the rix mix

Oddly, as I approach the 10th blogversary of The Rix Mix (exact start date unknown), someone from my hometown finally stumbled across it,  linked to it on a Facebook page, "You know you're from Roselle Park if," & asked if anyone had heard of me.  Two commenters had. One thought I had grown up in a different part of town & another claimed to be my stepbrother & predicted I would soon acknowledge the post, which guaranteed  I would not.

It's the kind of small town page where people are always trying to get details correct; exactly where something was or where someone lived. Do you remember this or do you remember that?  These matters are not of much interest to me. They never were. They are impediments to one's memories &  imagination.

Although I grew up in a particular place, & I write about my experiences  there quite specifically, I've also treated that small town in a generic manner. The "history" of the town is my personal history,  & my history as it involves the town is of a young person enjoying the security of a small town in the Fifties & Sixties while gradually learning how small it was. The rest is family stuff & could have happened just about anywhere. The town was a bit like the Methodist Sunday School education I picked up there; enough to teach me some basic,  important things & provide a safe environment for learning them, but not  so much that I had to spend years chopping away a repressive  accumulation of dogmas, doctrines & myths. I stayed in that town one year too long. I began becoming bored with the place after my grandmother moved to Atlantic City, accelerating when I was old enough to go to New York City. In high school, I became  aware of my lack of sophistication.   I didn't need to be Downtown NYC sophisticated, but I knew I needed what would be found there.  I've never been bothered by being a small town person; coming from one, I'm all the more easily entertained & even astonished by things more urbane & traveled  folks hardly notice. When in Manhattan, I still have to remind myself not to look up too much.