If I were a person that needed to have reasons for doing something, I would probably begin this blog by way of introduction, letting you know why I've decided to write about small town Indiana, and apologizing in advance for what, in several instances if not most, would constitute an offense for the people of Indiana. And if I were a person that needed reasons for doing something, I'd be in a tight spot because there really aren't any reasons for the existence of this blog, and it'd be really hard to make one up because there really aren't any reasons for the existence of the subject matter of this blog either. So in a way, I'm the man for this completely reasonless job. Still, I'd feel a bit cheated if, having spent so much time in small towns in Indiana, I would come out of that strange place without having reported about the...well, about the wonders and curiosities that I've witnessed. So in an effort to help me feel better about spending time in Indiana, I've decided to detail those wonders and curiosities for your reading pleasure (and I mean just pleasure, because there is nothing, I mean not a single thing, edifying about this blog). In what follows you'll find what I found in Indiana: midget wrestling, corn, fat white people, drunk sushi chefs, factories, bacon eating contests, corn, "I werk at tha cracker barrel," abandoned factories, very few teeth, farms, corn chowder, basically, a lot of poor uneducated white people.
This is not to say that Indiana is completely devoid of charm. There are charming small towns, small towns with moments of charm, and small towns with no charm which nonetheless have their charm, like those pigs covered in filth and shit have their charm because from a certain angle it kind of looks like they're smiling, which I guess isn't simply charming but rather stupid and charming at turns. Before I came to Indiana, I hadn't been exposed to small towns, or to stupid people in small towns, the stupid people that I met all lived in cities. One difference between small towns and proper cities (and Indiana has none) is that in cities stupid people are in pain because they're so stupid. So I always thought that stupid people, in virtue of being stupid, were also in pain. For example, the teal deep v-necked part-time model at the American Apparel register who took twenty-three minutes (I timed nineteen and estimated four minutes before I started timing) to ring up a woman's purchase, he looked like he was in pain because all the meager calculating faculties at his disposal working at the peak of their abilities were still insufficient to accomplish the simple task of ringing up a three pack of jersey tap panties. I suspect he was going through the same motions, mainly because he looked like he was going through the same motions, hoping that the next time, miraculously, he would get it right; and in the end, he was miraculously right, probably on accident, but now I believe in miracles. In any case, he was genuinely in pain because he had somehow stumbled upon an awareness of his stupidity, and he thus gained the ability to say to himself, while going through the same motions, "God I'm so stupid it hurts!"
In small towns, on the other hand, no one seems to know that they're stupid, and so they're happily stupid. So given a similar situation, but moving from the American Apparel in L.A. to the Cracker Barrel in Gas City, Indiana (R.V. and bus parking available), we find a person at the register in the general I.Q. range of the part-time model, somewhere in-between a chunk of styrofoam and a flap of cardboard, but you can tell that she's happily stupid because she laughs at herself, covering her mouth with a large hairy paw but already having revealed her set of three-and-a-half teeth (an incisor, canine, molar, and something too rotten and oddly placed to recognize), confesses to you, "Aw shucks dear I done messed it up agin', I's so silly thas why errybody says 'Charleen yous so silly' thas wut errybody says hup hup!" Somehow, even after the terrible feeling of having recently consumed 'Momma's french toast' from the 'Pancakes 'n such' section of the menu, it's hard not to be charmed by the three-and-a-half toothed four-hundred pound wonder laughing at herself and asking you for nine dollars. So don't let anybody tell you that Indiana is completely devoid of charm.
They call Indiana the 'crossroads of America' in all sincerity, as if no one could think of anything better to say about the state. But somehow the name feels right, because flying in all you see are roads crossing the state, some windmills flanking the roads, and more cornfields than you've ever seen before. And the people there are all in cars, racing across the roads of the state to get, well, across the state.
There are two colors in Indiana, blue and tan. The sky is blue, preternaturally blue, like a Magritte painting, which probably contributes to the surreality about the state. The ground is a burnt tan in March, covered in dead corn stalks and shucks. If you count the roads, some are asphalt black and some are various degrees of grey pavement depending on whether or not it's rained recently. But mainly, there are two colors at any given time, blue and white in winters, blue and tan transition seasons, blue and green in growing seasons.
I flew into the bumfuck center of Indiana in October of 2007. Crossing into the state, I got the distinct feeling that the pilot almost kept going, until it happened upon him that he might land to drop some people off. I wondered where he would decide to land, however, because there didn't seem to be anything to comfortably land on in what I'd seen of the state so far from my windowseat. I saw cornfield after cornfield (they were separated by crossing roads), until, finally, we landed on one.
After landing near Indianapolis, on the bumfuck middle cornfield of Indiana, I deliberated upon the first bumfuck city I would visit: West Lafayette, Indiana, home of Purdue University, in Tippecanoe county. And I suppose that's where I'll begin this blog, in the first shithole town that I visited, and I'll try to continue to post my travel notes, going from shithole town to shithole town, from Lafayette to Gas City to Floyd's Knobs, reporting on the sights, the flora and the fauna, focusing, however, mainly upon the indigenous that I encounter, the wonders and the curiosities.
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