“I’m so tired of all of this traffic. I just can’t wait to get out of Africa.” – Upright Citizen’s Brigade
Especially when I’m explaining.
When we moved to Alaska, we were moving from a mid-sized Midwestern city. The town we were moving from was not big enough for an NFL® franchise, but also not nearly small enough for a letter to Penthouse© about my experiences with an entire college sorority when I was a naïve college freshman in my first week at a small Midwest college.
But this town was a big enough town that there was still a reasonable degree of anonymity. If the person in the car next to me at the stop light was knuckle-deep up their nostril mining for mineral resources without even so much as an endangered species permit, well, the chances are I’d never see them again. And if I did, I could practice a pre-Coronavirus version of social distancing, which involved awkwardly “spilling” 173°F coffee over the hand they had extended for a welcoming handshake. I hope Grandpa forgave me after the burn surgery, but all he would do afterwards was waive that restraining order when I came over to say, “Hi,” and call the police.
He was such a scamp!
Sometimes when you sober up as a naïve freshman, you get udderly surprised.
Not too long after we moved to Fairbanks, The Mrs. had called me and asked me to pick up some canned bananas, sushi flavored ice cream with calamari chunks, and diet flavored peanuts (which turn out to be just a packet of salt) at Safeway™. I managed to get them. Did I mention that The Mrs. was pregnant with Pugsley at the time?
Anyway, after I got back into my car, I had to make a left turn to leave the Safeway© so I could head back to my house. Not a problem – it was a two lane road I was turning on to, but it was 6pm in February in Fairbanks – the traffic was as sparse as original hair on Joe Biden’s head, and it was colder than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s womb, so at least the ice cream wouldn’t melt.
I was third in line to make the left turn. The first turning car stopped, looked left, looked right, looked left and took his left turn. Boom, off he went, never to be seen again.
Now, second in line, behind a minivan. In front I could see the driver wasn’t looking left or right. As a battleship sized (really) opening to turn left opened and closed in front of her, I could see that she was arguing with her kids, probably about how the mean blonde man shouldn’t have taken the last of the canned bananas. Finally, when enough openings for the 7th Fleet to safely make a left turn had been there and left, my hand hovered over the horn.
I paused.
I took a deep breath.
I we got a mushing dog when we were in Alaska, but he identified as a she. I guess it was a Trans-Siberian Husky.
What had I lost out of my life waiting behind this woman? 45 seconds? I put it in perspective. Was it worth it to add stress to a mother who was currently in a battle of wills with three junior high aged kids? No. I let out a sigh, and realized that getting upset about something small like this really was, was something I could let go of. Forever.
Why be stressed? I’d be home in less than 10 minutes anyway, and Alaska would still be in its own time zone, which was a decade earlier than the rest of the world. I exhaled slowly. Stress drained away.
The woman finally pulled out into an opening large enough to be considered an interplanetary distance. I followed, right behind. At the lights, she went straight. I went straight.
And then I followed her for seven miles. At the next right turn, she turned. I followed. At the next left turn? I followed. She turned down the secluded driveway that held four houses. I followed. She turned right one last time, and I didn’t follow, because she turned into her house.
Her house? Right next to mine.
Mainly we didn’t garden, we just raised our herds of mosquitoes.
Lesson learned. Living in Fairbanks was tough enough. No reason to make it tougher by being the jerk, especially when it’s a small place.
But the lessons learned from living in Fairbanks were bigger than that. I had grown up in the country, so I generally never left the house without things like a blanket, jumper cables, a knife, good shoes, or yak-flavored fruitcake. You never know when disaster will happen, and I’d seen Pa Wilder rescue some idiot flatlander at least once a year.
When you grow up in the country, you never know when or even if a car will come along. I’ve driven mountain roads in winter where my tracks were the only tracks that had punched through 6 inch (7 meter) deep snow and I knew that if I went off the road, the only thing that would keep me alive was between the steering wheel and the driver’s seat. You have a lot of time as you pick your way through a winding road to think of the things that should be in the car with you. You also know the only thing that will save you is . . .
You.
Second place, Jack London Memorial fire building championship (LINK). Link related.
