Passing Through Joplin

When I got pulled over for speeding off Main Street in Joplin, the officer asked me if I was familiar with the small Missouri town. My mind had been on other things, least of which my driving, as far back as Minnesota, and I wanted to tell him an elaborate story that would explain everything. I wanted to tell him I had no idea what the hell was going on with my life and hours in the car alone had not decided much at all. I wanted to tell him that I did not know if I would stay the night, and if I did it would happen almost certainly in the back of my small car in a parking lot because these days hotels are not justifiable expenses. There was more too -- thoughts that hit you hard like bugs on a windshield across miles of open road -- but instead I told him it was my first time, only passing through to pay respects, which seemed a forgivable offense to him. I continued on Main, looking out at abandoned buildings, for sale signs, and the essence of a city still recovering.

The tornado hit Joplin two years ago, but it is still evident something bad happened. At a mile wide it passed through town diagonally; the line separating new houses from those surviving the storm is quite distinct. There are plenty of places in the world catastrophes like this are commonplace, but I imagine it is especially difficult on those in small town America. Here, everything stays the same, always, generation after generation, peaceful and quiet, a beautiful little bubble. It is light years away from mall shootings in Kenya and sinkholes in Guatemala. Call it naivety or ignorant bliss or great fortune, but in any case it must be one great shock when someone wakes up one day and their neighborhood, previously plagued by an occasional high school dropout and petty theft, is simply not there at all.

I found a coffee shop and a pub and stayed the rest of the night, talking to a strange bartender of Irish descent who had an affinity for tattoos and exotic pets. When my night was done I said goodbye to a raw assortment of faces I would never see again. As the sun woke up, I woke up too, groggily crawling from the backseat to the front, rubbing my eyes, starting the engine, and beginning the long drive south to the most stable resting place I've got these days.