Their new money and new anger had culminated in the incident

“The town, green and hilly and with streams running through it, though not far from an abandoned steelmill, had been discovered by these hordes and their anger, and all their new money and new anger had culminated in the incident, the Bike Pump Maiming - only Josie called it this, but still - in the middle of town. The incident involved a man in a pickup truck and a man on a bicycle, and the result had been a fight that left one man half-dead. But it had not been the pickup man who had beaten the bicycle man, not at this moment, in this town - no, this was the contemporary inversion, the version where the bike-riding man, wearing spandex and riding a five-thousand-dollar machine, triumphs over the kindly lawn-cutter in his rusted truck. The bicycle man had apparently taken umbrage at the pickup driver, who scraped out a living trimming grass and doing one-man landscaping gigs, who apparently had not given the bicyclist wide enough berth while passing. They were both on the road, traveling along the tiny pond that an environmental group had preserved for migrating ducks and stationary herons. So at the stop sign, the bicyclist pulled up, yelled his choice words, at which point the pickup driver stepped out and was promptly struck in the head with a bicycle pump. The driver went down and was struck again and again until the bicyclist, in his spandex and tiny special shoes, had fractured the lawn-cutter’s skull and blood covered his face and spattered on the rhododendron that had recently been planted on the median by the Retired Gardeners’ Club (RGC), which had supplanted the Association of Green Retirees. It was inside out, utterly backwards but perfectly emblematic of these new angry people rushing. to and fro, always rushing to angrily go jogging, to angrily explain, to angrily expound, to explode when interrupted or slowed down, ready to be disappointed. These were the people! Josie made a mental note. The bicycle man, the maimer, would be in her Disappointed musical. Could there be some nod to Mame? Would that be too much?”

- Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier, 2019

I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest

“Let me be honest with you - a feat which, by the way, I find of the utmost difficulty. When one is invisible he finds such problems as good and evil, honesty and dishonesty, of such shifting shapes that he confuses one with the other, depending upon who happen to be looking through him at the time. Well, now I’ve been trying to look through myself, and theres’s a risk in it. I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I’ve tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth… On the other hand, I’ve never been more loved and appreciated than when I tried to ‘justify’ and affirm someone’s mistaken beliefs; or when I’ve tried to give my friends the incorrect, absurd answers they wished to hear. In my presence they could talk and agree with themselves, the world was nailed down, and they loved it. They received a feeling of security. But here was the rub: Too often, in order to justify them, I had to take myself by the throat and choke myself until my eyes bulged and my tongue hung out and wagged like the door of an empty house in a high wind. Oh, yes, it made them happy and it made me sick. So I became ill of affirmation, of saying ‘yes’ against the nay-saying of my stomach - not to mention my brain.”

- Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, 1947

(Red Country Reading List)

the mosquitoes were like real terrible, so he gave up

“Her name was something like Stacie McDougald, and she. had run away two days earlier with another girl who returned home by bus after the first night. Stacie then hitched a ride with a boy who brought her down the back road.

‘He never said anything, but when he stopped by the lake I got scared and ran. He looked for me in the woods and stuff, but the mosquitoes were like real terrible, so he gave up.’

She had hidden in the trees all night, eaten a couple of Ho-Ho’s, and finally put her head in the knapsack to escape the very. mosquitoes that had saved her.

‘Sorry my clothes are so gross.’ She took a vial from her jacket. ‘Only three left.’ Vacantly she stared at the vial, shook out a pill, and swallowed it with a swig of Pepsi.

‘What’s the pill?’

‘Gotta take them. I’m hyperactive. They’re Ludes.’

The vial had no label. ‘Prescribed?’

‘Oh, sort of. Like they used to be. I took Ritalin when I was little.’

‘Have you eaten anything besides the kiddie junk and Quaaludes?’

‘If I eat too much I get gross and fat.’

East of Hayward we drove into resort country where billboards and small, tacky motels lined the highway. The pavement rose and dropped, up and down, and the van rode like a cockboat. The girl fell asleep. At Park Falls, I stopped for gas. She woke up and disappeared into the restroom with her backpack. She came out wearing clean clothes, her long blonde hair wet and tied behind. Except for the insect bites, her face was smooth and bland and of an unnatural pallor like the underside of an arm. I suggested she telephone her grandmother, but she refused. At Fifield we went east toward Minocqua. The Chequamegon Forest was trees and sandy soil blooming with trillium. ‘Can you tell me why you took off?’

— William Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways

Only stopping for Faygo and pee breaks

“There truly ain’t no party like a Turner house party. Like a single-celled organism, it can change shape and reproduce itself with little fuel. The food runs out by 9pm, no matter how much they make, but the booze never ends. The children, in a pop- and candy-fueled ecstasy, will do doughnuts on their Big Wheels in the basement. Or, minus miniature vehicles, they’ll play video games on the old big screen down there, standing up, jostling one another, fighting the big screen’s static, and only stopping for Faygo and pee breaks. In the absence of any toys at all - which is unlikely because Cha-Cha’s basement doubles as a toy graveyard - Turners under the age of twelve may resort to old school play, linking arms and running as fast as they can in a circle until someone vomits, playing tag in the dark until someone gets a minor concussion, or simply screaming at the top of their prepubescent lungs until an adult comes down and threatens them into silence. The adults will play dominoes, bid whist, and Po-Ke-No. They tell the same embarrassing stories about one another and guffaw as if they’re new. They make liquor runs; they make new boyfriends uncomfortable; they make neighbors consider calling the police. They will eventually kick the children out of the basement, tuck them away upstairs, and dance in the belly of Cha-Cha’s house to classics from the disparate decades fo their youths.”

- Angela Flournoy, The Turner House, 2015

Then two men made long political speeches. One believed in high tariffs, and one believed in free trade.

My wife and 11 year-old son and I listened to Farmer Boy while driving in an RV across Kansas and Nebraska.

“Then he went out with Father and they walked on the crowded sidewalks. All the stores were closed, but the ladies and gentlemen were waking up and down and talking. Ruffled little girls carried parasols, and all the boys were dressed up, like Almanzo. Flags were everywhere, and in the Square the band was playing ‘Yankee Doodle.’ The fifes tooted and the flutes shrilled and the drums came in with rub-a-dub-dub.

Yankee Doodle went to town,

Riding on a pony,

He stuck a feather in his hat

And called it macaroni!

Even grown-ups had to keep time to it. And there, in the corner of the square, were the two brass cannons!

The Square was not really square. the railroad made it three-cornered. But everybody called it the Square, anyway. It was fenced, and the grass grew there. Benches stood in rows on the grass, and people were filing between the benches and sitting down as they did in church.

The band stopped playing, and the minister prayed. Then the band tuned up again and everybody rose. Men and boys took off their hats. The band played, and everybody sang.

Oh, say, can you see by the dawn’s early light,

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,

Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,

O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?

From the top of the flagpole, up against the blue sky, the Stars and Stripes were fluttering. Everybody looked at the American flag, and Almanzo sang with all his might.

Then everyone sat down, and a Congressman stood up on a platform. Slowly and solemnly he read the Declaration of Independence.

‘When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people. . . to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station. . . We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. . .’

Almanzo felt solemn and very proud.

Then two men made long political speeches. One believed in high tariffs, and one believed in free trade. All the grown-ups listened hard, but Almanzo did not understand the speeches very well and he began to be hungry. He was glad when the band played again. “

- Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farmer Boy, 1933

(Red Country Reading List)