“Hiding Out in a Small Town”

During the days leading up to Y2K, when irrational panic overtook otherwise calm people, I received a phone call from a man who spoke to me in a choppy, breathy tone. 

“Christopher, can you help me?” he asked. “I need someone to help me survive Y2K.”  I didn’t know the man and had never met him.  It was the first time we’d ever talked.

The man told me that he was afraid of the impending doom, civil unrest, and the loss of everything he’s worked for. He wanted to know if I could help him dig a hole in the desert.

“Excuse me?” I asked, waiting for the punchline.

“Why would you dig a hole in the desert?”

“I’d live there,” he told me, matter of factly. The man sincerely believed that digging a hole in the desert and hiding out in some remote desert locale would be his passport to survival.

I knew that I would not be digging a hole with him in the desert, and I asked him, “Have you ever camped out at night? Ever slept in the outdoors, ever?”

“No,” he told me.

“So, what makes you think you would enjoy living in a hole.”

He told me that he wasn’t sure he would enjoy it, but that he was certain he would survive better in a hole in the desert than he would in urban San Diego when western civilization began to collapse with Y2K.  In our conversation, I learned he was affluent, ran a business, and felt that he had a lot to lose as society collapsed.  He also told me that he didn’t know any of his neighbors, and he regarded them more with fear than with friendship.

I suggested that the man get to know his neighbors.  Join some social group, or start participating in Neighborhood Watches. Get to know his actual neighbors and begin to interact with them.  But he told me that he didn’t really have time for that.

“You want to dig a hole in the desert, but you don’t have time to get to know your actual neighbors?” I asked, waiting for his response.  He was quiet, thinking about it.

“Here’s what I also suggest,” I told him. “Take a trip.  Go to the desert if you want, but drive through some of the rural towns in California, and maybe Arizona, and Nevada, and Utah.  Get to know the world beyond your little world. Stop places and have lunch in little cafes. Talk to people.  Go shopping in little stores, and talk to people.  See what makes an impression on you.  If Y2K spelled the death of western civilization, little towns take care of themselves better because that’s what they do all the time.”

The man made a few comments and said, “Yeah, I like that idea.  I might try that. I think it would be good to disappear into a small town.”

It was clear that he believed he could live in a small town and no one would know him.

“Oh, that’s not going to happen,” I told him.  “No one knows you now because you live in a big city. That’s how it is in the big city.  People don’t know each other because they want it that way, or because it’s just too big.  But in a small town, everyone knows your business and who you are, eventually.”

“Really?”  he asked.  I could tell that this man had never ventured far from the confines of his own home and business.

“Yes, really!  No one hides out in a small town. All everyone does is talk, and they will know everything there is to know about you, sooner or later, whether it is true or not.”

I told him the story of when I lived on my grandfather’s farm after high school, in a town of about 3,000 population in northeast Ohio.  My brother and I had painted the kitchen of the farmhouse with flat paint, not glossy, and one of my uncles felt that that proved we were urban idiots who didn’t know the first thing about paint.  Later, when we went to family gatherings, cousins would say, “Oh, you’re the ones who painted the kitchen with flat paint.”  In one case, a woman in a store in the town center said the same thing, as if that’s all there was to know about me!

During the next few conversations with the frightened man, he seemed increasingly calmer.  I don’t know what action he finally took because he stopped calling. 

People who have never lived in a small town probably cannot fathom a place where everyone knows your business, which can be a very negative feature. But a small town is also like a large family, and everyone realizes that their fate is tied to their neighbor.  In this sense, for the health of urban America, and the sustainability of our cities, it’s necessary to become a part of the larger community, to take action, to get involved, and to get to know your neighbors for everyone’s mutual benefit.