Slamming Repetitive Towns

I spent the last four days in Swainsboro/Twin City area with my best friend Mandy and her mother Neta (pronounced, if you're me "Net-uh"). Sometimes, I do things that when I look back on them, I know that some people will judge me pretty hardcore for. Basically I watched a lot of Golden Girls and therapy TV (Obese and Pregnant, I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant, Intervention, etc.) these past few days. I also, although Mandy usually abstains, love to watch television that sells jewelry (stay tuned...that's going to be tomorrow's post).

Anyway, I just wanted to put a brief observation about my drive home today. I forgot to reverse my directions on Google Maps, so when I tried to come home and the dual-highway I was on split and I took a wrong turn, I ended up in Alma, about forty miles away from where I needed to be.

I didn't notice my error for about twenty miles and then it took me another twenty to get back on the right path. The reason that I didn't notice is that every depressing town of less than ten thousand people in southern and middle Georgia looks the exact same. The same weathered "cash stores," the same discount retailers, the same lack of fast food places, the same overabundance of trailer parks on the outskirts of town, the same bleached, dead feel to downtown It's like watching the same bad story happen again and again. And maybe it's a little sad to go over the junction of some highway and some state road and not just suspect but know that this junction...this crossing of asphalt paths, is the only reason this town still exists.

One of three things happens to all of us: we either end where we start, we blow far away, or we go as far as we can or want or until we get uncomfortable or tired, and we settle. We say that these trees are nice enough...this town is good enough. And we give up in the middle of home and a dream, living and attending the First Baptist Church and attending the women's auxillary until the end of time. Once is bad enough...it's a bad southern tragedy...a ghost town of flesh and blood. But to see it every thirty miles, as some sort of sociological deja vu...

The pretty town squares aren't enough. The regional cutesieness isn't enough. Why is your town here? What makes it special? Why should I stop? And if I shouldn't stop, why should anyone? You know, in Star Wars, there is a city that takes up the whole planet of Coruscant. I've never forgotten that name because it reminds me of a future of efficiency and usefulness...instead of an aborted attempt at urban maturity.

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I use this service called Zemanta to add links and pictures with Creative Commons licenses to my blog. I just started using it, but this picture came up as my first random picture today:

Image by Stuck in Customs via Flickr

The image is called "Roadside Beauty Salon." Like the sky, which is probably not real, but it seems like the place where you'd get your hair did at the end of the world.