Wednesday, December 22, 2010

do you know where cleopatra is?

My brain is buzzing with all sorts of small-town stories -- if I wanted to write books based on small-town life, there is enough material for a lifetime in these parts (although I might risk getting shot, as an alarming number of stories involve death, near-death, and occasional vigilante justice (although, to be fair, most of that was decades ago and some of it may have been exaggerated)). The day started off mostly quietly; I slept in because I managed to write four pages after blogging last night, and then had some lunch, took a shower, helped my mother with ingredients for the soup she was making, and drove into town so that my brother could check the tires on my mom's car.

But the culmination of the day was supper with Ross and Lorena, who are technically our neighbors (as they have ground adjacent to ours) but who actually live in town. I've mentioned them before, I think; he's the Presbyterian minister in town, she taught me and my brother in our Talented and Gifted program in junior high/high school, and they were in an early wave of the Peace Corps in Nigeria back in the '60s. We had a laidback, casual, utterly delicious supper of vegetable/beef soup, a relish tray (similar to what other regions call crudité), jello salad, and leftover cake from my gram's birthday party.

It was all v. nice and relaxing, and we ended up telling many, many stories. Somehow, it all started with my dad asking them if they knew where Cleopatra, Missouri, used to be (and, btw, Cleopatra is pronounced klee-oh-PAY-trah). He described it in relation to other locations around our county and the county in Missouri that borders us, including the farms of people long dead and houses that no longer exist. This included some man named Crazy Legs Maclain, as well as a variety of other characters, and as the stories progressed, it became more and more clear (as it always does) that, as insane as my county is, northern Missouri is ten times worse.

I say that mostly in jest, though, although all the small towns around here look down on each other with a passion that would be utterly incomprehensible to anyone driving through and seeing a seemingly identical series of dilapidated town squares and collapsing main streets. My father's stories should be recorded and stored in some sort of museum (Museum of American History? American Folk Museum?), and they make me laugh, but they also make me sad. Towns like Cleopatra aren't just dead -- they truly no longer exist, and a Google map of where the town used to be just shows a hog farm (part of a bunch of huge industrial hog farming operations spread across that county).

There are all sorts of ghost towns around here that no longer exist except in stories, their buildings plowed under, and even some of their cemeteries have been stripped of their stones and reclaimed for farmland. Within half a mile of this house, I can think of at least three dirt roads that are quickly reverting to wilderness; one that we used to take occasionally to the town where my school was is now completely overgrown and impassable (with a dangerous, possibly washed out bridge to boot), and one that we took regularly into the nearest town is so rutted and poorly kept that it, too, will likely fall back into a vegetative state in the next decade.

So it's quite strange to me that, in the space of 150 years, people (and yes, I callously mean Europeans; there were Native Americans all over around here, and you can find the occasional arrowhead to prove it, but the only Native American I know of around here was adopted by a white family) moved here, hacked towns out of the prairie, built railroads and a grid of roads delineating every square mile, put up schools and churches, and created vibrant communities...only to see everything slowly crumble back into the dirt. Our county's population peaked in 1900 and has been in decline ever since. And the decline is speeding up -- the tipping point was reached twenty (or more) years ago, and the wilderness is too close to taking over to allow for much hope that anyone will pull these towns back from the brink.

Anyway, I think that's enough memories and melancholy for one night; after getting lost in the rabbit hole of Wikipedia, it's now three a.m., and since I need to do all sorts of stuff tomorrow, I should really go to sleep. Goodnight!

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