Cars Have Fucked Up This Country Bad
Americans unlucky enough to grow up in more recently built towns and exurbs are stuck having their entire lives defined by the spatial needs of cars. Their neighborhood density is low, their mobility options are limited, and the most urban-esque experience they ever get growing up might be playing with friends on the pavement of a suburban cul-de-sac. Never will they “walk” to a “corner store.” Always will they drive to a Target. If there were ever any beautiful nature along the way, now there is only highway and billboards and shredded semi truck tires on the side of the road.
When I graduated high school, I was one of those people that got the hell out of their hometown. I decamped for college, then for a city, then another city, and finally the mountains of the West. When I left, I had a chip on my shoulder, convinced that those of us that leave are somehow more than those who don't.
But as time passed and the years turned into decades, I reconsidered this position. People that stay must surely have something those of us Leavers do not. Wisdom, an intimacy, a folksy understanding of place. It's simply too easy for us Leavers to think we are better than Stayers.
But I've been back in my home region for several months and, well, there's no other honest way to put it — this place is shitty.
Not that there aren't good things about it. Any person worth their mettle can find beauty anywhere.
But there's something about this place, on the outer edges of a large American city, that's undeniably anemic. The people, the land, the culture… it's all so flat, boring, dull.
The landscape, mostly farmland, has long been stripped of anything natural. Even farmland, once the provenance of farmers, is now just industrial agriculture — as far as the eye can see, petro-chemical fertilizers sprayed on corn and soy, neither grown for human consumption.
And the above paragraph is the perfect crystallization of the people and culture.