remembering how to forget

One day while listening to an NPR interview with a singer in a band from Reedsville who was talking about returning to his small tobacco-fueled town after being out on the road, and how he saw the small town mindset in a new light when compared to the many other places he had been and people he had met, I found a way to relate to him and feel more comfortable back home. The singer never held disdain for his fathers' racist, one track mind, nor repugnance for the open land instead of a cityscape, but rather a willingness to help his father see the value of change and acceptance, and respecting and enjoying the country life.

*Direct correlations to my father, tobacco or racism, are in no way personally related with me.

After returning to the U.S., I felt like calling people, making a plan, and expecting to meet them at the prearranged time and place was practical enough, and as it turns out, it was. I was still able to spend plenty of time with all my homies without having a phone, and borrowing the teeniest car ever (the smart car) from my dad. However, the evident reality of how necessary driving was when all I wanted to do was go to the grocery, or to meet a friend for a drink, was rubbing me the wrong way as I saw it through new eyes.

Many aspects of our culture as Americans can be seen in the vast size of our country. With so much free space for our ancestor escaping oppression in foreign lands, the idea of having something to call your own, and making it your own, has trickled down from generation to generation. Diluted along the way, many aspects of "free, open" space is viable to the willing observer every day. Big roads, big cars, "personal space", front yards, back yards, everything that we love and are proud of, and even take for granted, are things that you don't necessarily have everywhere else. I remember telling someone in Spain that I was about to mow the lawn, and had never heard someone laugh so hysterically, until I told them that it was a rider mower, and then I could say that I'd heard someone laugh even more so as such.

Thinking about the pictures of highways and cars that I'd shown my students in Spain, and then seeing them in person after being away, was definitely interesting and educational. It's was really quite a strange change.
¿No?
Now I'm back to small cars, smaller roads, no yards, walking & biking everywhere, having shops in the bottom of the building I live in, and generally a more practical and day-to-day style of life. Who's in for vacation?