Working for the weekend: Job 2

I can't remember how old I was when I started mowing my grandparents' lawn. Maybe it started before the babysitting thing, which would make it Job 1, but I already wrote that one so fuck it. I would ride my bike to this job as well, eight blocks this time. My grandparents lived on the other side of town, which was the three or four blocks west of Main Street. My hometown is very small. Don't make fun of it. I have heard (and said) it all before. Some people brag about escaping my hometown (by the way, it's Bridgeport, Nebraska), but everyone who leaves has little choice. There are only so many jobs in a town of 1,500. No college, no record store, no movie theater (though there was a drive-in theater open in the summer that closed only about four or five years ago), no bookstore, nine or ten churches, not many interesting people, an unhealthy fixation on high school sports, lots of white houses, and a hatred and fear of anything slightly different or new, unless it was something like the new Super Wal-Mart in nearby Scottsbluff. If this was even remotely not your cup of tea, you had little choice but to get the motherfucking fuck out of there once you graduated. Maybe three or four people from each graduating class stay in town. The rest get out. After some time passes, four or five more usually come back. That's about it. There are some good things about the place. It's very safe (houses and cars stay unlocked most of the time), which made it an exciting place to be a little kid. You had the run of the town, even after dark. There is a really nice lake, some wonderful rock formations a few miles outside of town that are great for climbing, the aforementioned drive-in theater where I saw on-screen boobs for the first time ("Police Academy") and got drunk and stoned in my friend Clint's blue van with tinted windows. And I would be lying if I didn't say that some really great, interesting people live there (though there aren't many of them). Luckily, much of my family and friends from Bridgeport are in this category When I remember my childhood, my memories of the way the town looked contrast sharply with the way it looks to me now. It seems so gray, empty, deserted, narrow, unfriendly to outsiders, ugly, plain, ridiculous, backwards, laughable. I feel a haughty sense of superiority to it, which makes me feel ugly about myself. The way I remember it is different. As a child, Bridgeport seemed healthy, happy, green, expansive, full of possibilities, friendly. Then puberty hit, everyone turned into an asshole, the town seemed to shrink, I had to drive to Scottsbluff to buy music and books, I learned about all the stuff I was missing from the music and books, I felt lonely and unhappy, blah blah blah. Basic teenager shit, but at least you city teens had a little more at your disposal to fuel the angst and loathing. (A digression: one positive aspect of being from the small town and living in the city, though I'll never feel totally comfortable in either place, is that the city always seems so exciting and new to me. I still get excited knowing I can see bands I like in concert, buy CDs the day they come out, go to great movies, buy great books, meet new people in unexpected circumstances, eat in different restaurants, etc. This seems like a privilege and a thrill, and even though I've lived in cities for nine years, the novelty hasn't worn off.)
What does all this have to do with mowing my grandparents' lawn? Not much. It's just that the transition from small, happy, small-town Josh to teenage, unhappy, small-town Josh occurred while I was mowing their lawn. Thinking about riding my bike to their house made me think about what I saw when I rode my bike, which got me reminiscing about all that hometown shit. That job wasn't bad either. Mowing a lawn isn't much fun, but it's physical, not too hard, and you actually accomplish something, unlike the job I just quit. I show up. The grass is too high. I cut the grass. Not an amazing feat, but fulfilling in its own small way. A far cry from the endless bureaucratic loop of my last four years, in which I would a) proofread a document b) document would undergo slight, usually meaningless revision c) document would return d) I would proofread document again e) rinse and repeat. Sure, the grass grows back, but that's what grass does. It's nature, baby. A document won't revise itself. It takes an army of jackasses to handle that one.
Also, after I finished mowing, my grandmother would give me a ham and cheese sandwich and strawberry soda. If they were out of strawberry soda, I would have a Coke. Then I would get a five dollar bill from my grandfather. Not too shabby.