The author’s wife, Yvonne, enjoying her childhood

I always love hearing my wife’s stories about childhood life in East Germany. Yvonne was 10 years old when she left for the West before the wall came down (yes, it was possible to leave — just very difficult).

Modern Schneeberg, where Yvonne grew up

I was finally able to visualize her stories on a trip to Germany in 2007. The DDR museum in Dresden is like stepping into a time machine — separate and fully furnished rooms of typical houses and offices rekindled strong memories for Yvonne and provided me with a glimpse into the past. (Another entertaining look back is the film Goodbye Lenin!)

After reading another traveler’s account of his brief visit to East Berlin in 1987, I thought I’d start peppering Yvonne with more questions about what it was like to grow up in the East. The below anecdotes are strictly from her memory, the way she remembered things. I didn’t want to mess that up with any research.

Childhood life in East Germany in the 80s

1. There were no bananas. You could only get them once or twice a year, and you’d only be notified of their availability by word of mouth. So you’d have to rush to the veggie store (not a veggie store as we know it — just cabbages, potatoes…anything grown locally) and stand in line to get your one banana per person in your household.

The ubiquitous Trabant (Kombi model)

To stretch the rations, Yvonne’s mum would quarter the banana, slice it thinly and serve it on bread to her and her sister.

2. You couldn’t buy strawberries from a store. If you wanted them you had to go and work in the fields picking them for hours. You were allowed to buy a certain portion of the ones you picked.

Yvonne remembers her mum telling her, “Don’t worry about picking, just eat as many as you can!”

3. Luxury items were priced way out of proportion to people’s salaries. A black and white TV might cost 10 times a person’s monthly salary; a 200g bag of coffee would cost around $20.

4. If you wanted to buy a car — most likely the ubiquitous Trabant — you had to wait years. Like, 10-12 years. So people who turned 16 (although you had to be 18 to drive) would put their orders in to get their mitts on a car when they were in their late 20s.

5. Yvonne remembers visiting the Baltic Sea twice in her childhood for vacation. They didn’t have much choice of where they could go. Holiday homes were usually linked and subsidized through work and you could obtain use of them once in a while.

6. You could only watch one of a few state channels, but radio waves know no walls (well, except maybe lead ones), so those close to the border were able to pick up signals from the West.

Luckily, Yvonne’s family was able to, so they had some access to the West’s news. Obviously, this was all very hush hush.

7. Every child was part of the Pioneers: Grades 1-4 were Blue Pioneers, 5-7 were Red Pioneers, and grades 8-10 graduated to the Free German Youth (FDJ).

When you first arrived to school, all the students would stand at attention and salute the teacher.

The teacher would say, “Be prepared!”, and the students would reply, “Always prepared!” before giving the salute, and then the day began.

Every 7 October, Yvonne — along with all the other Pioneers — would join in the parade commemorating the birth of the GDR. They dressed up in their Pioneer outfits, waved flags and flowers, and cheered.

Yvonne taking a bath in the sink.

8. Yvonne’s home had no bathtub or shower, only a sink and a toilet. She was fortunate enough to have a grandma with a bath, so once a week they would make their way there. Hot water didn’t just flow out of the taps though.

The water was heated by charcoal stove. A big water tank sat next to the tub with a little stove underneath where charcoal had to be shoveled in. The charcoal was delivered a few times per year by a big truck. They would leave a big pile of it and the residents had to shovel their portion of the coal into their allotted space in the basement.

Even at her own house without tub or shower, they needed to heat the water this way. They lived on the fifth floor, so Yvonne remembers having to walk all the way down to the basement with a couple of buckets and back up with them topped full of charcoal.

The fonder memories

It wasn’t all trying though. Everyone had a job, school lunches were free, after-school care was free, people were generally happy, necessities were extremely cheap, and there was more community spirit than there is nowadays. In those times, there were no Joneses to keep up with.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

For a beautiful photo essay on modern Berlin through an ex-pat’s lens, check out Paul Sullivan’s Berlin 20/20: A Photo Tour of a Reunited City.

To find out how Berliners are going to celebrate this November 9, check out Two Ways to Celebrate the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

Do you have any of your own stories to tell? Share with us below!

On the beach at St Alban’s / Photo by Candice Walsh

Long Path Road is dead.

Dad and I sit on the front deck of our sandy bungalow, 11 p.m., him smoking and me trying to adjust to darkness without streetlights.

“Why on earth would anyone build a cabin when you already live in the middle of nowhere?” he says, taking a haul on his cigarette.

I didn’t know Dad had a sense of humor until two years ago, when my relatives and I gathered in my Uncle’s shed, eating homemade beef-jerky, listening to fiddle music, and drinking Black Horse ale.