I contrast this with living in an urban area. Sure, there are dangers there, but those dangers are man, not nature. Nature, in places like New York City, has been tamed to the extent that the only dirt you’ll see has been trucked in from miles away. In an urban setting you are reliant on people to do everything for you. Come get your trash. Heat your house. Wax and filet your Chihuahua. In New York City, they even have a number to complain, 311. In 2010, Wired (LINK) did an article and listed the complaints, graphing them. What complaints were sent to this number?
Graffiti. Consumer complaints. Traffic signals, damaged and overgrown trees, dirty conditions, chlorofluorocarbon recovery, problems with taxis, illegal building uses, property taxes, noise, and rodents.
In a rural world, graffiti is solved by talking with the neighbor boy’s dad.
- Traffic signals? If you see three in a day, you’re doing something wrong.
- Consumer complaints? Don’t shop there anymore.
- Damaged trees and overgrown trees are solved with a chainsaw. Which also might solve the graffiti, if you know what I mean.
- Illegal building uses? What’s that? When cousin Kaiden uses your barn to make meth?
- Property taxes? Call the county commissioner. He lives down the road apiece and you know that Wanda is NOT his cousin.
- Rodents? You do have a barn cat, right? And if by rodents you mean coyotes, that’s what the .223 is for.
- Chlorofluorocarbons? The pigs eat those, right?
With a few exceptions, all of those issues are taken care of by rural residents themselves. The other things don’t even exist. Chlorofluorocarbons? Sounds like Bigfoot to me. Unless you mean sweet, sweet Freon®, which is necessary to keep the sushi ice cream cold.
Godzilla was flipping houses before it was cool.
I remember reading the Wired® article when it came out, incredulous that city dwellers would call the government and bother them with such petty things. In my mind, this call-in number over shallow inconveniences almost seemed like an experiment in conditioning people to be helpless when nearly all of these problems could easily be solved with either small arms or artillery.
In a rural setting, you’re prepared to save yourself. In an urban setting, you’re waiting for someone to save you. And in an urban setting, you’re anonymous. Do you think people would act like such fools on Black Friday if they had to face those same people the next day?
No. Good heavens. Want to see a polite Black Friday? Come to Modern Mayberry. We have to live with each other, and performing Brazilian ju-jitsu over a Spongebob Squarepants™ 50-piece socket set is just not something you can do and still nod and smile at the Dairy Queen® afterwards. Heck, it’s not like it was the Hello Kitty® smoker, right?
One of the stories that presents the biggest case for learned victimhood in cities is that of Kitty Genovese. Kitty was a bartender coming home from work one night in March in 1964. She was murdered. Some accounts say that dozens of people heard her murder, which lasted half an hour. Apparently there were one or two calls to the police, but no one came. At least one person that heard it said, “I just didn’t want to get involved.” Did I mention that happened in New York City? Yeah. It did.
Contrast it with this:
When I was driving in Fairbanks, I saw a car by the side of the road. It was -50°F outside, and it was a January night. The car was obviously stuck. I stopped, and rolled down the window. The other car did the same, and I found myself talking to a (maybe) sixteen year old girl, plainly embarrassed that she’d run off the road.
John Wilder: “You okay? Got someone coming?”
Unknown Teen Driver: “Yes. It’s all fine. I just wish everyone wouldn’t keep stopping!” They say that no man is an island, but to me it’s ironic that you’re more on an island in the sea of humanity that is New York City than you are in an isolated island of sub-arctic tundra in the snow on a rural road in Fairbanks, Alaska.
I kid. I only saw it snow once in June in the two years I lived there.
The other day I was at one of the nine stoplights (in the entire city of Modern Mayberry) and was thinking about some wonderful blog topic and not really paying any attention to the light. The light turned green. My car was as immobile as Bernie Sanders’ love of communism. There were two cars behind me. Pugsley, however, said, “Dad, get the lead out! Are you waiting for a special color of green? Are you waiting for it to grow vines and pull you through the intersection?”
None of the cars behind me honked.
When it comes to community cohesion, where would you rather be?
Okay, probably not behind me.
