July nonfiction: Small Places: In Search of a Vanishing America

This month was a re-read of an old book by Thomas H. Rawls. Small Places: In Search of a Vanishing America. I picked up this book when we lived in Montrose and there was a Saturday market by my house every weekend, including a used bookseller. I really miss Montrose. This book was published in 1990 and now as a re-read I see it is actually outdated. One would think that the subject matter of small towns disappearing would remain current, but in this case there are a lot of references that just don't apply anymore.

At the time of writing, the worldwide web hadn't taken off, and the author suggests that the vanishing of small towns is "new" phenomenon that just started "twenty years ago" which would have been 1970. Therefore reading the book with the idea of small towns disappearing being a "new" thing is an unusual and outdated slant. I also disagree that small towns just started disappearing in 1970. I mean, that's just not true. Look up the history of any mining ghost town.

Chapter 2 covers Antelope, Oregon and the Rajneeshees, a story that has recently fascinated the public thanks to the amazing Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country. But it's now kind of a strange read because in 1990 the Rajneeshees had not yet completely exited Antelope. Bhagwan had been deported by then, and the public was aware that a few of the Rajneeshees had deliberately spread salmonella in The Dalles, but the compound still existed at the time of the book's publication. So, this is not by any means a full story of Antelope, and in fact I can only imagine that the 2018 release of Wild Wild Country has changed the town of Antelope yet again. I say "I imagine" because I have not yet been there (though I want to go), because it really is in the middle of nowhere. This is one example of why I feel that Small Places is sort of outdated in its concepts. By zooming in too close the author seems to miss that places grow and shrink and grow again over longer periods of time than 20 years.

I do like the author's writing style in that he is not overly sentimental or nostalgic about the alleged loss of these places. He traveled to all the places he wrote about, and he interviewed the locals, and just factually reports what they said and what he saw. I liked that he observed that it was not illegal for the Rajneeshees to purchase that land and build a compound, a fact that was also clear from Wild Wild Country. 

In another chapter he observes that people moving from a big city to a small town tend to try to bring the city to the town, instead of changing their own ways to adapt to a small town life. A local laments that the outsiders were sending their children to private schools, indicating that the small town public school wasn't good enough. Complaining. But maybe it really wasn't good enough. How much adapting is necessary and how much is actually making life more difficult or even more dangerous? In another chapter the author interviews a local who makes the comment that what the town really needs is a fire engine. And the author wholeheartedly agrees. Would upgrading the town's fire response system really be so terrible?

The book raises a lot of debates or questions such as these, but reading about these towns and knowing that a whole lot has changed in these places, and in the economy, since the book was written left me with a lot more questions and doubt about the judgments that were implied.

However, if you view this as a history book, you can get a 1990 glimpse at the following towns:
Grinnell, Iowa; Antelope, Oregon; Mount Hope, Ohio; Chelan, Washington; Dott, Pennsylvania; Keuka Lake, New York; Lynchburg, Tennessee; International Falls, Minnesota; Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin; Osceola, Missouri; Nye, Montana; Point Reyes Station, California; Palmer, Alaska; North Danville, Vermont; and Stillwater Township, New Jersey.

I thought about donating the book, but I do feel nostalgic for Montrose. Further proof that I bought it in Montrose was the fact that I found an old Hillary Clinton sticker in the book that I had been using as a bookmark. It was from her first campaign.