Boiling Tea / Photo by Candice Walsh

Dad picked up an old rope tied to a snowmobile and started using it as a skipping rope. Later, when my Aunts and I squatted in the grass to relieve ourselves, I looked up at the glittery darkness and wondered when I had been created equal to my family.

“Don’t let that dog lick your arse!” my Aunts screeched as I toppled over.

But there are no age boundaries, no social constructs here. Among these hills and inside the bay, you’re forced to create bonds. I ride my bike around town and people holler, “HELLO, CANDICE!” I completely forget who they are.

The town is overgrown with alders. My path to the old Catholic school has disappeared. My friends and I used to chug beers on that path before we all graduated high school and moved away.

This year, 28 new homes have been built, and plans are set for a multimillion-dollar government building. The marsh across from our house is being drained to facilitate a new road, and a cul-de-sac for more houses. Who in their right minds would build a house here, six hours from the nearest city, a million years away from good healthcare? Travelling halfway across Canada is more bearable than a trip home.

The next evening I run into an old classmate, Kyle. Not yet graduated from University, he and his brother have bought a modern two-storey house among the trees for less than $40,000. They have invested in a tourism business, taking wanderers around the bay for overnight camping trips, windsurfing lessons, and explorations of the many untouched beaches and coves. Around the wind-beaten, freezing coast of southern Newfoundland, Kyle has perfected surfing.

Surprisingly, the pub is filled with people in their twenties and early thirties. A cluster of older people stare at me as I approach the bar for a drink. “Judging by your red hair, you must be a Walsh,” says one man, leaning forward, and his hands gripping his beer.

One can only remain without an identity for so long.

When I awake on my last day in St. Alban’s, I spy Dad’s rucksack sitting by the front door. He’s in the kitchen brewing tea, and he plants a bottle of homemade bakeapple jam on the table for me. The room smells like evergreen trees and wood smoke, and I’m reminded of the time we spent the afternoon hiking through Dad’s trail, pausing to boil tea over a fire in the snow. The best tea I ever had.

Suddenly the city is deader than this town.

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Oakland. City of Dreams. Photo by anarchosyn

I glare into red brake lights and sigh. Rubberneckers stare across the center divide at the solemn funeral procession.

Six days ago, in the middle of a spring afternoon in East Oakland, a wanted parolee resisting arrest opened fire on police, killing four cops. It’s being called the worst day in Oakland history, not an easily earned title in a city infamous for sideshows, motorcycle clubs and gangster rap.

The entire Oakland police force has been given the day off to attend the funeral, and the procession is shutting down the four eastbound lanes of 580.

Photo by anarchosyn

“Come on, people.” I inch along, annoyed as I stare at the rooftops and asthmatic-looking palm trees peeking over the freeway’s edge, determined not to gawk.

It’s easy to grow hardened in Oakland. Violence, crime and corruption seep into the everyday, a sort of infection that’s gotten into the blood of the place.

Every year you watch the number of homicides creep towards, and often above, 100; every year, you know a couple more people who’ve been robbed, assaulted, held at gunpoint.

I round a bend in the road. Now I slow, stop, stare. On one side, ceaselessly coming towards me, is a single-file stretch of motorcycles, cop cars and black-windowed vehicles. I realize I can’t see the end of it; it arches an overpass, keeps coming, a steady passing of grief.

On the other side of the divide, it looks something like that REM video. Cars have pulled over onto either shoulder, their drivers stepped out, standing either staring or with heads bowed. No one speaks. The rumbling sound of the passing procession is all I can hear.

Photo by madpai

Dust-covered day laborers have parked their pick-up truck next to a bluetoothed, Escalade-driving businessman. Tattooed arms hang out of a flat-black old Pontiac, while dread-locked hyphy kids stare from atop gleaming rims. They all wear similar looks, not of shock, but of sadness, a deep-down, well-buried pain.

It’s heartbreaking to love a city like Oakland, but looking at all these faces, I realize why I do. It’s the spirit of the place, diverse and alive and like home, that keeps me here, fiercely believing in the city’s goodness, its potential to be more.

While no one in city government has made any public statements about the incident (aside from stock comments from the mayor), and while marginalized segments of the community have been calling the gunman a revolutionary hero, the true Oakland is here, silent and grieving together on the interstate.

Driving across the long, barren stretches of highway through the Mojave Desert, I get this bittersweet feeling of coming home after a long time of being away. I see the light rising up—the hellish illuminations of Las Vegas—a city cradled by mountains on all sides; it looks like a smoldering fire pit, or the mouth of a volcano ready to blow itself wide open.

As I’ve traveled outside of my hometown, I’ve encountered numerous people who find it hard to believe that a man could actually hail from Las Vegas. More than once I’ve been asked if I live in a casino. No, no. There are even houses and apartments and trailer parks.

