My dad had a crazy uncle or two, as all quartz rock solid rural archetypes do, and they used to congregate on a fringe corner towards the south end of Main Street, near what used to be a pool hall, which became a video store when I was a kid, and had arcade games too, in the back, until Nintendos came out. Then they started renting video games and the back room became the adult rentals.
I had my own crazy uncles, as all quartz rock solid rural archetypes do, and when they were coming up, they’d built a bypass around downtown, a new four-lane with two smooth asphalt lanes going both ways, and folks had measured a near perfect quarter mile from just underneath the bridge that Nat Turner Road passed over, to the end of the guardrail headed west. It was just right for illegal drag racing, back then, but they built a Wal-Mart and a Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Food Lion and a Valero and a Comfort Inn and then that doubled and tripled, and downtown became obsolete and the four-lane got slow and had some stoplights thrown up. One uncle died early, as half of all quartz rock solid rural archetypes do, and the other one was briefly lacking a home base, so he’d be hanging around some of those stop light intersections.
Them stores been in decline, too. We’ve got a Big Lots where the department store was, and I think there’s a church that meets where that other grocery store used to be. The Wal-Mart is still there but it’s a sad and doomed place to be. Downtown is mostly empty, but there’s a smattering of boutique businesses that make no sense to people who lived here for more than one generation, run by folks who came from elsewhere, where they couldn’t afford to have a boutique business. They mostly get mad at us, for not spending money we don’t have to sustain their fantasies. I’d support them if I could, but I don’t often need $12 knick-knacks or $23 suppers.
They hadn’t figured out how to build a bypass around the bypass, so we all just get stuck at stoplights with the same stores they have in every other shithole nowhere to everybody else but us. Some dude who said he’s always been from here, but I’ve never seen, who wears polo shirts with his grandpa’s last name on them, is fixing up the old tobacco warehouse downtown, and turning it into a microbrewery or some shit. He was on the news from the city an hour away, talking about how they wanted a road that went around the bypass and came right to the quaint end of downtown he was doing this at. I think his wife runs the $12 knick-knack shoppe (extra letters to show you how it’s laid out inside). They was trying to get a roundabout built there, and have a historic downtown shopping district.
That’s the other end of Main Street from where my crazy great uncles hung out, and the video store was. That building is still there, too, all fucked up and rotting back into the earth. But the building had good solid bones, from before any of our time. I dream about owning it, and having a flea market there, or something. But I can’t even pay the bills I got, and it’s getting cold, and that means heating bills about to be crazy, so we gotta limp along until we hopefully see the redbuds again. And maybe something magical happens and it all gets better, and making a living don’t feel so goddamn much like somebody slowly choking you to death, with hands you can’t see, which is letting just enough oxygen in you can keep paying your bills, but not letting go enough you can do anything better with your life. But what are you gonna do? Not that much you can do, if there ain’t no oil paintings of your great grandparents nowhere. At least that’s what I tell my nephew.
I had my own crazy uncles, as all quartz rock solid rural archetypes do, and when they were coming up, they’d built a bypass around downtown, a new four-lane with two smooth asphalt lanes going both ways, and folks had measured a near perfect quarter mile from just underneath the bridge that Nat Turner Road passed over, to the end of the guardrail headed west. It was just right for illegal drag racing, back then, but they built a Wal-Mart and a Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Food Lion and a Valero and a Comfort Inn and then that doubled and tripled, and downtown became obsolete and the four-lane got slow and had some stoplights thrown up. One uncle died early, as half of all quartz rock solid rural archetypes do, and the other one was briefly lacking a home base, so he’d be hanging around some of those stop light intersections.
Them stores been in decline, too. We’ve got a Big Lots where the department store was, and I think there’s a church that meets where that other grocery store used to be. The Wal-Mart is still there but it’s a sad and doomed place to be. Downtown is mostly empty, but there’s a smattering of boutique businesses that make no sense to people who lived here for more than one generation, run by folks who came from elsewhere, where they couldn’t afford to have a boutique business. They mostly get mad at us, for not spending money we don’t have to sustain their fantasies. I’d support them if I could, but I don’t often need $12 knick-knacks or $23 suppers.
They hadn’t figured out how to build a bypass around the bypass, so we all just get stuck at stoplights with the same stores they have in every other shithole nowhere to everybody else but us. Some dude who said he’s always been from here, but I’ve never seen, who wears polo shirts with his grandpa’s last name on them, is fixing up the old tobacco warehouse downtown, and turning it into a microbrewery or some shit. He was on the news from the city an hour away, talking about how they wanted a road that went around the bypass and came right to the quaint end of downtown he was doing this at. I think his wife runs the $12 knick-knack shoppe (extra letters to show you how it’s laid out inside). They was trying to get a roundabout built there, and have a historic downtown shopping district.
That’s the other end of Main Street from where my crazy great uncles hung out, and the video store was. That building is still there, too, all fucked up and rotting back into the earth. But the building had good solid bones, from before any of our time. I dream about owning it, and having a flea market there, or something. But I can’t even pay the bills I got, and it’s getting cold, and that means heating bills about to be crazy, so we gotta limp along until we hopefully see the redbuds again. And maybe something magical happens and it all gets better, and making a living don’t feel so goddamn much like somebody slowly choking you to death, with hands you can’t see, which is letting just enough oxygen in you can keep paying your bills, but not letting go enough you can do anything better with your life. But what are you gonna do? Not that much you can do, if there ain’t no oil paintings of your great grandparents nowhere. At least that’s what I tell my nephew.
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