A Few Thoughts on What My New Neighbors May Really Think About Me

The Mayberry Chronicles continue

It’s been a couple of weeks since I wrote about the ongoing trials and tribulations of my move from a city where my chances of being killed with a handgun are mitigated by the fact that there are grocery stores closer than 20 miles away to a part of rural America where the peace and quiet is often cancelled out by the sheer number of “Take America Back 2024” flags. The move has been proceeding at a glacial pace, so there hasn’t been a lot of news, but I did find myself pondering a few things on my two-hour drive back east from civilization yesterday.

I had extra time to ponder when stopped for an extended period in Wills Point (population 3,863), where a ridiculous number of people have descended on the town to watch the eclipse on Monday (an optimistic lot, given the current 75% chance of rain). I still don’t understand all the fuss about the sky going dark for a few minutes; if you want to see that, just walk outside at midnight. Anyway…

Something my stepdad told me a few days ago made me think about something you never think of in a large city: what do the locals think about my permanent relocation to their little community? It’s actually something I don’t usually think about anywhere; I’ve reached an age where only two people’s opinion of me matter: Springsteen and Jesus. What he told me was that there was talk at the gas station about a dustup I was having with a friend of ours over who would inherit my stepdad’s tools when he passes.

This was a shock to me, because the only thing that has ever been said about it is that I am glad I won’t have to deal with them. He has an entire shop full, and I have no clue what most of them even do. My stepdad can’t work a cell phone or computer, but he can rebuild a transmission in his sleep; we have complementary skill sets. I quickly realized that in a town where, today, tomorrow, next week, and October 9, 2026, will all look virtually the same, a “new guy” is big news and if he’s a hermit writer, then they’ll have to find ways to make the story more interesting any way they can. I will truly have arrived when they have me sleeping with the local hairdresser.

After a little more thought, I’ve come up with three reasons I will be welcomed with open arms and three reasons I will be viewed with varying degrees of suspicion for the rest of my days. These reasons do not apply to every individual here (many are amazing people in every sense of the word) but are a reasonable summary, nonetheless.

Why I Will Be Beloved and Probably the Next Mayor

1. They loved my mom. It helps to be the only child of a woman everyone here was fond of; I get the goodwill simply by association and even more so if I play up the fact that I am, from a strict biological perspective, an orphan now. Luckily for me, the folks she lived around for the past 30 years got the same benefit as my children: they only knew the “grandmother,” a very different being than the woman who raised me (everyone with kids knows what I’m talking about).

2. They admire the fact that I took care of my mom for a year and am now helping my stepdad. I hear this quite often, and I appreciate the sentiment, but this one should not even be on the list. The fact that family helping family is now considered “admirable” is ridiculous; if you’ve not there for your family, you’re just a dirtbag.

3. I’m a native Texan. A few decades ago this would not have mattered at all, but the influx of Californians over the past few years has caused no small amount of concern. This ignores the fact that most of those moving from California to here are quite similar to the people who’ve been here for generations; they are, by and large, both socially and politically conservative or they wouldn’t move here in the first place. I chuckle every time I hear the phrase, “don’t California my Texas” because what I then hear in my head is the Red Hot Chili Peppers song “Californication.”

Why I Will Always Be “That Guy from Dallas”

1. My great-great-great-great-grandfather didn’t settle this area with Stephen F. Austin in 1821. Your standing in the community is still determined by how many generations you’ve been here, though you can bump that status up significantly by simply being rich. I’m out of luck on both counts.

2. I’m a Catholic. This one will surprise many, but anti-Catholic sentiment not only still exists, it is on the rise in many parts of the country. That this could be an issue was brought home to me last year when the physical therapist working with my mom after she got out of the hospital invited me to her church (First Baptist Small Town I Will Not Name). Her selling point was a fascinating sermon series her pastor was doing on how the Catholic Church is the whore of Babylon from the book of Revelation and the pope is the anti-Christ.

I thought this nonsense had ended with JFK’s election in 1960, but clearly not. I started to ask her if the anti-Christ was Pope Francis specifically or the papal office in general. If the former, he’ll be gone sooner than later (he is 87, after all) and if the latter, then Satan was certainly taking his own sweet time getting the Apocalypse moving (2,000 years is a long time by any measure). I said none of this, however; they might still tar and feather heathens in these parts.

3. I’m from Dallas and thus probably secretly a liberal. I am technically not from Dallas (I’ve lived most of my life in Arlington or Fort Worth), but for many here, anyone from the DFW Metroplex is from Dallas. And since Dallas is a hotbed of “liberal Democrat shenanigans,” anyone from there is suspect until they prove their ultra-conservative credentials. This will be a problem for me, because while I am indeed conservative about several things (I’m a middle-aged, military veteran, Christian from the South…duh), my current political philosophy will not go over well.

If my new party had a name, it would be the Please Take Us Back Party. I think we should petition King Charles III to take us back as a British colony (not as part of the Commonwealth; as a colony). After 250 years, the one thing America has proven time and time again is that we should never, ever be left unsupervised. We’re like the teenager who, as his parents are leaving for the weekend, assures them that he will invite no more than two friends to spend the night and then immediately throws a house party with kegs and 300 guests. The benefit to Britain would be that by reacquiring us, they get our Navy too; Britannia would once again rule the waves.

The three things above will never be spoken aloud to me, of course; people are far too polite here to say any of it to my face. Instead, they will discuss it in hushed tones in Sunday School classes and at the gas station.

One final note before I close. I have been calling this The Mayberry Chronicles without considering the likelihood that readers under a certain age may not know what the hell I’m talking about. The name refers to the fictional North Carolina town of Mayberry that was the setting of the classic 1960s sitcom The Andy Griffith Show. It’s still a great show; you should watch it.

Stay tuned for further updates, my friends. Things should really get interesting when I perform some stealth nighttime missions to replace the “Trump 2024” banners with one reading “Come Home to the Catholic Church.”

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