Small Town
July 21 2016


Even though I’m only here for awhile,
a few strangers have caught my eye
apologized
asked which way.

Do I have that settled look
like I’ve lived here all my life?
A man whose directions
won’t lead you astray?
Non-threatening,
like some hail-fellow-well-met
who waves at every passing car
squinting through the glass,
back-slaps random passers-by
like long lost friends.

It’s a small town, on a back road
a few traffic lights.

And I thought I looked so worldly, so self-assured.
A mover-and-shaker
on his way up.

But it appears I’m that guy in the barbershop
with the small-town brain trust,
solving the world’s problems
with common sense.
Who never doubt their belonging,
feet propped 
on the arborite table
with wobbly chrome legs,
stacked with well-thumbed magazines
well out-of-date.
No one in a rush.
The usual haircut, Joe.

The sweet smell of emollients
the tang of shaving cream.
Exotic blue bottles of barbicide
that have never left the shelf.



I read this poem (which appeared in Writer's Almanac, Garrison Keillor’s daily on-line selection ) and loved the idea of a stranger being asked directions, and how secretly pleased he is:  the sense of legitimacy, belonging, exoticism it confers. 


Directions 
by Jim Barnes 

On my way back from the Tabac
two Dutch businessmen stopped to ask
which way and how far to the Metro.
I tell you it felt fine: I felt

Parisian and tried to sound it.
Walking to the Crillon, Caroline
and I were stopped by a chic couple
who asked if they were near the Ritz.

We pointed diagonally toward
place Vendome, then shared our Michelin.
Only in Paris, as they say,
can an American be so French

that Europeans ask directions
and seven strangers wave at you
from cars and waiters read your mind
and offer Chateau Neuf du Pape.

“Directions” by Jim Barnes from Paris. © University of Illinois Press, 1997. 


Of course, my version is quite the opposite:  instead of becoming an honorary Parisian, the character here gets to toy with the undeniable appeal of belonging to an archetypal small town. It’s not cosmopolitan and it’s not ambitious, but there something very reassuring about stability, familiarity, routine. And about knowing your place in the world. If this scene isn’t somewhere in a Norman Rockwell painting, it should be!