6.07.09
Out of the train station, onto Tower Street, and I’m reminded of John McCain’s “Small Town America” rhetoric during the elections. Centralia’s downtown still seems to be 1950’s America. My subtitles, perhaps falsely, say it looks “pre-Vietnam pre-Stonewall pre-Culture War America”.
McCain’s rhetoric was justly criticized because the “Small Town American Ethics” are overtly the same as those in the city. McCain’s message was not about living circumstances though, it was a non-specific criticism of urban liberalism.
Mainstreet USA (Centralia version) looks beautiful to me. It’s relatively dense, walkable, and glows with health.
Moving out from the preserves of the interior everything decays into nature and flimsier building aesthetics. Eventually it levels out into cropland, hilly woods and farm houses.
My eyes and ears tell me that people in Centralia are too often obese, and too often uneducated. A survey of used books in Value Village here compared to ones in the Value Village in Seattle is disheartening. The politics shift in ways I don’t like, but more importantly the books seem of a slightly lower intellectual level.
The people I am staying with seem to like it here, and with good cause. Land is cheap, cost of living is low, there’s some space around you, and some trees. That’s a good deal.
P. S. Delicious cookies!
