Big Brother vs. small town

Living in small-town Texas has some strange side effects; for example, the federal government and the rest of “the real world” seems almost unreal. But the streets I run and drive on, the neighbor’s cows, the rodeo — these are all very real and immediate.
Helping a neighbor with storm damage and cooking up a good meal comes naturally. Despite the global influences on cuisine, if you asked me to find the impact of global events in Orange, I would have to shrug or laugh.

Living here is like living in a country song. The police really do show up at parties to drink with friends and they really do let you know they are there to have fun. There are bonfires out in the sticks that go on all night. Attention is paid to the little things, so the chaos beyond the county line is largely ignored — from what the president is doing all the way to our stance against Iran.

This is not far different from the atmosphere I remember from my first year of college. I had very little idea of whether the world as I once knew it had ended or kept going, carried on by its own momentum beyond UC. (A lot of University of Cincinnati students came from small-town, U.S.A. This is Ohio, after all; most of us grew up in our own little bubble.) Somehow that changed in the last three years.

I don’t know if it has to do with our generation taking its place on the national stage, or the election or my own personal maturity, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. There is much comfort in dwelling in a cocoon and enjoying, without distraction, only what one is tangibly in contact with.

But there is much more satisfaction in understanding the currents moving in and out of one’s sight, feeling there is some effect one can have against this force of change.

Perhaps Orange is moving toward this; its nearby neighbor Bridge City is already there. Bridge City had only 14 homes (out of some thousand) not flooded from Hurricane Ike.
Hundreds of Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers remain, as the March deadline for their removal approaches. The federal government agreed to an extension until July if rent is paid on the units.

Yet Bridge City, as a municipality, outlaws trailers as a form of permanent housing and decided to stick tight to the March deadline. For once, the residents are receiving outside input, which will directly mislead them. Families have less than three weeks to get out of their trailers or start paying rent to the federal government while still trying to raise funds to rebuild. If they don’t, they will be evicted.

Does this seem surreal? Does it seem strange? It is just another example of how federal and local governments interplay. There is a lot of hurt here but also the potential for a new awareness — there is more to this world than donut shops and fish fries.

But the stereotypical ignorance keeping the world a little simple is a beauty much at risk of being lost. There is enough on the daily to-do list in Orange to keep its residents busy caring for those nearby, content to let the rest of the world alone with its own concerns.

Because small-town people have an intense understanding of their own loss, a homeowner can come flying out of her trailer to tell you there was an earthquake in Haiti; a neighbor will shake her head and tell you Ike’s damage is nothing to the suffering in Port-au-Prince.

The simplicity of local focus is the real world, too. By keeping hearts close to home, these people learn to embrace the similar struggles of the whole world.

Maria Bergh is a fourth-year architecture student and intern for Fuller Center Disaster ReBuilders, building houses in Texas after Hurricane Ike.