i could swear i let you know...i tried one day to let you go

I had intended to keep going with what I was writing last night. However, the internet is my nemesis (perhaps proof that it was, after all, invented by Al Gore?)...I ended up reading stuff on Google Reader for far too long this afternoon, after waking up at 12:30pm. I then showered, ate lunch, and ran into town to get gas and wash my car. Washing the car was relatively pointless, since it got dirty again as soon as I left the pavement and took the gravel roads home, but at least I got the salt off from my forays into the snowy wastelands of the Great American West.

On the way home, I drove through Allerton (the smaller town that we're technically affiliated with, since it's only two miles from us instead of four). Driving through town is utterly depressing. It doesn't help that it's March, the spring thaw has led to a lot of mud, there is no green to be found anywhere, and it's been too messy all winter to pick up from the aftermath of a catastrophic ice storm they had a few months ago (remind me to post pictures of the trees in our front yard - it's a disaster zone).

But even if I were driving through town in the most glorious summer ever (and yes, summers in Iowa are glorious - possibly the best anywhere), it would still be depressing. On the main block alone, several buildings have completely collapsed, destroyed by decades of neglect. One of my favorite places in town was Milford's store - he had an old-fashioned soda fountain, and you could get shakes, malts, cherry, lemon, or chocolate Cokes, phosphates, ice cream with v. stale cones, etc., as well as whatever stuff he happened to have in stock, most of it well past the expiration date. He passed away awhile ago, they came in and auctioned off all of the stuff, and now the entire southern wall of the building is collapsing onto the sidewalk.

It's a v. strange thing to watch a town decay before your eyes. I spent a lot of time there when I was younger, because my grandparents had a store in town - but they sold the building years ago, and I noticed the other day that one corner of the giant mural panels on the north wall had fallen off. Even though the post office, bank, civic center, bar, and legion hall are still occupied, it's only a matter of a few years before the entire main street falls into complete ruin.

I've been worried about the economy, considering that I've forsaken six months of salary - but my current, self-selected 'poverty' is likely just a blip on my long-term earnings curve. Regardless of what happens with the economy in general, though, it's too late for Allerton - the damage was done decades ago, the seeds planted well before I was born. When I went to the town play last weekend, they said that in the early 1900s, when Allerton was a railway hub and hosted various chautauquas and other events, there were 192 businesses active and advertising in Allerton alone. This year, the play had managed to solicit advertising/sponsorships from ~100 businesses in the entire county this year - and since those solicitations were a way to raise money for the play, some of the businesses (like my grandmother's - she paid for an ad for a store that has been out of business for ten years) aren't exactly viable.

On top of all of this, one of my high school classmates died this week. I wasn't friends with him (in fact, was petrified of him, since he wasn't particularly kind me or my friends), but it's still a complete shame. I should probably be writing something other than a romance novel - the combination of grinding poverty, drug abuse, and structural collapse would be better suited for fiction or horror than for romance. Or, perhaps I should make up a memoir in which I'm a drug-addicted seventeen year old with three kids who pulls herself out of an impossible situation by a combination of prostitution and knitting - I could probably sell it, unless my brother or sister rats me out to the New York Times.

It's not all bad, though - the majority are v. nice people, many of whom I've known my entire life. And it's v. nice to have some significant solitude - I was sick of living in a 'city', even in Palo Alto is considered a boring suburb. It's time to stop brooding and go to bed, though. I have to wake up early tomorrow morning so that I can get to Des Moines by 9am for a meeting with a local chapter of romance writers. If I get really ambitious, maybe I'll use this as a way to force myself to start getting up earlier every day - but don't hold your breath.