What Death is Like

The artifacts are still coming in. The latest addition is a book given to me by Meredith about travels in small-town America, “The Lost Continent” by Bill Bryson. With all my other travel books to read I probably won’t get through this one anytime soon. But I’m in a cozy house that’s perfect for reading, so I mine as well read a few pages before moving on. I successfully made it through two pages before returning to my computer to write what you’re reading now.

I’ve seen a lot of small towns, big towns, small cities, and big cities. The scale leans more towards the cities than the towns so far on my trip. But regardless, city or town, 100 people or 1,000,000 people it’s still a hometown. Bill Bryson does a great job of describing something I’ve seen in many places, so here are a couple excerpts from the two pages I got through.

“When you come from Des Moines you either accept the fact without question and settle down with a girl called Bobbie and get a job in the Firestone factory and live there forever and ever or you spend your adolescence moaning at length about what a dump it is and how you can’t wait to get out and then you settle down with a local girl named Bobbie and get a job in the Firestone factory and live there forever and ever.”

“Hardly anyone ever leaves. This is because Des Moines is the most powerful hypnotic known to man. Outside town there is a big sign that says, ‘WELCOME TO DES MOINES. THIS IS WHAT DEATH IS LIKE.’”

“When I was growing up I used to think that the best thing about coming from Des Moines was that it meant you didn’t come from anywhere else in Iowa.”

I’ve learned that this is what people think in a lot of places, not just Iowa. Hey, I loved Iowa! And there’s my friend Devon who grew up in Brooklyn, he wants nothing more than to see Kansas! I find myself very frustrated when I hear someone say, “This town is boring, there’s nothing to do.” You hear that anywhere you go. Personally, I believe that ‘boring’ is a characteristic of people, not towns. Guess what, there are people that want to live in that town just as much as you want to get out.