“Wow,” they will say, “must be a great place to live,” and I’m compelled to laugh in their faces. It may be okay for a tourist on holiday, but as far as I’m concerned it’s a glamorized cesspit, and if you don’t lose your ass gambling, then the dry desert heat will get it.

Photo by lostamerica

There are two types of gamblers in Las Vegas: those that gamble because they think they can beat the house, and those that gamble for sport, because to them gambling is everything and the money means nothing. If they won Megabucks they would be back in the casino the next day to start giving it back in installments.

I’ve seen my grandfather throw his social security money away every month for the last decade of his life. When he died his wife discovered winning tickets for over twenty grand stashed away in his dresser. She never saw a dime of it because in theory the money had never changed hands.

Photo by gsgeorge

The casinos seem to draw any culture and vitality from the rest of the city. There have been a few attempts at creating an art district but setting up art galleries in dangerous areas only invites despicable hipsters in, and it doesn’t clean up the trash. It only creates more.

Most of the local poets and writers hang around the bars and cafés near the university, and because of the lack of any scene, it’s easy to sift through the bullshitters, the pretentious, the sycophants, the pseudo-intellectuals, and so on. It’s cool to be an artist in San Francisco, but if you’re an artist in Las Vegas it’s usually because you want to be.

Photo by geoperdis

There are plenty of good bars by the university, where it’s easy to avoid any insufferable tourist crowds—obnoxious frat boys and Barbie look-alikes are scarce, because they like to be a part of the show, and that takes place on The Strip. As for the downtown scene, it is swarming with hipsters, and like The Strip it is overcrowded and overpriced.

I’ve found my local dens, and that’s where I spend my nights when I’m back home. I don’t know what keeps dragging me back to the neon landfill -usually women, unfinished romances, that sort of thing. It’s never long before I’m back sitting at the bar of one of my old haunts, considering another way out.

When the first hurricane hit Florida, I lay in bed. The day was dark as night. Dark inside, too, since the power had gone out. By noon the winds had come in full fury, east to west, no swirling, and no gusts like normal storms, just a sheer wall of sound, trees bent, not billowing.

Otherwise it was eerily quiet, for there is little electrical activity during hurricanes, unlike the usual cataclysmic thunderstorms that erupt every afternoon. Plant City is far enough inland, maybe 40 miles from the Gulf Coast and even farther from the Atlantic, so the danger was not great.

I did jump onto the floor a few times, crouched between bed and dresser as the huge oak tree curled over my bedroom screamed with broken limbs. After a while I got used to the falling branches; the roof was strong enough to withstand a few thumps.

Photo by ASurroca

I just lay in bed all day, into late evening, the window cracked to better hear the rushing torrents, and let in cooler air.

The power stayed out for two weeks, much longer for some. There was one local restaurant/bar that had a generator, so they reopened the night after the storm. With the summer heat returning and most businesses and schools closed, the only reasonable thing to do was buy a newspaper and head to the bar when they opened at 11 in the morning, driving on twig and leaf littered roads, through intersections left chaotic by deadened traffic lights.

Once at the bar I would order icy mugs of beer – only light domestics available – and pass the time, maybe stare at the TV, or into the void, or gnaw on fried cheese.

By the next Friday another hurricane was bearing down. The bar was sparsely filled now, only the dedicated flies were out, while most stayed at home, lest an early slap of wind knock a tree onto their car, or send a projectile right through their God-fearing face – and to prepare, of course, lighting candles, taping windows, filling bathtubs with emergency water.

Hurricanes came every weekend that August, and with each of Mother Nature’s wolf cries the populace grew more at ease, the numbers at the bar on the eve of storms increased, and the conversation about the nearing storm had the tone of chatting about the local football team. There might even be a bit of an argument, “I think it’s cutting south,” “No, I think it’s going to hook up the coast.”

Photo by Otaku

August ended. The power came back on. Lawns were raked clean.

And nothing changed. Nothing ever changes in Plant City. I left four years ago, after doing 24 years’ time, and when I visit now and then it’s exactly the same. The locals swear that change is constant and it seems to even sadden some, though most are proud of their growth. A new hardware store, a new chain restaurant, a new neighborhood where an orange grove used to be.

In the bars, the waitresses had children at fifteen, the fathers gone from memory by kindergarten. Aging beauty queens sit at round tables, faces frozen, beside their fawning royal court and their fattened quarterbacks and plastic babies. They look the same as in junior high, just a bit softer, smaller, tired, scared. All with eyes as unaware as a doll’s. All laughing on schedule like jack-in-the-boxes. They don’t realize they are barely even the approximation of aristocrats.

At the bar counter the patrons mumble in your ear about the niggers and spics that plague them, as they give you that knowing look, a little grin, because it’s something to bond over: fear and ignorance. It’s a tradition.

