Homecoming
Bob, my neighbor's friendly burro
Places never seem as strange as after a long absence.
Like your first college football game post-graduation or a trip through the dairy aisle after a yogurt-eating stint in Europe.
I grew up in the small town of Princeton, W.Va. (pop. 6,347) which never seemed as odd for the first 18 years of my life as it has for the last six.
I can appreciate a lot of southern West Virginia’s peculiarities– beautiful scenery, fast drives on hairpin turns, Appalachian music and folklore and of course the scrumptious pepperoni roll. The other end of the spectrum (obesity, meth addiction, poverty, racism, sexism, polluted water, alcoholism, tooth-loss and NASCAR) are a little harder to stomach.
But what strikes me most on this particular Christmas visit home is how Princeton renders my worldly logic and regular habits completely irrelevant.
Like the unofficial D.C. pastime– talking about your rent and what it gets you in a particular neighborhood. The cost of living is pretty low here, which it ought to be in a place where the median income is about $21,000. But it makes me cry a little that you can rent a four-bedroom, three bathroom ranch house with a garage and a fireplace for $1,000 a month.
Like any craving I might have for sushi, kimchi, curry or even a decent espresso. You might try the Applebee’s which practically serves as the alumni center for Princeton Senior High School. For late eats, there’s the Omelet Spot. They’ve reopened since a windstorm destroyed the roof last February.
Like chasing free wifi. The only place with free broadband that I can think of is Barker’s Muffler & Tire City, as strange as that might seem. Add to that being able to google your way to answers. The resource cocktail of Yelp, Twitter, Craigslist and Metromix that went into nearly every social decision I made are slim to non-existent.
But you don’t need somebody to tell you something you already know. Most of us know our way around hamlets like Brush Fork or Sandlick just like we know the local weatherman was a several-time World Quick-Draw champion or the apocryphal story about the drifter who drowned in the old water tower even though none of us were alive then (if it even actually happened.)
For a few weeks I think I’ll be OK without tofu and Target and Googlemaps Street View– After all, who needs broadband when you’ve got barnyard?
The fact that you have a friendly burro neighbor named Bob is worth like five broadbands. (And he started me on a fun blogging tangent tonight, so please thank him for me.)
I’ll be sure to give him an apple on your behalf!