The question isn't can you go home again? The question is, do you want to? From the day he left the small town he grew up in, David thought he did. He left the Allen Dale South Carolina for Princeton, then law school.
You know, I really sort of see myself as being a black matlock or something like that. I mean, I'm sort of into that idea. I'm sort of into the idea of being the lawyer in town. Just recently he was offered a job with a country lawyer back home.
And so he and his wife have to decide, what are they gonna do? She grew up on a farm outside Allen Dale. They were childhood sweethearts. And deciding where to go, it's the biggest question in their marriage.
I try to conceptualize myself. Could I really live in a community that small? Could I live in a town with some traffic lights? And I could not see it.
I could not visualize it. And I think that only a couple of weeks ago I told David that I could definitely never live in a town like Allen Dale. That's pretty strong language, Lee. In a sense that a dispute comes down to a difference over how they view a central fact of a small town life.
A feeling that comes. And you know everybody knows you, knows your business. He likes that feeling. People knowing your business are wanting to know your business.
I mean, it sounds like a horrible thing, but that kind of whatever, nozziness in some respects keeps you in line. You know, people knowing that my car was potentially parked at Lettuce House at a time that it shouldn't have been, keeps me in line, you know? I mean, so you don't do that. You don't do the things that you know the neighbor next door can report back to your mom.
You know, you just have to be a good boy. And that's sort of the way that I see myself in Allen Dale. I'm Allen Dale's a little good boy. And I think that I always lucked against being a good girl.
I mean, I was not a bit of a child. I didn't have any discipline problem. But I think that at a very early age, I was spiritually an individualist. And I think that, you know, when you want to take stake out and behave in your own way and have a personality that may not be assimilated to everyone else's, it's just painful in a small town because it sticks out.
Reviews of abortion and race relations didn't square with the prevalent opinions in Allen Dale. The speech you gave as high school, valedictorian, a speech critical of the school system, was a minor town scandal. People apparently talked about it for months. And so for now, they're stuck.
Living in Manhattan, trying to decide if they see small town life as cozy, or as claustrophobic. Welcome WBZ Chicago with this American life in my reglass. Each week in our program, of course, which is a theme, bring you a variety of stories on that theme. Today's program, Small Towns, the claustrophobia and freedom and yearning for small towns.
Equine, Country Mouse, City Mouse, a family moves from a tiny town to the big city, or what seems to them, anyway, like the big city. Act two, I get together with single farmers, who are trying to get other farmers to stay in rural America by marrying them. Act three, three Chicago teenagers make the argument that the public housing project that they live in, a high-rise building here, in one of the biggest cities in the country, is actually a small town. Stay with us.
Equine, City Mouse, Country Mouse. One of the classic American stories is the migration from small town to big city, and all the personal growth and dangers and freedom that happen when you make that move. A contributing editor, Sarah Val, went through that change herself with her family, but with one small catch. The big city that her family moved to wasn't New York or Los Angeles or Boston.
It was both in Montana, population 30,000. Which sounds like a small town to anybody who lives in a city, but was in fact 30 times larger than Rags, Oklahoma, where they started. We were hopeful immigrants from small town, Oklahoma, who set out for a better life in small town, Montana, and became new people. Where else but America can an okra eating twang, talking Godfearing good girl like me, be given the opportunity to turn into the liquored up opinion-mongering he done I am today.
My twin sister and I were born Oakies in Muskogee, because that's where the nearest hospital was. But we lived in Braggs, a dusty little Muskogee County nowhere, home to a thousand people, four churches, one school, a couple of stores, and a much vilified bar called the Little Oklahoma. Our mother took us to Braggs Pentecostal Church three times a week, where I got saved, got baptized, and prayed with her and the others in the ladies' prayer meeting for the Little Oklahoma to be shut down. And I sang, sang in church, sang at home, sang along with my transistor radio to the Tulsa Country Station.
I sang for God because I knew God was listening. When I was six, I got a tape recorder for Christmas, and here's the first song I sang into it. I will be a helper at home at church at school. I will be a helper of a Bible rule.
When there's work for me to do, I'll do it happily. I will be a helper to everyone I see. I hate that song more than any other. Every time it pops into my head I shiver because it's a spooky reminder of the docile woman I might have become had I stayed in that town, in that church, where there are so many rules and so many eyes upon you.
Not to mention the fact that God himself ran the biggest stake out of them all, and you knew that come Judgment Day, you'd account for every last slip your preacher and his minions had somehow missed. Small towns are always hot beds of surveillance, but when you add fundamentalist religion to the mix, the things you can't do outnumber the things you can. Sex is bad, drinking is bad, smoking is bad, women standing up to their husbands is bad, questioning scripture is bad, not attending church is bad, cussing is pretty damn bad, and as my father would soon find out, moving away is really, really bad. If you asked him why we left Braggs and moved to Bozeman, and believe me, my mother's family has never stopped asking, he'll launch into this whole song and dance about his health.
One of the main deals was my... Dad, you've been giving us the old health line for years. Yeah, that was kind of one of the reasons for leaving there. What was the real reason?
The real reason I wanted out of there. Why? Go somewhere, there was a lot cooler. Mm-hmm.
And any other reasons? I mean, what specifically? The honey is real good here. Dad, you're not answering the question.