Snow and ice clung to the dock as whitecaps churned atop a colorless harbor. ‘I hope I never have to live in this God forsaken place,’ thought my mother in the blustery, frigid January of 1960. ‘The boondocks, the middle of nowhere…’

This fearful plea perhaps caught the gently ironic attention of The Man Upstairs, and my folks moved to Westport Point, MA in 1961. The city girl from bustling Ft. Lauderdale found herself living in a massive converted barn, 15 “country miles” from Central Village, sledding Gamble’s Hill on the winter snow, leaping from Elephant Rock under the summer sun at the beach club.

The old cow paths, Sodom Road and Cornell Road, wind and weave forever across the hilly terrain, carving an obscure kind of geography into the cornfields, cow pastures, and acres and acres of woodlands rich in Norway maple, red oak, and white birch, such that it is not uncommon to hear a landowner remark, “I’m not for certain where my property ends, but…”

Photo by PhillipC

Drift Road and River Road parallel the East and West branches of the Westport River, which divide the landscape into three long, wide fingers poking into Buzzard’s Bay.

Almost a hundred years ago the rumrunners would slide their boats past the Point of Rocks and utilize their local knowledge to navigate the broad marshes and hidden shallows of the West Branch and evade capture. The descendants of these bootleggers would turn the town into the Chop Shop Capital of the World.

But Westport’s citizens are essentially honest and industrious growers, harvesters, caretakers.

At the core of Westport’s evolution is a group of families that can trace their heritage back to the settling of the town, names like Gifford, Macomber, Manchester, and Tripp. The sons and daughters of these Swamp Yankees continue to take care of their own and honor their stubborn ancestry, like fixing the same sewing machine or hay baler twenty-seven times or like taking a grudge to the grave.

My folks slowly wove their way into the community. My mother directed the church choir for thirty-five years and served in the public school system, while my father’s commercial fishing ventures employed hundreds of sturdy Westport men.

Photo by PhillipC

So while the fixtures symbolize the town’s character – the ancient Bell Schoolhouse, the historic Acoaxet Chapel – it’s the characters who truly embody the town’s spirit, from Cukie, the local historian/storyteller whose memory ought to be a national treasure, to Fast Jack, a mildly eccentric veteran who runs a continuous yard sale from his front yard on Main Street that no one can shop because of the fierce goat he keeps there.

The farmers still predict the weather better than any meteorologist and the fishermen still congregate on Lees Wharf to discuss The Way Things Used To Be.

Of course Westport has grown and changed significantly over the last half-century, but it remains a place rich in resources, inhabited by resourceful people. The fertile soil supports vineyards now, in addition to the working farms. Kayak tours float awestruck visitors downriver in concert with local fishermen wielding clam rakes or picking green crab traps.

Photo by dougtone

The summer crowd rushes in from Boston and New York to frequent the Westport Lobster Co. for fresh scallops and the roadside produce stands for sweet corn. Months later will find Westport’s own retired to their barns, repairing equipment and mending gear.

As new housing developments continue to morph the town into a kind of rustic bedroom community, the traditional Westport lifestyle prevails, private but not secluded, slow but certainly never dull.

My mother laughs at her first recollection of my hometown. January here is no longer bitter or desolate, but peaceful. She enjoys the Concerts at the Point, the Harvest Festival, and Wildcat basketball games, as well as the fact that she can’t get through the market or the post office without encountering half-a-dozen friends.

And as she considers retirement now and her golden years, she’s overwhelmed by one particular sentiment: ‘I can’t imagine living anywhere else.’

Feature photo and photo above by Lola Akinmade.

Jolting out of bed at the sound of my name, I begrudgingly rush over to my parents’ room for daily morning prayers. Names are yelled out in chronological order and being the oldest means I always lose a few seconds of sleep.

I love watching the cap-full of Dettol – a common antiseptic – expand into an amoebic white cloud as I pour it into a bucket of tepid water. Its residual smell lets my mom know we’ve properly showered. I slip into my little blue and white striped uniform with blue flaps for collars. We can guess which schools neighborhood kids attend based on colors, stripes, or checkered pattern of their uniforms.

The smell of curry, thyme, and white pepper wafting from the kitchen means our house help is almost done with the classic Nigerian omelette. Tomatoes, onions, and a pinch of salt rounds it out. It is usually eaten with fresh bread bought the same morning from a kiosk in front of the house, boiled plantains, or boiled white yams.

Today, we scarf it down quickly with boiled yams before piling into the family Peugeot, which we pronounce “Pee-Joe”. “Good morning Mr. Olufodun!” We greet the driver, and soon enough, we hurtle down to join the congested sea of cars.

Photo by Lola Akinmade.

