Published May 15, 2005 in the Hibbing Daily Tribune
John Denver sure had it right. No, not about the jet plane, and “Sunshine on My Shoulders” still causes “Pain in My Eardrums.” But he was right about being a country boy.
Just recently, my wife and I moved out Balsam Township, ending a 7-year stint of city life. Of course, by “city life,” I mean life in Hibbing, which some cosmopolitan types would call a small town. My dad taught me at a young age that you could tell the difference between county and city by the legality of shooting animals off your porch. Hibbing, as lovely as it might be, does not pass that test.
Balsam does, though I still choose not to shoot critters. It’s just too quiet and comfortable out here to want to shoot anything, and I figure I’ll save my ammo for when the government comes with their black helicopters.
There I go with my rural stereotypes. It’s OK because I grew up on a salvage yard in the middle of the Sax/Zim bog, so I figure I’ve earned the right. In truth, rural folks can be even friendlier than your average townsfolk, where the stress of sharing space with thousands of other people causes some to scowl menacingly at uncontrolled intersections. Out in the country, I’ve received more friendly waves and hellos than I can count. Almost every time you meet another car on a highway out here, people give the “one-finger” steering wheel wave, and it’s not even the middle finger!
One of the first weekends out in the woods, I read in the Daily Tribune that Hibbing was cracking down on blue bag violations. At first I was a little disappointed. We always strictly followed the blue bag rules when we lived in town and yet every trash bin within 4 blocks was chock full of non-blue bags every morning. It seemed like you could throw out a life-sized statue of yourself, engraved with your name, weighing a metric ton, without a blue bag and still get away with it. (Though why would you throw out such a thing? I wouldn’t dream of throwing mine out). At any rate, now we can’t smugly condescend over blue bag violators nabbed by the garbage police.
But then I thought about it some more. Other bags are a little cheaper, and come in many pleasing colors. Still, in the country we are learning that garbage bags do not walk to the landfill on their own. (Come on, scientific community, quit messing around with that cancer drug and build me an economically feasible trash bin robot!)
I shouldn’t complain. The world might be better if everyone had to carry his or her own garbage to the dump. We might consume less, recycle more, or at least burn things in barrels, to the delight of hobos.
In a way, I get the best of both worlds. I still work in Hibbing, with fast access to all the big city amenities, but get to sleep in a place where only moon and starlight peek through the windows, rather than streetlights and neighborhood hoodlums. In fact, just last week I observed the International Space Station streaking across the sky with the naked eye. In town, you’d be more likely to see a naked guy streaking by a highway gas station.
Life in the country is just a little easier on the eyes.
One quick note, the annual Bob Dylan Days celebration starts this Friday. You can read all about it in Thursday’s edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune. In honor of Hibbing’s most famous former resident, I’ve written this couplet.
Zimmerman lived here, learning music and rhyme.
Lift your glass to cheer, that he chose not to mine.
Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune.