The Village Part 2

It was a great many years ago that I came to Longmont, Colorado. I had come because my wife's family lives in Longmont. It seemed like this terrifically exotic place surrounded by the great Rocky Mountains on one side and farmland everywhere else. It was filled with that strange agricultural-industrial ruin you find in small places. There was the defunct and decaying sugar beet refinery. There was still an operational turkey packing plant which did not smell good. There were the rails with the patina of red rust snaking their way through the old warehouses. There was a Main Street, an old neighborhood of stately homes and plenty of open space between.

Longmont, for years captured my imagination. It became this strange fictional backdrop I could reference when I wanted to write a short story. I would put a few people on the streets of my imagined Longmont and give them some sort of missed connection or lost cause to deal with. In my world, I made Longmont to be the quintessential western agricultural center. And since we lived just down the road in Denver, I knew I would be going to Longmont for holidays or parties. Anywhere you go for a party or a holiday is always a great place. Even though Longmont was not a reference point for me and my past, there was something about going to Longmont in those years that made me think of the place as a home or as a sort of home.

When the opportunity arose to make a move to Longmont, I was eager to try the place out. We had talked for years about spending time living on the outskirts of a small town. We had this notion that the place would fit us if we could just live in that place where it is quiet at night and you can turn your back on city lights and face the Milky Way as it falls into the darkened fields.

It's a small town. Main Street is US 287 which runs 1,791 miles from Choteau, Montana to Port Arthur, Texas. Our little stretch of 287 goes from Colorado Highway 66 on the north side of town to southern border of town—a distance of less than 5 miles.

Amid the farms on the west side of town, Longmont has a small airport complete with a taco wagon and a skydiving outfit. There are bicycle paths all along the water ways. There are ample places to worship: two bookstores, a handful of bars and churches of most creeds. There are hawks and eagles soaring the lower elevations of the vast sky where jets criss-cross overhead. This place is what most call a fly over state. The distance to the east and the north is fracked all to hell, huge wells breaking up the crust of the earth. It's unsightly and it's unsavory and as long as there's a market, there's someone to supply fossil fuels which taint our air and sully our farmland. In these farther stretches, places you can see from our town, there are massive plastic looking houses, like massive dollhouses in dollhouse neighborhoods being built by the moment. There are over-sized roads with many lanes and each side of the street is packed with fast food outlets and predictable places to spend money.

My village has the cross section of American life that I think you'd find most anywhere. There are those who want to build a wall around the entire country. These people have that xenophobic attitude that oftentimes seems to have no baring on what they do daily. These are the people who have friends and acquaintances from all walks of life, and when someone different moves into the neighborhood, they are often the first to invite the newcomers in. It's something I see often enough. And next door to the xenophobes are the people who keep signs in the windows written in Arabic and Spanish and English. These signs proudly proclaim that we are all neighbors, and as long as we are here, we are one people, one nation, one USA. Can we be at once socially progressive and xenophobic? Can we be at once the people who wish to conserve our rural roots and sell pieces of mineral rights to big oil.

Big oil is a big deal here. If you ask me, it's best not to trust big companies, big industries and however you feel about big oil, you're part of the system, the decay, all it. Our town wishes to be fossil fuel free by 2050. Lofty goal, in a way, but at the rate we're going, we all may be fossil free by then. It's only a criticism because it's part of the landscape here. It's farmland and McMansion neighborhoods and fracking wells. It's all the people who go along with each of those things. Fighting happens here because of these sorts of things: water, oil wells and new construction.

But it's quiet here at night. Even in the center of town where I live, it's quiet here at night. The businesses along Main Street close early. The restaurants and the bars close early too. The market here just doesn't support a late nightlife. After nine or ten at night there is practically no one on the streets. Occasionally a car passes or a pedestrian with a dog, but that is only very occasionally.

In the late evening when I return home from a night of work, I ride my bike over abandoned streets. The sounds are the sounds of my body working the machine that carries me the few blocks from where I work to where I live. I hear the sounds of my breath, the creak and squeak of the bicycle. I can count the number of mercury gas street lamps because of the sound that they make and the beautiful gold green glow like grainy old photographs. Those mercury street lights are slowly being replaced with LED lamps, which I'm told are more efficient and better for the environment. I wish they put out a better light. The windows of homes, and I look at them, are darkened too. Only very few windows are alight with that ghastly glow of the TV, the glow of someone who has turned off their mind for the night, or for their life.

When I get home, it's quiet. The village sleeps, and after quiet reflection, I sleep too.