Tag Archives: metropolis

Cowtown

Cowtown: (n) a small town, especially one in a cattle-raising district in the western U.S.

 As a boy growing up in Ohio, the pecking order was very obvious.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Cleveland was a city that was so metropolitan that it had pollution. Nobody talked much about Cleveland—it didn’t even really seem like it was part of Ohio. It was more like a piece of New York City, stuck up next to Lake Erie.

So for the people of Cleveland, coming down to Columbus was journeying to a Cowtown.

Now, to the folks in Columbus, there was a city just to the north, which was smaller and perceived itself to be intellectual. But for those who lived in the Capital, it was their Cowtown.

Westerville. Westerville looked ten miles to its north to find a village that was mostly farmers and a few people who commuted to the capital city for employment, called Sunbury, and considered it a Cowtown.

That was the Cowtown I lived in.

But Sunbury wasn’t going to put up with that, so we decided to pick on a little town called Centerburg, which we believed had barely emerged from the caves to discover fire.

Centerburg was our Cowtown.

Now, poor Centerburg had trouble. It needed some community to be its Cowtown, but most of the areas around them were the same size. So because a nearby burg, Johnstown, had an occasional murder, Centerburg decided to make it Cowtown.

Just outside Johnstown was a little spot in the road that had a couple of antique shops and a bait store.

Alexandria. It was the Cowtown of all Ohio Cowtowns.

The goal, I assume, was to make sure that even though you were going to be overwhelmed and disregarded by some larger metropolis, there had to be a less robust region that you could feel free to look down on due to their lack of sophistication.

Now, I thought it was something that just went on in Ohio, until many years later, I was sitting in a restaurant in Manhattan of New York City, and heard a waiter refer to Philadelphia as a Cowtown.


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Country Club

Country club: (n) a club offering various social activities

I grew up in a town of fifteen hundred people, and that’s fourteen hundred and ninety-nine if you deduct me.

It was small.

Yet it yearned to gain the respectability of another town ten miles away, which had just become a city, and by the way, in becoming a city funny wisdom on words that begin with a Cwas desperately trying to keep up with the metropolis ten miles south of it.

For you see, it’s not so much that the “grass is greener on the other side of the fence.” It’s just that often we’re envious that our neighbor has a fence.

My little town wanted to have a golf course. We didn’t need a golf course. There actually was a greater demand for a teen pregnancy center. But I digress.

Yet some investors from the medium-sized city in between came together with the small-town folk surrounding me and built a golf course on the only land available at the time—which was a hilly piece of property that ran right alongside a major road.

I will not get into the fact that the golf course was not exactly ready to host the Masters. But shortly after it was constructed, those who were playing golf realized that they didn’t have a country club on the grounds.

Where were you to go after slogging your way through eighteen holes, lying about your score, to sit with some friends and enjoy a cocktail while discussing the finer points of your pointless activity?

I was convinced there would never be a country club.

Matter of fact, I was hoping it wouldn’t come to be.

There were two reasons. The first was that our small town did not require a golf course, let alone a nineteenth-hole watering-area for the few golfers who could actually climb up and down the hills.

But the main reason I didn’t want us to have a country club was that I knew we didn’t have much money and it would be really shitty.

But it was voted in and it was built. It was just a little bit bigger than a Dairy Queen, and only contained four booths. It looked like one of those small-town diners that stays open because twenty-five people go to church with the owner.

It was embarrassing.

Matter of fact, after a while, people stopped calling it a country club and referred to it as “the place.”

“After we get done playing golf let’s go to the place.”

The name was so ambiguous that it fit our small-town country club just jim-dandy.


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City

City: (n) a large town.

The fear of the unknown is the beginning of bigotry. (I just came up with that. What do you think??)

This was clearly expressed to me growing up as a boy. (I started out as a lad and decided to stick with it.)

I lived in a Village of 1,500 people. This is the crowd size for a medium-famous rock band.

It’s small enough that you can eyeball everybody, size them up and make ridiculously quick decisions on who they are and who they aren’t. It’s not so much that everybody knows everybody–it’s the fact that nobody really knows anybody, but because we’re so close together, we draw conclusions anyway.

You had to drive ten miles to get to the Town. We hated them. They were our arch-rivals–because they had about 25,000 people. They beat our high school teams in every sport, and we were convinced they were all brats, strutting around their houses smirking at each other and sneering at our little Village.

Sometimes the boys from our Village would go down to the Dairy Queen and pick fights with the Town guys. We always lost. But at least we tried, right?

Now–another twelve miles from the Town was the City. Even though the Village was only twenty miles away, the City was the “Dark Side of the Moon.”

There were only certain reasons to go there.

