Had this strange long dream that I think my retired teacher pal who was visiting Maysville, Kentucky who posted all these fab old town photos induced... Maysville is on the Ohio River on the Kentucky side.
Those photos combined with where I now work at a deluxe Wal-Mart if ever there were one with an admirable politically correct vision at least - (that sits on an area which I remember as an empty farmland area of two lane roads and wood/wetland areas replete with native Ohio wildlife)....
So, the dream began and I was in an Ohio wetland area with woods flanked by forgotten old abandoned family farms... there were streams, trees, wildlife everything was green and shaded...
In the dream I was with a gaggle of people on a tour... a Wal-mart corporate tour... some executive-type was showing us where there will be a store entrance - right where he was pointing to were these tangle wood trees... I asked, "well, what about these unique trees...?" Everyone was silent - like collectively saying "duh" - CAT - as in Caterpillar would raze them all... then I said, well, at least wouldn't they make a nice natural and unusual alternative entrance to frame the entrance area.... silence...
And meanwhile it is the company Caterpillar who is the machination of bulldozing once grand Palestine.
Then the pasture like prairie in front of all that future Wal-mart-o-rama was teeming with insect life, I asked what would that pasture area be... (again, wrong question)...
...and everyone was silently saying - the super-paver parking lot...
I then said that I suspect that Sam Walton never envisioned all this - this is all just a cult - I then went on in the dream to say to my corporate tour director that my dad - rest in peace - used to dress formally - albeit simply - in brown leather shoes, actual slacks and a sports coat like tweed jacket - kinda dapper until that Wal-mart guy made athletic shoes socially acceptable - pull on synthetic pants with an elastic waistband and a zip up jacket, also synthetic - and that mom (RiP) - wore the same exact same thing - adult versions of children's pull on clothes without any dignity... and they were dead and I blame Sam Walton for their disgraces before the end of their lives, for having lived in such clothes, out of Wal-mart super paver parking lots, eating and dying from fast food and buying up recreational-ly - devoid of purpose - cheap made in china crap - that they thought was American made...Well, I didn't make any friends or sympathies in that strange mute gaggle of people I was with, all nameless and faceless and speechless...
Then, we, as the afore mentioned gaggle, were in an old Americana town somewhere in old and forgotten Ohio - old terracotta brickwork everywhere - streets, sidewalks, structural facades all terracotta brickwork with simple yet elegant arches - grand pillared churches poised on hilltops - Lots of business on the High street - independent opticians, A temple like Public Library, bookstores, barber shops for men and beauty salons for women, cafes, green grocers - butchers and bakeries... Remember, I lived in a small country called Belgium which still, at least in some half and half way, functions this with the independent family owned service businesses with corporate American style supermarket stores as competition.....
In the center of town was a beautiful town hall that still functioned as such - lots of trees, green spaces, shade, the ever present red brick that seemed vaguely Dutch or Flemish in style and hills and no grid of street alignment. Narrow streets too...
And yet all this was the 21st century and somewhere in forgotten Ohio..... and what was once a grand turn of the last century city park behind the town hall - get this - a huge three story deluxe Wal-mart was having its grand opening... and I was having, all of the sudden, visions of the beautiful old Ohio town going out of business and becoming obsolete overnight... then in the dream I was in the town hall standing in the waiting area of a grand lobby - again somehow with Bart the Belgian - like at the town hall in Brussels... (a grand medieval place still used as such).... anyway.... we were in this Maysville styled town hall - waiting on the Mayor... This Mayor - he had replaced his old carved paneled wooden door to his office with a security but plastic Tupperware brand or was it a Rubbermaid brand petro-product plastic flap of a door... From in his office Populist conservative like news was blaring from the radio or TV... and I realized that Mayor got paid off by McWal-Mart of this country's sinister Military Industrial Complex Corporate-o-cracy to build that Wal-mart in a town like that on top of a historic park... with the purpose to erase our collective American, once grand and yet simple brick and elegant history replete with architecture that yielded human dignity from its very proportions by some Jeffersonian intent - But that the media had an agenda to, like I said, just erase our past, which perhaps, was in reality all a modern day and socially acceptable Capitalists cult of all that. The local media which somehow by its incessant yammering, convinced all the groovy independent business people to go along with the Mayors plan to sacrifice the grand old park for a deluxe flagship Wal-mart with a parking lot out back (rather than in front - the effect of which would literally turn the town inside out - back asswards as it were)... because acres and acres of Dominion type vinyl housing was going to be built surrounding the town guaranteeing the independent businesses more business despite the obvious colossal competition... oh, it was just a nightmare...
In the dream I was having literal visions of new Dominion brand type gated community houses, McMansionettes and townhouses, condos and apartments, cheap chain motels, only a couple years old falling into foreclosure and disrepair and standing empty - the independent shops boarded up and empty - out of business signs - the Wal-mart - empty and closed up - denuded of its sign-age - the once beautiful gracious town looking like it was neglected and forgotten for years - and anyone still left there was stuck strung out on crystal meth...
Then I woke up...
Awoke to a rainy day of suicide skies...
And thought I felt like Jimmy Stewart opposite Donna Reed in the Christmas time black and white holiday film - It's A Wonderful Life.... I was remembering that film was referenced in that jerk of an asshole, Mr. (James Howard) Kunstlers book titled The Geography of Nowhere - that book is great but the author is a nasty sort of human which I experienced first hand through e-mail...
No comments:
Post a Comment