Nothing says “Crumbling Third World Dictatorship” like a bare florescent lighting tube. Granted, the politically correct term for such a nation is “failed state” and florescent lights are getting the ol’ heave ho in favor of LEDs, but that is part of what makes me so nostalgic for those flickering beacons of bad ballast. When you combine the candlepower of these little beauties with the heavy moisture of a mid-summer night in Old Carolina, you can almost imagine yourself in Nicuragua back in the day.
Especially among the Sandanistas up there in the Northern Highlands, huddled down and just waiting to take out that bastard Somoza. Whether or not the world is on our side, justice is. And truth. These are things that cannot be denied. We will bring ourselves together, here in the parking lot of the Chinese food restaurant and pledge our loyalty to one another and to the cause of liberty.
That’s the thing about being in a forgotten place, a hard to get to place, a place that seems somehow left behind. You band together with the people who remain and get to what is real. That was kind of the thing I liked about this place 20 years ago. That feeling does not seem to pertain so much now. We have been remembered, found, and discovered. I live in the hope that, to some extent, people may forget again.
Me too.