this is just an "idear" of mine.
UPDATE: Pauli, the writer of two of the comments listed above, has written a post on his blog in response. Read more in my follow-up post here.
Labels: essay, north dakota
Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger 4/06/2007 12:01:00 AM
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7 Comments:
Greetings.
Thanks for the side light on Dreher's article.
Rod Dreher is genial and chatty, which is why I continue to enjoy reading his blog. Occasionally, he'll make a good point. Occasionally.
However, Mr. Dreher also can be ridiculously inconsistent, and silly, and snobbish, and even hypocritical and pretentious. He fancies himself an astute "Crunchy-Con" observer of other conservatives, but when called down on something he'll suddenly start pleading that he doesn't have the time to read everything major conservatives have have written, or such like excuse, or else he simply has his critics banned from commenting, accusing them of being too "personal" in their criticism.
My own conclusion is that Crunchy Con is like a meringue pie with no filling, just meringue. Meringue is okay in its place.
By 
Oengus Moonbones, at
6/4/07 09:58
Julie,
First-time poster and reader.
I live in a rural area 45 miles outside Cincinnati. I've lived in the suburbs, and lived in the city. I know the differences between all three.
Our small church welcomes everyone. Doesn't matter where they come from or how much money they make (or don't). We're conservative in that same way Dreher is. We don't want to see the best overtaken by the good (or worst). What we've been given is glorious; we don't want to lose it.
I want to see a sky filled with stars at night. I want to breathe clean air. I want to see God bring life forth out of my cultivated land. I want to go up to my fruit trees and pull down a pear delicious enough to make you cry. I want to taste fresh peas, not canned.
And every day I feel like systems exist out there trying to kill those dreams. Market systems. Government systems. Social systems. Stuff that sets itself against God and His ways. Bureaucratic nonsense. Eminent domain. Legal loopholes. Injustice in spades.
So maybe I've become one of those diner folks who wonders who the new fast-talker is, the guy coming to scout out where to put the superhighway so it cuts right through my land. Perhaps I have become a little suspicious if for no other reasons than wrong seems to follow after too many people nowadays, not right. People don't come into town to make things better anymore. They come to take something away.
God help America if that's what it's come down to.
By Dan Edelen, at
6/4/07 19:40
Dan Edelen makes a good point. And as I have said, Dreher occasionally makes them as well.
Here in Land-In-Between, where I am, things were becoming Aspenized. I keep wondering where all the rich people are coming from to buy up the oversized McMansions they're building here in Coeur d'Alene. The median price of a home is already out-of-reach of the average pay in this region. It doesn't make any sense to me. There are some truely nutty economic dislocations going on. The lakeside properties are now affordable only to upper crust millionaires.
I guess it's good news that the crazy building boom has slowed a little. But the area is looking more and more like nothing it once did.
By Oengus Moonbones, at
6/4/07 22:43
I think Ventura might be suffering from a little culture shock.
In a dense urban environment, paying attention to a complete stranger is regarded as a threatening act. People must pass through the immediate proximity of hundreds if not thousands of people every day. They simply ignore the vast majority of people they pass by. When somebody doesn't ignore somebody it means something. Having a a complete stranger look right at you feels threatening.
In a small town, the exact opposite happens. Ignoring somebody is threatening behavior. People have plenty of time to acknowledge one another so people only fail to do so out animosity or extreme lack of attention.
I think Ventura simply mistook the normal attention that small town people give to everyone as hostile glances.
By Shannon Love, at
9/4/07 13:58
As a former member of the NYPD, who's still in NY I laughed my butt off when I read that city people don't look down at people from the country. I've lost girlfriends due to the attitude they have with anyone not from "the city" or Europe. They are the saddest hypocrites in the world-when they charge that folks from rural areas are prejuidice.
By 
, at
9/4/07 17:53
Me and a friend of mine once conducted an accidental social experiment along these lines.
We were both writers, about to appear in a movie and had to shave our heads in order to play our parts. Since we would both be bald in a few days anyway, we decided just for the fun of it to give ourselves mowhawks. So we got up early on Sunday morning, made an impromptu ceremony of shaving each other's heads (my friend's kids loved this) and then proceeded to get dressed an go to a Baptist Church for morning services.
Now mind you from the neck down we looked like any other middle class family entering a place of worship. As my friend has just moved to this area, this was the first time any of us had attended this particular church.
The reaction was very interesting. Children, being honest and innocent at they are, were giggling and pointing, "gee, mommy, look at those men and their funny haircuts" At the same time all the adults were doing their damndest not to acknowledge anything different about us. We carried on very normal conversations with other people after the service who appeared a little vexed, but never said word one about our ridiculous mowhawks. We played along and pretended we were just like anybody else.
Clearly we were very much outsiders to the party. But either out of fear (maybe we were racist skinheads?) or out of the need for unity and conformity (hey, we're all sinners here, right? Who am I to judge these lowlife strangers?) our obvious differences were met with a complete, awkward silence. That is, except from the children.
By , at
9/4/07 18:09
I find it interesting that the author of the original article didn't actually talk to any of these strange people who seemed to hate him so much. Or talk to any officials in the small towns that he concludes are dying.
He also neglected to visit any of the small towns in the Texas Panhandle that are thriving, or the two big cities (Amarillo and Lubbock) that are bigger than ever.
I guess those facts would have gotten in the way of his condescension.
By Aaron, at
9/4/07 20:09