“You get Punch? How about Guardian?” my mom yells out in pidgin English to a newspaper vendor racing alongside the car in traffic. Balancing a stack of newspapers on his head with a few stuffed underneath both armpits, he skillfully pulls out a Punch and exchanges it for a 10 Naira note. Twenty years later and now 100 Naira a pop, this daily ritual of buying Punch Newspaper remains.

Our morning commute takes us to Ikoyi, a suburb off one of the many islands that collectively make up Lagos. We spill out and run through the gates of our primary school, Federal Home Science, just in time for morning assembly as students gather in the dusty yard to sing the national anthem, Arise, O Compatriots.

Once primary school lets out early afternoon, we shuttle off to lessons on Lagos Mainland. After school activities involve more studying. No little football (soccer) leagues or cricket teams. If we want to play football, we form a ragtag team of neighborhood kids in someone’s yard.

We fill up on geography and social studies, and wonder if kids our age in America and the rest of the world have to go to lesson too. During our snack break, we run across the street like Frogger characters to a wooden kiosk to buy meat pies and scotch eggs – boiled eggs coated in minced sausage mix and fried.

Photo by Lola Akinmade.

The clock strikes 5 and it’s time to go home.

Navigating late rush hour traffic, we arrive to a hefty lunch-dinner combo cooked by mom who’d gone out earlier in the day, perusing open air markets to get fresh meat and green leafy vegetables.

“NEEEPPPAAA!*” we yell in unison just as the daily power outage occurs in the middle of our favorite show. Waiting patiently in the dark until the generator grunts, we resume our show without interruption. NEPA affects the TV stations as well.

I fall asleep on my knees as we convene in our parents’ room for nightly prayers before bed. Exhausted yet knowing fully well that the next day will bring more of the same.

*NEPA – Known at the time as Nigeria’s National Electric Power Authority.

Santana Row is the new attraction in San Jose, and my friend Bernardo and I are walking down its smooth, pink sidewalk. Tiny white lights twinkle charmingly in tiny trees, shop windows gleam, and the beautiful people of San Jose mill about, cell phones at the ready.

Even if it were daytime, we couldn’t see the mountains, because the tall, smooth buildings block the view.

Photo by Joe Shlabotnik

San Jose’s real downtown, three miles away, has been in steady decline since a wildly misguided “redevelopment” effort in the 1950s. Now, Santana Row has simply replaced it. Bernardo and I find this upsetting, and predict that the lingering downtown businesses will be gone within five years.

Bernardo can comment on the dying downtown once, and leave it alone, but I can’t stop opining: look at this place, I tell him, it’s so false, pretending to be a “Main Street.”

Main Street my butt, Main Street of Gucci and Starbucks. It’s nice to have public space, but only people who can afford this crap will come here, so, what, public space is an upper-middle-class privilege now?

Bernardo nods and mm-hmms at my ranting, and leads me into a shoe store. We check out price tags: shocking! A clothing store: if we added up the value of every article of clothing we’re wearing between us, we could afford a tank top.

As we head for the door, I see Bernardo slip something into his pocket, and look at him in surprise. He giggles. “Your face, chica!” he cries, and steers me outside by the elbow.

In the light of a streetlamp, he opens his fingers to reveal a pinched-off inch of succulent from the planter in the store window. I feel a grin spread across my face, and then burst into laughter.

Bernardo laughs, too, and we stand there bursting with joy over this filched scrap of life.

We agree to dedicate the rest of the evening to liberating genetic material from the Row. By the time we leave, Bernardo’s pockets are filled with specimens of half a dozen species.

Photo by Marcin Wichary

A few weeks later, in Bernardo’s miracle of a backyard garden, I see our cuttings, green and shiny, rooted in tiny pots along the porch railing. In the side yard, Bernardo’s botanical tribute to the country of his birth: nopales, maguey, corn, beans, squash. A huge avocado tree and all the plants he’s begged, borrowed, or stolen somewhere in this Valley.

As Bernardo leads me around his yard, I realize that for the first time, I don’t hate San Jose. For the first time, I believe that this was once a valley of fruit trees, and before that, a plain of oaks, groomed by fire.

I feel myself claim this place as my hometown: the freeways and shopping malls and suburbs, and in that sea of development, the archipelago of gardens, planters, trees, fields. The mountains that define the valley, just as they always have.

Feature photo by jimbrickett. Photo above by bill barber (off flickr for a bit).

The part of Virginia Beach that matters is a box framed by four roads: Shore Drive and Laskin Road, which run east-west; and Pacific Avenue and Great Neck Road, which run north-south.

The sides of the box are all very distinct. Where Shore Drive meets Pacific is the apex of everything good. Where Great Neck intersects Laskin is the nadir of suburban commerce. Do not pay any attention to this “downtown Virginia Beach” – there is no such thing.

