I Have a Secret; Please Don’t Keep It

Some secrets should be kept.

Some, shared.

And some secrets should be held against one’s chest for 14 years until they grow to an unmanageable pressure, screaming to be released into the atmosphere—the forever ether that is the worldwide web.

Today, I will tell you one of these secrets. My own.

It is the secret of the contents of a binder. A burgundy binder. A plastic-coated burgundy binder.

But we need to go back to the summer of 2012.

I was turning 22 that summer and was living with a group of four other guys in a five-bedroom house a few blocks off campus from our university, where we were all going to be in our third year come August. I didn’t know any of the guys particularly well then, nor did I after that summer. In fact, I don’t think I’ve spoken to any of them for more than five minutes since moving out that August. They’re all great guys; we just ran in different circles. We didn’t share many interests, namely Settlers of Catan. I don’t know how many times a week they played that game in the living room, hunched over an old bedroom door that had been converted into a table, but it was at least three or four nights every week.

“You’ll like it,” I was assured.

I didn’t.

Before you wonder, no, this story does not end with my revealing I am a secret Catanophile or that I’m nationally ranked in herding sheep and acquiring rivers or whatever is done in that game. That’s not my secret. And if it were, I’d never share it. Like a planter’s wart or my opinion on Disney using Taylor Swift in the new Toy Story film, I’d keep it to myself.

To afford my $140 room in that house, I worked on the university’s grounds crew, a job I had done the previous fall as part of my work-study program (You know, the program where, for every dollar you make at the job, they take a dollar off your tuition. So, at $7.25 an hour for 8 hours a week, I paid for about nine minutes of total class time.), so I knew what to expect. Well, I thought I did.

If you go back and look at the data, Indiana set a record that year for how little rainfall we had. In the first 17 days of July, not a drop of rain fell. And when no rain falls and the heat reaches 90 degrees, the grass dies. What are rookie groundskeepers to do when there is no grass to mow? Mulch. And Mulch. And mulch. In the hazy, punishing Indiana sun, we scooped, loaded, unloaded, spread, and leveled truckloads of mulch.

Have you ever had to shovel mulch for eight hours a day in July and August in Indiana? Have you ever had to do it in 85% humidity and zero rain? If you’ve never had the pleasure, allow me to try and explain it: Put some paste in your mouth then turn your oven to 350 degrees and shove your head in there. Now try to breathe through allergy-inflamed nostrils.

That’s pretty much it.

At least that paste has a nice flavor.

Every morning, we’d walk in together, praying to see an empty truck bed, a promise from the divine that no mulch would be spread that day, and we would, instead, spend our time pruning trees or picking up garbage. Most days we would have been happier to clean the truck’s bug-splattered grill with our tongues and teeth than scoop another shovelful of disgusting, smelly, mother-hating mulch.

After our ton of mulch was dropped across campus and our arms were too exhausted to slam our punch cards in the time clock, I would trudge home, my boots scraping the potholed side street between campus and the house. Under the shade of Walnut Street, my spirits would tick higher as my brain cooled and could recall what was waiting for me in my desk drawer, nearly in my reach as I walked through the door. Sanctuary! Please, give me sanctuary!

I’d toss off my dirt-odored khaki shorts and t-shirt, throw myself into an icy shower to stave off heat stroke, and rinse the mulch-dust-tan from my face, arms, and legs, and prepare myself for an evening locked in my room with a $2 dinner, a DVD from the library, and my burgundy binder.

My secret.

There it was, waiting for me, even before my hair had dried.

I’d pull it from the bottom desk drawer and read “PRIVATE” scribbled down the side in faded Sharpie.

Opening the cover, my eyes, heavy with the draw of a magnet, lock on the first page, surveying every inch of the curves and details, the uncontested beauty, the round…

…ok it’s a map. I was doing too much and got lightheaded. It’s a map.

But that’s not the secret!

The map has a highlighted route with circles around 15 small towns in Indiana; small towns I wanted to research, visit, and then document on video and through my writings.

I wanted to chronicle small towns in Indiana. What they used to be, what they are now, what life is like, what the people are like and what they hope life will look like in their town in the coming decades.

But Indiana wasn’t the end goal, it was the test. It was the proof—the blueprint I would use to repeat my research, chronicling, and sharing small towns all across the American Rust Belt. It was my dream. And, as many 22 year-olds learn, some dreams have to be put on a shelf—or back in a desk drawer—until they’re either forgotten, remembered best as memories, or there’s time for them.

Well, 14 years later, there’s time.

That’s my secret.

Now there’s time. So, in the coming months, I’m going to share with you some of my favorite small towns, small towns that are new to me, small towns that have soul and culture and history to offer, and small towns we should be protecting and promoting so we don’t lose them all to being suburbs of the closest metro area.

The American Townsman is a project I’ve been working toward for a long time, one that has been in that desk drawer for more than a decade, and one I believe deserves to be dusted off and shared with everyone who is reading this and everyone they know.

Yes, I believe it is that important.

I’ll share how you can join this journey, follow along, help us out, and even recommend your small town or a small town you love as one of our next to be chronicled.

I love small towns and I want to see them retain what makes them special while staying competitive in a changing economy and culture. That’s what this project is—a mission, a passion to preserve our small towns and what they mean to us.

So, join me! Be part of airing out my secret!

It would mean a lot, as we go through this week, if you would share this post and the following few posts with as many people as you can (or on your FB/LinkedIn feeds or wherever you’ve found this).

If you put your email on our list, we will NOT spam you. We WILL send you cool posts, videos, and fun stories about small towns across the Rust Belt though!: https://www.americantownsman.com/

Please, don’t keep my secret!

The American Townsman: Celebrating the Soul of Small Town America

-AT

Adam Tidrow is a serial entrepreneur, expert in American business and economic history, and scholar whose work focuses primarily on local economic development in the American Rust Belt