27 January 2009

view from a dying city

a recent import to dowagiac, the irish writer, told me today that he heard dowagiac was a dying city. i googled it immediately and found that "dying city michigan" pulls up flint and places near flint, but not dowagiac. he must be wrong.

google would know if it were true.

but then again it is possible that ours is an insignificant death--a death too small for even the internet to notice.

as an aside, saying flint is dying is as insightful as saying puppies are cute. vultures ate the butt out of that pig a decade ago. the circle of life, hakunamatata, amen.

fifteen years ago, i suspected dowagiac was dead, not dying. they made major renovations to the "historic" downtown. signs point to this attraction (as they do in most smal towns) from the highway through town that everyone uses to avoid such things. they restored the brick buildings and put up imitation street lights so the vacant storefronts would be more attractive to the various stroller girls and other unemployed folk who spend their days on benches.

i was suspicious because one always puts a suit on a corpse before burying it. the fix up was proof of our death.

as always, though, we in small town middle america are slow to catch on. we have to be reminded by outsiders of things as obvious as our own demise. tear down the city limits sign and replace it with a tombstone. we're dead.

4 comments:

Ugly Angie said...

"i was suspicious because one always puts a suit on a corpse before burying it. the fix up was proof of our death"....that is a beauty, scotty....
hmmm...maybe the IW is an angel here to help us, like on Highway to Heaven...

ugly wife said...

tombstone, mi 49047. and now we all carry guns because we have no need for the "po-po."

Thirtysomething said...

Sounds like my home town- Pierce City MISSOURI. :) scary shit i tell ya!

Elmer Boutin said...

In our town they put in a visitor center. Then they wondered why no one came to visit it.

This is a great place to live and raise a family, but there's not much to attract tourists. Seems like that money could have been better spent elsewhere.