Behind the Scenes: Fairmount

    I love little towns. Love exploring their historical markers, their unique downtowns, their architecture, their parks. And usually you don't have to deal with the crowds you would run into in the big cities, the tourist traps, the "destinations".  One thing I do not enjoy, though, is when a town keeps grasping at ghosts, getting stuck in their past.

    I moved to Indiana in 1994, living in a small town in the north central region called Tipton. Every year I would hear about a festival up in the town of Fairmount celebrating their most famous one time resident: James Dean. I never got a chance to participate in their festivities, but being part of the poetry community, I got to hear every romantic poem about the town and their native son.

    While trying to find a new place to start a poetry club, a friend of mine suggested we check out Fairmount's library. After making a few phone calls to set up a date and spreading the word to all the poetry people we knew, we drove up on the evening of the reading. Just the two of us showed. So we decided to wander the town and find a few places where we could put out some flyers to promote our new club. This was what I loved to do anyhow, just explore. What I found was just disappointment.

    Most of the town that I got to see was closed storefronts and empty streets. Sure, there were some nice houses, but for the most part, the town seemed to be just holding onto the spirit of the 50's. The rebel still lives in Fairmount, even if most everybody else left.

    It brought to mind how some people can't wait to move away from their hometown, but when the talk about their roots it somehow is their heritage. I guess am partly guilty in this too. Leaving my hometown of Moline, Illinois was not really what I wanted to do. Yet, whenever someone asks where I am from, I have to volunteer the additional detail that Moline is home to John Deere, sometimes continuing into the fact that my father's parents both worked for the company, his mother a secretary at their headquarters.

    With all this in mind, I decided to write an anti-romantic poem about Fairmount, not really to put down that specific town, but to dispel the ghosts that haunt many of our small towns that struggle for their very relevance in a society dominated by metropolitan life.

    Here is that poem, first published by The Tipton Poetry Journal in 2005 and again by the Poetry Society of Indiana in their diamond anniversary collection of 2017.

Fairmount

 

 

The boys still lean

on cinderblock walls

to have a smoke

and contemplate life

away from these

vacant buildings,

this dying town

forever grasping

at the ghost

of a rebel.

 

The girls still walk by,

get a nod from the boys

and giggle

down the cracked sidewalk,

crossing the street

against the signal

without looking.

 

The boys

follow the girls’ figures

with unfulfilled eyes

as they slowly disappear

around the curve.

In unison,

they stub out their smokes,

flick them into the

empty parking lot

and plan another

Friday night escape

to Marion.

 

Someday,

they will leave for good,

only remembering this place

in trivial conversations,

where they will brag

about growing up

like James Dean.