So Far From Heaven

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

1919 American Legion Post – Now Kimble County Historical Society Museum

I’ve poked a little fun at Junction, Texas.  Partly because they were there, I was there, and it’s an easy target, standing still gazing into the headlights.  But the stark reality is the people of Junction aren’t significantly different from you, me, and all the people living around us.  They’re trying to scratch out a living in a country that’s caving in around them, trying to hang on to what hasn’t caved in yet.

Trying to find something that works by throwing grappling hooks into things that worked in the past.  And when they see it’s not working, blaming the failures on people who are trying to reconstruct different things from somewhere else in the past.

That $3.50 per gallon gasoline sign is a disaster in rural Texas where the nearest somewhat large town’s a $20-$30 round trip.  Same as everywhere else in the western US.  It means the price of having groceries delivered to stores in town will skyrocket over time, and driving to the larger stores in larger towns will skyrocket alongside what’s happening locally.

Aside from some agriculture, nobody in Junction, Texas, is manufacturing anything anyone wants to buy locally, anyone would want to buy elsewhere in the US, or overseas.  Same as where you are, only in Junction it’s more obvious. 

But their toasters, microwave ovens, automobile parts, refrigerators and computers are manufactured in Asia, same as yours.  There’s nobody in town can repair most of them when they fail without obtaining parts manufactured in Asia.

So they fantasize about seceding.  Pretending they could go back to the independence of the past.  Pretending that would bring back ways to make an honest living.  Celebrating their tough, Comanche fighting, Confederate ancestors, pretending they have something in common with them.

While on the other hand, they try to imagine they have something in common with people a decade ago who died when an airplane crashed into a building a quarter-mile high.  Grasping for some abstraction of solidarity with the people there, some anchor that pretending they remember those people might provide to help them deal with a world collapsing around them.

In a real sense, they do have something in common with those 9/11 dead, beyond them all being human beings.  The people who jumped out of those towers weren’t manufacturing anything anyone would want, either.  If they were living today they’d be paying big bucks for gasoline, groceries, toasters, manufactured somewhere else, too.

But there’s nothing else meaningful those unfortunate people in New York could have to say to people in Junction, Texas.  If asked, I suppose they might suggest, “Build higher buildings.”

The road from Main Street to the graveyard is easier to follow in Junction, but nothing else is less complicated than anywhere else.

Old Jules