Place as Teacher (2006)

Abstract

I have lived in nine places in my life, but I dream about only one: a small valley in the southern Ozarks carved out over the last million years or so by a clear stream that the local people know as Meadowcreek. I lived in the Meadowcreek Valley for 11 years, and in some ways I still do and probably always will. As places go, it had a lot going against it. Meadowcreek was remote from some of the essential amenities of the good life. The nearest bank was 25 miles away. The nearest shopping mall was 100 miles to the south. The nearest town, Fox, was 3 miles distant by treacherous dirt roads. It has never made anyone’s annual listing of the most desirable places to live. It had no Starbucks or fine restaurants. The general store on county highway 263 stocked mostly white bread, soft drinks, canned goods, cigarettes, and some hardware items. It functioned as the de facto town hall, where the conversation was slow but nonstop until a stranger wandered in to ask directions. The post office across the road was the only other establishment of note. There you could get your mail, opinions about the weather, and a sympathetic hearing about what hurt. Within a quarter mile of the post office were four churches, all of the kind that connect Christianity with sin, tears, redemption in the blood, and glory spelled with a capital G, punctuated by hallelujahs. JD’s garage was down the road a bit, along with most of the mechanical detritus he’d accumulated over a half century of repairing all manner of things. He would take nothing more than $2 for a tire change. The vacant building across an unpaved street housed any number of dreams. Donny Branscomb tried to make a go of a café there, but people in Fox don’t eat out much and selling coffee and cigarettes didn’t pay his bills. His next line of work was driving a tour bus out of Little Rock.