Movies. There was only one theater in the Town, and it usually just showed Disney flicks. If you wanted to see a movie, you had to go to the City, which meant you had to listen to a fifteen-minute lecture from your mom and dad about the dangers lurking in the metropolis, which had several hundred thousand folks.

They also had restaurants instead of “Mom and Pop food.” When I went to the City, I always thought I was going to be robbed, raped or killed–maybe all three.

As a youngster, it caused me to believe that the smaller things are, the more pure they stay–that it was impossible to live in the Town and do good works, and certainly beyond imagination to dwell in the City and find favor with God.

The fear of big things caused the young people of our Village to pick up on the vices of the City without ever receiving the benefits of culture, convenience and camaraderie.

It took me years to overcome the little box that lived in my head, which was supposed to contain everything I needed–yes, a long time to go into the City, bringing what I had learned in the Town, while maintaining the heart and soul of my Village.

 

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Billiards

Billiards:(n) a game usually for two people, played on a billiard table

Dictionary B

I grew up in a small village that was close enough to a nearby larger town to make all of the young folks feel out-of-step and inadequate.

We had to go to the bigger city to be entertained or to absorb any available culture that might accidentally trip through mid-state.

So when we drove our cars in the direction of the nearby metropolis, we felt a combination of empowerment mingled with humiliation. We certainly were convinced that everyone in the larger burg was aware that we came from smaller digs and therefore lacked the social graces to be able to hold our own with the natives.

But we went anyway. It was the nearest bowling alley.

Bowling was very important. It gave you a safe, cheap way to go on a date, where conversation could be channeled into laughter over the lack of ability to roll a ball down an alley.

Now, in the back of this bowling alley was a small pool hall. It was a new addition, and some of the young folk from our town were a little bit afraid of going to play this game of billiards because it was associated with lower-class or “hoodlum elements.”

So I had great trepidation the first time I went into the billiard section of the bowling alley, picked up a stick and tried to hit the cue ball.

Yet I quickly became addicted.

Matter of fact, almost every weekend I went to play billiards, which we called pool, with my friends, until we thought we had become so good that we believed we could actually compete with other “stickers.” (That’s what we called them, even though I’m sure no one else did.)

One night five guys from the big town came in, saw us playing, and challenged us to a tournament, the winner to take ten dollars.

We were gambling. We felt so grown-up. And ten dollars was all any of us would have for the next two weeks.

But we were confident. After all, we had already played two months worth of Saturday nights.

We lost.

Miserably, horribly and ferociously, as balls banged into each other, going in all directions, causing our heads to spin, eventually exposing our choke factor.

We left.

We were ten dollars poorer and more certain than ever before that “small-town Johnnies” need to be careful when playing with big-town bullies.

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Anytown, U. S. A.

dictionary with letter A

Anytown, U.S.A.: (n) any real or fantasy place regarded as being typical of American small-town appearance or values.

As a verified vagabond who has done my share of stopping at the local convenience store to inquire about the best diner in town, I will tell you that the similarities which exist among these little burgs are few and far between.

I know we would like, for the sake of political or spiritual agendas, to categorize certain locales as possessing the true crust of the American apple pie, but just as in the case of that delicacy, the fruits that fill them are varied.

I grow weary of listening to pundits portraying America as a conservative nestling of Puritanical, family oriented souls huddling over a common fire, exchanging “favorite scriptures.”

Likewise, America is not a bustling metropolis of cosmopolitan, creative beings on their way to the next cocktail party to discuss the brush-strokes of a new, controversial artist.

People are magnificent as long as you understand them. And here are three things I have learned which reflect the only commonality in the human family. They bring me both comfort and a bit of comic relief:

1. We are obliviously self-centered.

Even though we would be offended by the notion that we are highly focused on our own thoughts and lifestyle, it is just the way we survive. Without it, we probably would spend too much time correcting mistakes or being hit by buses.

2. Our values change as our problems mount.

It amazes me that someone who insists they are against some particular vice will suddenly become more forgiving when one of their children commits it. You can call that hypocrisy if you want to, but to a certain extent it is a necessary blending of survival, mercy and inconsistency.

3. If given the chance, we really don’t want to hurt anyone.

The trouble is, there is so much animosity in the air that we are continually tempted to be assholes. But if you can separate people from the media, politics and religious arrogance, they generally have enough heart that they want to make sure to give the other guy a chance.

If you comprehend these three things, you will find them anywhere you go, with anyone you meet, at any time.

If you have a mission to separate the “good people” from the “bad people,” to create a superior chosen race which is more “American,” then you will be a contributor to the insanity that divides us … instead of the understanding that unites us.

 

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