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| Aerial View of Zeigler, IL |
I didn’t have to go looking for community, because it was all around me, like the multiple layers of an onion (but much nicer smelling). I lived in a family that was part of an extended family which lived in one small town. Most of my family went to the Zeigler United Methodist Church, of which my father’s parents had been founding members. My mother’s father had been the town doctor. Everyone in the town knew my mother and father, and most knew both sets of grandparents. The entire town was like an extended family.
When I strayed outside of our immediate neighborhood (not often) people still knew me and my family, and were watching out for me. When I fell off my bicycle in front of my house, Irene Vaughn, who was on her front porch, appeared at my side in an instant, took me into her house, cleaned my scrapes and put Band-Aids on them before sending me home. One school day, I mistakenly came home for lunch, but no one was home. It was unusual for my grandma not to be there, and my mother must have been in the neighboring town doing her weekly grocery shopping. Nancy Proctor, who then lived next door, found me sobbing on my front porch, and administered a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk, along with a hug or two, and then sent me back to school, after she was certain she had “filled the hollow spot.” She certainly did that, and I’m not just talking about the PB&J.
I regret that my daughters didn’t have the overwhelming sense of peace and security with which I grew up. In contrast, they grew up streetwise, learning tactics to keep themselves safe from the people in their environment.
It’s ironic that in a major city, every day lonely people are surrounded by other lonely people, and none of them seem to value each other as human beings. They are rude to each other as a kind of default setting (politeness, when it occurs, is a complete surprise), cutting each other off in traffic, and then making rude gestures. Road rage is chronic. People in our area have been known to kill each other in traffic-inspired altercations.
“All the lonely people, where do they all come from? / All the lonely people, where do they all belong?”
When I strayed outside of our immediate neighborhood (not often) people still knew me and my family, and were watching out for me. When I fell off my bicycle in front of my house, Irene Vaughn, who was on her front porch, appeared at my side in an instant, took me into her house, cleaned my scrapes and put Band-Aids on them before sending me home. One school day, I mistakenly came home for lunch, but no one was home. It was unusual for my grandma not to be there, and my mother must have been in the neighboring town doing her weekly grocery shopping. Nancy Proctor, who then lived next door, found me sobbing on my front porch, and administered a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk, along with a hug or two, and then sent me back to school, after she was certain she had “filled the hollow spot.” She certainly did that, and I’m not just talking about the PB&J.
I regret that my daughters didn’t have the overwhelming sense of peace and security with which I grew up. In contrast, they grew up streetwise, learning tactics to keep themselves safe from the people in their environment.
It’s ironic that in a major city, every day lonely people are surrounded by other lonely people, and none of them seem to value each other as human beings. They are rude to each other as a kind of default setting (politeness, when it occurs, is a complete surprise), cutting each other off in traffic, and then making rude gestures. Road rage is chronic. People in our area have been known to kill each other in traffic-inspired altercations.
“All the lonely people, where do they all come from? / All the lonely people, where do they all belong?”
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