Reunited
by Jon Worley
I did my tenth high school reunion this weekend. I didn't go with the usual sort of incentive (like getting back at all the nasty people), but with the intention of understanding just why the hell I hated the experience so much.
There was a bonus. On a lark, I stopped by my friend Gerry's parents' house, and he actually had shown up for the festivities. So I had a buddy, someone to share a few pool games and shield me from the nasty ones. A friend who understood what I meant when I described my occupation as "general malcontent".
Barbara (my wife, for those who don't follow this column religiously) decided early on not to go and also campaigned heavily for me to stay home as well. She has spent three days in Clovis, and those are three too many, as far as she is concerned. Honestly, I agree there. But I still wanted to make the trek. When my car broke down in late June, Barbara tried to use the cash crunch stratagem to further her aims. Alas, I had already bought the plane tickets, and that trumped her club.
So late Friday afternoon, I cruised into Clovis, armed with the music of pain. There's nothing like a dreadfully harsh song to boost your spirits, and I went with the latest Jayhawks album, some Neil Young, Kepone, Patty Griffin and the Chemical Brothers. I listened to Living with Ghosts three times during my 24 hours in Clovis (Griffin's raspy rural blues wail is a wonder to behold), and requested "Block Rockin' Beats" at the mixer (Friday night's event, the first "mixer" I've ever attended), only to be told by the DJ that it is obscene. He couldn't explain how a song whose only lyrics are something like "Give me some more of those block rockin' beats" could be morally offensive, particularly since he had just played a song glorifying gang rape, but whatever. Just another classic Clovis story.
This ugly (and that's an objective term) little town on the Llano Estacado of eastern New Mexico was my home for five years. I toured the eighth through twelfth grades in the Clovis school system. I endured the wrath of a school where you were nothing is you weren't a football player or a cheerleader (or at least aspired to those positions). And I really hated it. I wanted this gathering to tell me why.
Guess what? It did, sorta. Most of the folks at the reunion still live in town or within 100 miles (which out West is comparable to the distance between Yonkers and Manhattan). And these folks like living there. That's where my problem comes into play. Lots of folks told me, "If you want to raise kids, Clovis is a great place." An insult on two levels. First, it assumes that anyone without kids at the present time (like me) doesn't want kids or has somehow failed, and second, I was raised in Clovis (I spent my adolescence there, anyway) and I can personally testify as to its unfit nature. It's this assertion (and plenty more like it) that have finally helped me understand what I have always referred to as "the evil shroud" that envelopes the town.
These people are scared. They don't want to leave their comfort zone, even a little bit. They don't want new experiences, they want Monday nights on the La-Z-Boy, beer in hand, watching the Cowboys. A case in point, if you like. A classmate, after I told him I lived an hour north of Baltimore, told me he preferred Clovis to Cal Ripken's kingdom because "Baltimore's just not Clovis." An astute observation, to be sure, but a telling one as well. Ultimately, these people are not only afraid of what lies beyond, but what lies within as well. Simply paralyzed with an all-encompassing fear.
There are lots of small towns in this country, and I'm sure they are as well-stocked with small minds as Clovis. And had I lived in any one of them I would have found them caught under similar caul of darkness. I can think of at least a hundred such places in Nebraska and western Kansas right off the bat. I don't like small towns, and I never will. Simple as that.
But now I understand my high school distress just a little better. As I see it, evil is simply fear incarnate. Whether this is manifested in bigotry, blind hatred (not necessarily the same thing), greed or what have you, the roots always lie in fear. The only cure for fear (and its close cousin, ignorance) is education. A broadening of horizons. And the evil inside these denizens of Clovis moves them to actively oppose such personal growth.
That prospect still scares the hell out of me, to be honest.
Jon Worley may have recovered enough from the psychic wounds incurred this weekend to attend his 20th reunion. Then again, maybe not.
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