I live in Bittersville. I'll probably die here, too. So will most of the other people here now.
Bittersville's a town that used to have 1100 meatpacking jobs that paid $27.00 per hour - in 1972. By 1982 they were all gone. They made a movie about the strike at the meatpacking plant north of here. The movie won an Oscar, but the jobs still went away.
It gets worse..... in Bittersville:
Now, the people who had those jobs are old and poor, or dead. Their sons are skinheads that listen to Korn and Megadeth and pimp out cars in their garages. Their daughters aren't sure who their kids' fathers are. They have money for cigarettes and cell phones, but not for shoes, but it's OK 'cause Medicaid covers kids and unemployed dropout moms, and they're gonna go to travel-agent school anyway when they get outta here. The babies are adorable, but some of 'em have head lice or some small bruises. They don't look like the guy mom has staying in the bedroom while he waits for his luck to change in Bittersville.
There used to be four Gypsum mills. Now there are two. One of those is in receivership - despite being right on top of the second largest gypsum deposits in North America. The unionized Gypsum mill workers work seven days a week, 52 weeks a year -- you think I'm making this up, don't you? It's all true. Most of the workers die in their late 50s. The local union with the biggest membership has exactly 12 employed members. They used to kill hogs for a living.
The entire downtown has moved to the mall, but the stores from the mall have moved to Des Moines and Branson. Wal-Mart is the 5th largest employer. The streets are full of massive cracks and holes that eat tires for lunch. Local taxes are at the limit set by the state. The budget isn't balanced. There is a beautification project going on, but no money to make it work. Bittersville is looking for a new job recruitment slogan, too.
They built a new wet milling corn processing plant and two ethanol plants in the last five years, but the newest one can't open because the people here that need jobs can't do the ones the plant needs. That's because you have to have made it through high school and take a drug test to get a job there.
The schools are full of mean cheerleaders, a good wrestling team and sophomores that read at a 5th grade level. 19 teachers just got laid off, including all the guidance counselors. The middle school basketball coach was arrested and jailed for taking movies of the boys in the school shower room, but there'll be no trial. He hung himself while the jailer was on break. Too bad about those counselors.... Some of those counselors will find jobs somewhere that's not Bittersville.
We have a Parochial school here. They raised enough money to build a new campus with elementary, middle and high schools in it. Their kids went to state in basketball. The parents put on a really fancy ball every year that raises the money. All the politicians show up. The school shares school buses with the public schools, but they don't have to take any difficult kids. That parochial school is really good academically, but it would be a lot better if the parents got vouchers from the state to send kids there, so says their lobbyist.
The biggest church in town makes a fortune selling the Bible as a memorization drill to the parents of Ritalin kids. Their women don't show their ankles. Their school for troubled teens is in a former mental facility that was closed by the state due to violations of the Disabilities Act. Our Senator got that passed, but the money to implement it can't be found. No one can visit the school for troubled teens, but that's OK because they all seem to be from California or Kansas City. They don't ever come into Bittersville without a guard.
A lot of the Protestants don't like the Catholics here. The feeling is mutual. A lot of Congregationalists left to become Presbyterians because they couldn't agree how much to pay the organist. True Gospel preachers hold revival meetings at the old Volkswagon dealership building. Bingo raises money for the Christmas soup kitchen.
Bittersville kids that congregate on the city square used to just look for weed and a party, but now they score meth and downers. They tear down stop signs or shoot at each other with glocks. They buy 'em at the gun show at the fairgrounds from a guy from Tennessee that used to live here when he was on parole. They laid the stop signs on the railroad tracks to see if they could derail a train. Fun! It worked! Some of 'em shot up some black kids from Omaha who were here for a wedding. They didn't like it that the bride was white. They killed her and an Omaha guy at the Holiday Inn which is five miles miles from where the wedding was held. Meth kids have a lot of energy.
The Bittersville Holiday Inn has a different name now....
When you're high and have a gun, you tend to forget you live in Bittersville.
The Carnegie Library was disaccredited for only having one quarter the number of books needed to get a D grade from the national organization of Libraries. It took 14 years to get a bond issue passed to build a new Library. It needs more books, though, now that it's here. The big problem with the Library now is the naughty books that might be seen by kids. Books are not a high priority in Bittersville.
I got told today by the TV that the people of Bittersville are happy, forward-looking optimists by a woman that says the guy with the funny name is elitist, that he's laughing at us and puts us down.
That's weird. The guy with the funny name came here four times and his cool wife was here, too. He drew thousands of people, and he stayed around to answer questions. He said that he knows that "hope" is a hard thing to believe in when you live in Bittersville, but that he has hope, and we should, too. He says if we get fired up like an old lady he met in the south somewhere that we can join him to use our hope to change Bittersville. He says we can change the world. He said that he worked his way up by helping people with worse problems than ours, and that we can do it, too.
Back in February I met hundreds of people at an event called a caucus in Bittersville that usually draws just a few people. There were unemployed counselors, and chuch members. There were single moms with babies, and there were a lot of people that live right in my neighborhood that I had never met, including some nice people that used to live in Mexico. I saw some students fro the Junior College there. They saw the guy with the funny name at the college in the auto repair shop, and stopped by to check him out.
I saw one of the librarians and some lawyers and doctors, and I saw a bunch of old union guys with their VFW caps. I even saw some people from the big church with the long skirt rule and the secretive school.
Almost everybody had buttons that said "Hope." There were signs that said it, too. They took a vote, and the lady who said we were disrespected by the guy with the funny name came in third. A nice guy from South Carolina came in second, but the hope guy with the funny name came in first. The only fight of the night came because everybody wanted to go to the next meeting to represent Hope.
It got worked out. A lot of people are still wearing their Hope buttons. Some of 'em went to Nevada and Texas and Pennsylvania to spread more Hope. I gave them all of my buttons, but I kept the sign. I'm still using it....
in Bittersville.
Update:
Thanks to the people who took the time to read or comment!
I want to mention that, although the essay does use a lot of true information from my real home town, the tone of it is more dictated by my anger at the traditional media and the Clinton and McCain campaigns for willfully misrepresenting what Barack Obama said, and even more importantly, that what he said is absolutely and without qualification, TRUE!
There is a growing arts community in my town, and, despite the problems, there is a growing realization among young people here that they have a real opportunity to set the course for the future of rural Iowa.
I cannot overstate how important Barack Obama's message is to people here. So, the problems are very real, and so is the bitterness, but Bittersville is a state of mind. And, face it, if The Wire is right at all, we're better off than Baltimore ;-) Duck -- run...... bye.