The morning of that day I rose early and drove up to the bookstore and took a table on the patio outside. It was Sunday, a day of change. The seven-day tourists of the south end were coming or going and I had a notebook and a similar intention to go somewhere.

By the end of July this was a recurring theme. I resolved to go into the bookstore and not leave until some tangible plan had been set into place. But then somebody whistled.

Photo by bill barber (off flickr for a bit).

“The hell you are,” Neal said. “Sky’s blue from top to bottom. No day for a bookstore.”

He was cradling his cuppajoe. He said it like that too—cuppajoe—real fast like the caffeine could speak.

We decided to check the waves and we drove off through the tree tunnel down Shore Drive. He was speeding and you don’t speed on Shore Drive—not in the Commonwealth—but there was nothing I could say. Lucky for him no police cars were tucked into the cubby holes of the State Park.

The roadside crosses passed unmentioned and we parked somewhere on the north end and decided to swim.

There were tiny little barrels spinning along the shoreline and we judged each other as we traded waves body surfing. It was small to the point that we had to coil like a spring and push off from the bottom into the face of the wave. Neal won out thanks to an odd rogue wave.

Photo by bill barber (off flickr for a bit).

“Where did that come from?”

He looked toward the mouth of the bay.

“A submarine,” he said.

I looked north and saw it. There was an aircraft carrier too.

When the contest was done we planed out on our backs and rolled with the waves. I knew it was coming. I felt it.

There was the same blue of the morning and the nothingness, and there was an old friend by your side and we would take bikes later through the Narrows and there would be drinks on the porch when the storms finally came and more old friends and all this would happen as it did every day only because it was assumed and never questioned, and thinking of it all, I knew—I knew as it came upon me that I was caught in that idle web for another year.

Maybe after fall, I thought. When the hurricanes have passed. That’s what I’ll do.

Photo above by lunita

Tommy Carson loved doing rails of coke on his dashboard, then barreling his truck down The Bog Road at break-everything speed. Mrs. Allen was having sex with at least two men who weren’t her husband, one possibly under eighteen.

And once, while I was standing in line at The Video Stop to rent Gremlins, I watched Mr. Holland walk in and clock the kid who had slashed his tires the week before.

This is where I grew up. With a population that hovered around 1,000, Bristol, NH seemed like an idyllic lake town to outsiders. It’s the kind of place that cityfolk dreamed about; no stoplights or traffic, no pollution or car alarms, no leashes on dogs.

But as anyone who has grown up in a small town will tell you, there’s a rip current in places like these that can send a soul straight for the rocks. A nice, quiet life sounds possible until monotony takes hold, driving even the nicest old lady to cane the paperboy.

Photo above by Althewebmaster

Google Earth verifies that the town still isn’t much to look at. Life centered around a Cumberland Farms store (”Cumbie’s” to locals), a gas station, a bakery, Bristol Pizza, a bar and a lone fancy restaurant. Many houses were treated as works in progress, with half-built additions and porches propped up on concrete blocks. Quite a few residents tapdanced above the poverty line, just one transmission repair away from not being able to buy milk.

School was colorful. There were the teachers, who had to deal with everything from bus sex to shutting off televisions when the O-rings failed a spaceship carrying the state’s favorite teacher, Christa McAuliffe. I especially remember the French teacher, who taught the language with a New Hampshire accent so thick that it has since made me the laughingstock of every restaurant in Paris.

Photo above by libraryimages.net

There were my best friends, a brother and sister who had rescued me from excellent grades and fashioned me as a hoodlum. Matt smoked two packs a day at fourteen and Debbie had a habit of making other girls’ faces collide with her fist. We’d down Soco while waiting for the bus, which could be quite late, given that its first pickup was thirty miles down a rural route.

Most women seemed to trudge along with a tinge of buyer’s remorse when it came to their children, while men worked speed-fueled shifts at the local plant. There were never any arguments involving ethnicity because there wasn’t a single person of color – the town was still 96% white as of the 2000 census. Mr. Shakey, whose grocery store parking lot was THE place to hang out, seemed only able to hire high school girls who had developed earlier than the rest of their class. The cops were a Deniro kind of ruthless, all seeming to have a side bet as to how many kids they could toss into Juvie.

Photo above by Derek DMan

Winter began in November and ended in April, with temperatures so low that ski masks were a fashionable accessory. John Cheever wrote here during the summer but was smart enough to evacuate before the leaves started falling. Every road led to a mountain and every mountain was next to another. And every inch would be blanketed with snow by December. Most houses were a lighter color from four feet up because the snow banks didn’t permit sunshine until they melted.

