Death of Small Town Texas

Up and coming blogger, Stephan Dueboay wrote one of the best articles I have read in a while that some of you will ‘get’ and some of you won’t.  It kinda depends on your age and how technology oriented you are.

Those of you who grew up in small Towns across Texas and the USA will immediately empathize with Stephen who is starting his blog called The Flighty Texan.  You will need to go to his blog and see what he writes there.  He named his blog The Flighty Texan and I’ll let him explain how he came up with the catchy title.  That title would fit a lot of us here in the blogosphere.

But back to his essay.  He starts off by explaining the isolation of small towns back in his growing up days.  He also points out that he now realizes the isolation of small town Texas was a ‘blessing’ of major proportions.  He states, “I look back and realize just how great a town it really was and how fortunate I was to begin life blanketed with its simple style.”

Wow!  How true is that?

I believe I have figured out just about where Stephen grew up and I won’t give that away, but it could have been anywhere from Dumas to Dripping Springs and that covers a lot of territory.  And just because he grew up in one of the smaller towns in Texas doesn’t mean his essay won’t touch others who grew up in more urban areas or on the outskirts of some of our major cities.

Fact is….the world has changed.  A lot.

Here is Stephen’s essay.

Death of the small town

Stephan Dueboay, Sr

© July, 2010

I grew up in a small Texas town just on the outskirts of the middle of nowhere.

Although I didn’t realize it at the time, being isolated there was a blessing that is daily oh-so-obvious as an adult. As a young boy, I thought my hometown would eventually die a slow, painful death because of its unwillingness to move forward. Now I look back and realize just how great a town it really was and how fortunate I was to begin life blanketed with its simple style.

I was aware of another world just past the county line because of the 6 o’clock news and the fuzzy and static-laden voices that verified its existence on my transistor radio. Those broadcasts and fleeting receptions helped my mind’s eye create the vision of what I thought life might be like in the big cities of Dallas and Fort Worth.

Riding bicycles unaccompanied by an adult from sunup until sundown all over the county was quite normal then. My mother’s only requirement as I pedaled out of the yard and pretended not to hear, was the stern and non-negotiable command of “you had better be in this house when that street light goes on.” And that came out of her concern more for my getting into bed at a decent hour and not so much for my safety.

My friends and I would spend hours scouring ditches through  neck-high Johnson grass  beyond the shoulders of the road and behind restaurants and gas stations searching for the glistening glass drink bottles that we would redeem at the local grocery store for a pocket full of shiny nickels. That was a dependable source of income for an 11-year-old boy not satisfied with the fifty cents allowance I received each Saturday morning.

Kick the can, riding bicycles without helmets and cooling off in a friends tank, never dwelling on the snapping turtles and snakes that swarmed just below the surface of the muddy water, were all rights of passage for young boys chasing down manhood along those dusty back roads.

With only a single movie available and playing for the fifth Saturday night in a row at the theater, cruising the mile-and-a-half, well-worn main drag endlessly was the weekend entertainment.

We were on a first-name basis with the local policemen who would creep slowly behind us in their cruisers while we parked on the square under cover of night. It was almost like an episode of Mayberry, RFD — Andy Griffin and Barney Fife tending their civic duties by ensuring that the children of local residents weren’t involved in something that would get them hurt or in trouble.

But now the hometown I once knew has become unrecognizable to me and, ironically, it’s from the very thing I once thought would be its salvation from a plain, ordinary existence. I don’t know how to explain the different “feel” it now has.

No longer does the naïveté hang on the breeze like the sheets on mama’s clothesline. It’s no longer a refuge or a place where I can run and hide when I get disenchanted by the world and all of its problems.

Now every country in this world is a neighbor. The small town is now a faded memory from another time like the ice-pick, typewriter or those bottles I spent the better part of my youth searching for. Even remote corners of this fragment of dust we call Earth are just a keyboard or mouse-click away.I’m not so sure that I like that or if I will ever be able to embrace it. So call me old fashioned and I’ll just say, thank you.

I find myself, like many other people around this globe, mired in the age of Facebook, texting, high speed internet, cable and firmly planted in the electronic age.

But everything good and necessary comes with a price. Technology can be a good thing and the majority of our worldly “neighbors” would say it is necessary, but the by-product of technology has become a double-edged sword.

On the one edge the ability to do things bigger, faster and better has evolved at an incredible pace, freeing up even more time to cram something else into our time-starved lives. On the other edge, the innocence of the small town has been shattered and compromised because now, the entire world and all of its glories and its darkness is at the fingertips of unsuspecting youth from Hico to Hiroshima. Those outside activities I spent a childhood enjoying have now disappeared, long-gone with the small town. Now if it isn’t gigged, wi-fied, joy-sticked or hi-speed, it’s not an activity or an interest for kids.

Yes, the little map dot where I grew up has fully embraced the technological age, too. I don’t even recognize it during the visits I take there now.

The buildings are the same but just a bit more rundown than I remember and the school I attended is still home to the Fighting Indians and the kids still drive up and down the main drag, but now with a curfew. There seems to be a well-defined appetite for all things worldly, present and around every corner. Cell phone towers seem oddly out of place in once productive peanut fields that are now, empty, overgrown pastures.

Gang signs deface historic buildings and landmarks, young boys walk around with their “pants on the ground” and booming car stereos shatter the silence of once peaceful mornings. Like a favorite uncle I thought would never die, the town I came to love has succumbed to worldly influence.

Those timeless, enduring words from Thomas Wolfe’s book titled,  You Can’t Go Home Again, make more sense to me now than they ever have.

But often, when I take time out of what has become a busy life and close my eyes, I pull an image from a dusty summer day in the past and pause to reflect on the simple tranquility of that place I once knew.

Though faded through years and age, the images I recall help me remember that deep in the heart of Texas, miles away from anywhere, but just a click away from everywhere, is a little place I once knew as home.

You can enjoy more of Stephan Dueboay at his blog, The Flighty Texan.

I’m David out in Real Texas

Enjoying the small town life

Tagged as: david werst, Flighty Texan, Real Texas Blog, Texas Lifestyle