RouseWorld | Main -- More 'submissions'

More 'submissions'

I might have to end up pulling this, as I'm not certain of the permissions, but I think it is a good commentary on growing up in certain parts of North Carolina during a certain time period. The author is listed as "David Southland."

This may have been written before the "bubble" burst, but I'm not sure.

My Town

I was eating Gerber's apple mush
when you were wearing plum beads
and looked over the San Francisco bay
during your lunch break in your Satellite
you listened to The Lovin' Spoonful
and ate your organically grown strawberries
and melba toast while noticing
the motorized yachts and further out
the trawlers that rusted in the salt
you always thought to make a mental note
of the next unauthorized protest
at the county hall, and how you wore
your hair down just for the occasion
and wondered if Grace would be there
to join in the protest against excessive fishing
on the California coast.
Then one day something happened
you woke up and realized what you
had been smoking burned a crater
in the hickory nightstand your grandmother
had given you the summer of love
which was 1967
and it was time to flush the acid
and the grass
go back to school
for a better education and
to make more money
get married to mary
before the contractor from Kansas
decided to
So years later as your accounting practice
did prosper you heard of the endless
area called North Carolina
over the Rockies and far away
the overlooked and forgotten land
where Doris Day was standard
on late night tv, at ten or so
and a cooperative was a young man
who delivered the paper right to the urn
by your front door
By this time I liked In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
probably more than you ever did
and the only thing to protest
was the curfew at 10 p.m.
and I never heard of The Crickets
just the ones outside my window
they put me to sleep at night
Then one day you read in a magazine
around 1992 that the town I lived in
a community that boasted a shopping mall
and two movie theaters
two thoroughfares
four supermarkets
was voted ONE OF THE TOP TEN CITIES
IN THE U.S. TO LIVE IN BY MONEY MAGAZINE.
and the accountant from California came
and his pen pal the ENT from Maryland came
and the displaced misplaced from the northern
factory towns that dried up like fallen oak leaves
and the land developers from Everywhere, USA
came to Middletown to make it Bigtime Middletown
now there are 74 places to eat fast food
11 supermarkets and the county I live in
is all real estate, all of it, strip malls and
mobile home villages and my town:
oh can I call it that? was once a town with
a drive-in that teen-agers went for sex education
horrified wives of local politicians ended
that sleazy dream
but you know that people actually shopped
downtown and I could ride my bicycle
blocks and blocks and see
a car now and then
where it is not commercialized it is subsidized
this place I must stay and grow old
it is too damn bad
it is only money that men can smell for miles
not the honeysuckle