Despite the underbelly, there was nothing sinister about Bristol. It was the kind of town you’d drive through while singing to your radio, completely unaware that a population had just passed. Most drama happened behind closed doors, allowing it to be a wonderful place to visit but a tricky place to live. I have not been back in many years and I do not think that I would want to. I don’t want to know if there is a Papa Gino’s, or if what was made in factory has been outsourced to Korea. I don’t want to hear if Tommy is finally Working The Steps or if they now have Gremlins on Blue Ray. I like how it sits in my brain just fine; a sleepy little town full of invisible nightmares.

Photo above by Ed Karjala

Feature Photo: theothermattm (Flickr creative commons)

Arriving from the airport, I cross the village and, running alongside my former secondary school, head up Via Nessi, then Via Matteotti. After a while I reach Piazza degli Eroi (Heroes Square), and my house, an old-fashioned building dating back to 1870.

The first night we talk family updates over a huge dinner of fresh lasagne followed by wild beef steak with a side dishes of crispy season vegetables.

Kitchens in Sardinia are the main rooms of the house and the windows are kept open–winter and summer alike–to enjoy the calm of early afternoon or evening.

Waking up the next day in my childhood room, I realize that I don’t need to be ready in fifteen minutes to catch the bus.

In fact, in Ghilarza there are no buses. In half an hour you can easily walk from one side to the other along il Viale, a long boulevard that marks the end of Ghilarza and the entrance to the adjacent village, Abbasanta.

Photo by SingAsong ♫

In the center of Ghilarza is the Piazza di Chiesa (Church Square), with a post office, a market, and the smell of spit-roasted chicken at Da Cristina and homemade wheat bread at Pische. Around one o’clock the town seems to be falling asleep: all shops are closed.

And just after lunch you might see only one or two cars and just a few folks–retired farmers or masons, meeting up in their favorite bar for a poker game.

My window opens to the main street Corso Umberto, named after the former Italian King Umberto I. As a teenager, I used to watch amusedly as black-dressed ladies rushed to the church for the 7am Holy Mass.

In Ghilarza, Catholic pulpits are taken very seriously. Every single child has gone through the first four holy sacraments up to the Confirmation.

Photo by cristianocani

Three times a year Ghilarza has the mysterious atmosphere of a ghost town. For nine days each time the inhabitants move to tiny built-up areas to worship three important Saints of the Catholic calendar.

Celebrations start only after the Saints’ statues have been brought to visit and bless every single house. Once celebrations have started, all the houses are left open so that you can go back and forth to anybody’s place, stopping for lunch, dinner or just a drink.

On the day of my departure my parents’ main worry is that I can’t taste everything on menu they had prepared for me. So the last lunch must be memorable: a starter of seafood salad is followed by pasta with mussels.

After lunch I know what to do: my baggage is ready, some home-made delicacies packed, a last glimpse at my room before switching off the light and going down the cool stairs, promising it won’t be so long before the next visit.

Feature and above photo by Norm Walsh.

I grew up in Bedford, MA, an old Revolutionary War town wedged between Lexington and Concord. Bedford is moderate in all regards. Poorer than Lexington and Concord and without the war fame, but not quite as poor as Billerica to the north, whose strip club and blue-collar ballsiness give it limitless intrigue.

Burlington, to the east, has a comparable demographic to Bedford’s, but its sprawling commercial district—anchored by the Burlington Mall and AMC Cinema—draws immense traffic and makes the town a place of many options. Carlisle, to the northwest, is woodsy and rich, and dotted with farmland.

Bedford, cruelly surrounded by so many places of interest, offers little more than a good school system and the easily ignored legacy of having the first flag in America. (The Bedford Flag shows a metal-plated arm protruding from a cloud and waving a dagger at the words “Vince aut Morire”—Conquer or Die.)

Back when I was growing up, the main thing to do was hang out in someone’s basement and watch TV, or wander the streets like a vagrant. When I was 17 I fell into eight handles of Smirnoff vodka, and so spent my last years of high school sneaking off to various places—house parties, “the shack” off Davis Road, the abandoned train tracks in Billerica—to get drunk with friends, as did everyone else I knew.

Eager to leave after high school, I headed off to college in Maine to become a wicked booze-hound and redneck. I drank myself stupid, bought some guns, took up hunting and fishing, and tried my best not to get involved with politics.

When I graduated college I strayed even further, finding work on a salmon boat up in Bristol Bay, AK. But that quickly turned sour, and I ended up running away in the middle of the night, back to Bedford to wallow in shame at the old house.

I have since moved out and back, living for a year in Boston then attempting another half-brained adventure which put me squarely on my ass yet again. And that’s exactly how it feels. No matter what I do here, I get the sense that I am sitting down. Bedford is a place for sitting: not for falling backwards, but not for moving forwards either.

