Have You No Shame? And Other Regrettable Stories

City on the Edge of Whenever: Part 1

My father is not a vain man, but like most, he is not immune to praise.  Should one wish to flatter him there are a couple of easy ways.

For example, say you are heading down the hallway to the toilet.  You approach his home office, a small room littered with the evidence of his many interests—bicycling magazines, novelty yarmulkes, Star Trek paraphernalia of varying degrees of ludicrousness—and as if by magic, the door swings open, flooding the hall with whispery folk music evocative of the precise moment fruit starts to rot.

 “Cutie, could you come in here and take a look at this?” 

“I have to go potty,” you say.

“It’ll just take a second,” he implores. 

And so sheets of tracing paper are unrolled and the magic markers uncapped, and you are shown how the redevelopment of Main Street will bring vibrant new life to the town of Social Conservative, Kansas or Bigot, Oklahoma; how its citizens will turn from the Wal-Mart to the small bookseller, from the Burger King to the artisanal cheese shop; how they will transform from the kind of people who live in rural Oklahoma to the kind of people who live in rural Vermont.  And my father is a man full of goodness, and Judy Collins is warbling something about sailors and Maine and the springtime and you are starting to really, really have to pee, so you smile quickly and feign delight at his drawings and diagrams. 

“A triumph,” you cry, as a warm bubble of urine surges dangerously close to you inner labia.  “Small-town America shall rise again!”

He glows with pleasure like a small boy praised at the blackboard, and the relief of making it to the bathroom on time is made all the sweeter knowing you have made Daddy happy. 

Here is the other way to make him happy: mistake him for someone who is not from Nebraska. 

            “Guess what?” He is beaming, having just returned from a convention somewhere hopelessly cosmopolitan, Houston or Philadelphia.  “Everyone I met there, everyone, they all said, ‘What?  Nebraska?  You seem more like you’re from someplace like Boston or…” (wait for it) “…New York.”

            “They thought I was from New York,” he repeats, shaking his head in pleased astonishment.  “Isn’t that something.”

            It wasn’t that he was ashamed of his hometown, far from it.  In fact, he had spent the better part of two decades inside and outside City Hall working to make it from a better, smarter, more vibrant place.  But Omaha had proved notoriously resistant to improvement, at least to the kind my father envisioned.  I mean, people in Omaha aren’t the kind of type who go bragging about their two-digit I.Q.s and total disinterest in anything without an engine, an ammunition belt, or a way to blame it on the Gays; but you know, they like a good chain restaurant.  They’re not about to start commuting by bike.  Omaha is Omaha.  It shows little inclination of becoming New York, or even Kansas City. 

            Still, this feeling of vague sheepishness about the hometown is widespread among native Omahans.  Run into a few at the mall or at the supermarket, and after conducting a cursory examination of your hair, clothing, and wedding ring finger, they’ll say:

            “So, you’re still out there in New York?”

            “Yes.”

            “You out in, um, Albany…or New York City?”

            “I live in the City.” 

            “The Big Apple, huh?”

            “Yes.”

            “Isn’t it real expensive out there?”  This isn’t a question, although it is phrased as one.  But you can see where this is going.