I’ll have productive days—fishing, splitting wood, disputing medical bills—and I’ll have days when I do nothing but lie on the couch and watch old episodes of “The Simpsons,” which I TiVo fanatically. Two weeks ago a friend asked me if I would paint his house, and I gladly accepted. The work is moving along, but the paint is drying slowly because the nights are so cold.

The leaves are starting to turn now and the wood stoves are burning at night. Fall approaches. And though fall brings the promise of hunting and flannel underwear, I can stay here no longer. I have sat long enough—nearly two months—and I am anxious to stand up, and walk away.

We pull off the highway through a quaint 19th century town called Cambridge, where the buildings still have the flat brick storefronts of an early frontier town, and people’s accents have a country twang to them—not quite Southern, not Minnesotan either; distinctly Ohioan.

We get pie at Theo’s Diner. One slice of chocolate peanut butter and one of cherry, both smothered in whipped cream. It is delightfully in defiance of the food pyramid and the paranoid foodie trends of the nation’s urban centers.

The waitress calls me “Sweetie” and looks concerned when I don’t finish the last bite. She’s got on pale blue jeans and her hair is a bright blond and all styled up in case some cute farmer, trucker, or local boy comes in looking for something other than pie. She is all business at work, dishing out and picking up hamburgers and fries and sides of green beans and mashed potatoes, all with a red-lipsticked local smile, and that Ohio twang.

Photo by seamusiv

As we pull out of Cambridge, we enter the county roads, where we’re occasionally stalled behind an Amish buggy trotting along at a 19th century pace. We take in the pastures where the goldenrod and Queen Ann’s Lace of summer are beginning to fade, and the grasses are taking on the rusty colors of fall.

Photo by RebeccaPollard

There are cows and horses grazing in the distance, and the textures and colors of the land bring me back to this local place, this base layer of home that I simply can’t peel away, no matter how many other homes I accumulate on the road. This time I am coming back from a year in Beijing, and I am in need of my family and Ohio’s solitude and anonymity.

I know tonight we will sit on the front porch, and watch the sky darken pink to blue to midnight over the pastures to the sound of crickets. Maybe the neighbors will come by with salsa they have canned, or a few ears of corn, and we’ll chat for a few minutes about their new dog and my trip to China.

When it gets dark, it will get cold, the first delightful chill of fall before the serious cold of winter. We’ll go inside, and snuggle into our beds in the silence of that deep Ohio night, lost somewhere in the middle, in the heart of it all, which no one knows about and where no one seems to go.

Feature photo by nophun201. Photo above by code poet.

My hometown is a little known municipality of just over 7000, but as of late has become the new location of several political journalists and the starting point for the new conservative superstar of American politics.

Wasilla, Alaska, rests in the belly of the Matanuska Valley, a place famous for giant produce (think 100+ lb cabbages) thanks to near 24-hour daylight during the peak growing season.

It is on the way to Anchorage if you’re arriving by road from Canada, and on the way to Denali National Park if arriving by plane in Anchorage. Wasilla has small town charm, I guess, but most of the buildings are low and nothing special to look at; half the year they’re covered in snow, the other half, mud.

The real charm is the landscape this town was plopped down in: neighborhoods are still on dirt roads, forests are still rich in life, the streams are still clear, and the mountains are so close, rugged and blue you feel like you’re standing in a postcard.

Photo by lizstless.

My childhood home looked out over the mud flats, a huge expanse of land that sunk to sea level in the 1964 earthquake and has since turned into marshland scattered with moose, bear, and enormous flocks of migrating birds (mostly geese and crane, both of which make their presence known with a cacophony of sound that is utterly and indescribably chaotic, irritating and gorgeous).

The pond up the street from our house wasn’t much to look at, except when beavers moved back in and built a dam or the occasional muskrat lingered for a few days. A little further up that dusty road was the creek salmon traversed in the summer, and we ice skated on in the winter. If you’ve never seen a creek literally moving with salmon on the way to their spawning grounds, you’ve not really experienced the full cycle of life.

It’s like staring into a fire late at night before crawling into your sleeping bag and gazing at the stars; you’re mesmerized, and even though you know there are wonderful things around you to see, you can’t break away.

My friends and I used to ‘rescue’ salmon stuck in the shallows by heaving them into deeper pools, until we were old enough to realize that handling the fish at this point in their migration was neither helpful nor legal.

Photo by mcav0y.

I haven’t lived there for many years, but visit occasionally. I always make time for that creek, and try to be there late in the summer when the salmon make their annual trek. Sitting and watching those waters now is like bearing witness to one of the gravest tragedies of our time – they’re so still.

While the politics of Wasilla and the vast state of Alaska are becoming talking-head sound bites, I can’t help but be drawn back into thoughts of the life that pulses through that landscape. It is eloquent and primal, rugged and fragile, my hometown, a world away.