Tell me what you hated about Oklahoma. Mainly, kind of the heat in the summertime. My dad's being diplomatic. No matter how many times I reassured him that this radio program is not on in stations in Oklahoma, and that no one in our family would listen to it if it were.
He still didn't want to come right out and say why you wanted to leave Oklahoma. It was to get away from family, his and my mothers. They were nosy, and they were everywhere. Every summer, itching to get away from them and brags, he'd drive us to the Rockies.
Oh, look at the pretty mountains, Mom would say. That old faithful sure is something. My mother, my sister, and I just thought we were on vacation. Turns out Dad was scouting out an escape route.
He still wanted to live in a small town. It's just that he wanted to live in a small town where he didn't know anyone. So he picked Bozeman. It was the right size, surrounded by gorgeous mountains.
And best of all, had the vital statistics he was after. Vowel family four, acquaintances zero. Arriving in Bozeman at the age of 11, I felt like we had just moved to Paris. A town of culture and ideas, of libraries and movie theaters and record stores.
I still celebrate the first day we got there, June 5th, as a birthday of sorts. Bozeman had miles and miles of cement for us to roller skate around on instead of a stunted 50-foot strip of sidewalk in our brags backyard. My sister, Amy, remembers pulling into town. Being over the past, and we've been, you know, driving through the mountains or whatever.
It seemed really super cute. It was weird being around so much concrete organization, you know. You were just set loose out in the world, too, wearing Oklahoma. We could wander around, but it was always like in the front pasture or the backwoods or walk over to our pause house or something, you know.
None of this, like, just cruise around the whole town. And it kind of freaked us out. It was exciting, too. It was.
One of the things I liked about living in Bozeman was that there was a library. You know, remember in Braggs, there was that the whole school. There was one little, wasn't it, like, a shelf? The shelf was in books on it.
Right. For, um, 12 grades of people. Yeah. And then Bozeman had, you know, separate buildings that were libraries.
Right. And how fun that was to just go and look at all the books we wanted. In Bozeman, I thrived. My sister blossomed.
My father found his thrill. But the move was hard on my mom. She missed her epic family. The thing that made my father squirm about small town life, being surrounded by people who know you, was exactly what she loved about it.
Her family is huge and hilarious, with big mouths and bigger hearts. And up north, she missed her fiery southern style church. There weren't any other Pentecostals in Bozeman, so we ended up at the most frigid, watered down, non-denominational, Protestant house of worship possible. We were used to this wrathful, angry, Old Testament creator, and sitting through week after week of God is love, got pretty bland.
And after a few years, our church visits tapered off, which was fine by me. Mom, on the other hand, had to deal with not only her own loss of spiritual guidance and community. She had to sit by and watch her children losing Christian steam. Well, let's talk about something we generally avoid talking about.
Okay. Do you think, well, as you know, at some point, I basically lost my faith and never got it back. And do you think, I mean, is that a regret of yours? Do you think if we had stayed in Oklahoma, I would still be right there by your side at church with you?
That's interesting, Sarah, because I do think about that a lot. I used to just really think, especially when I found out that you had, you know, lost your faith. I thought, if we would have stayed in Oklahoma, this wouldn't have happened to Sarah. You know, I feel really guilty and really bad that we moved to Montana, and Sarah has lost this.
But over the years, as I've seen you grow up and realize and know what kind of person you are, I'm wondering, even in Oklahoma, would you have began to search in different areas and maybe doubt? Are you calling me a bad seed? No, no, I'm not. I love you very much, and I'm very proud of the person you are.
That's your choice, you know. But it don't keep me from praying every night that you'll return your faith, Sarah. Amy told me, I don't remember this, but Amy said that once when we were about 13 or so, that you said, when we were in postman, you sat us down and you asked us if we wanted to go back to Braggs. And I would assume the reason for that is that if we would have said yes, because you obviously wanted to go back, then we would have ganged up on Dad or something.
Do you remember that? Yes, I do remember that. Were you really, how was it for you when we said we didn't want to go back? No, I was totally devastated.
Yes, I remember that very well. I think you were pretty quiet and it was really neat what Amy said to me. She said, Mama, we understand that you're very unhappy here and that you missed home. And if you feel that you need to go back, that's okay with Sarah and I, but we want to stay here.
And I looked at you and I said, do you want to stay here, Sarah? And you said, yes, I do. And so, you know, I mean, I immediately wanted to burst into tears, but I thought I need to compose myself here. And later that night, as I thought about it, I did it with a real turning point for me actually to start being happy here in Bozeman, because I thought, okay, I can't leave my children so I better get it together.
Because, and I know you really don't like to hear me say to Sarah, because you and Amy have been and are the most important thing in my life. And so there's no way I could have ever gone away and left you. There's so much mother-daughter history in the way my mom says, I know you don't like hearing me say this, because she knows I don't like hearing her say that I'm the most important thing in her life sometimes because of the guilt that involves. And before I started working on this story, I'd always felt badly about the way she sacrificed her happiness for mine.
I grew up believing she would have been better off in her little Oklahoma hometown, surrounded by family embraced by the church. But I found out I was wrong. Do you still want to go back to Oklahoma? Oh no, no, I could never live in Oklahoma again.
Why not? I really think that I've changed too much, Sarah. I mean, I love my brothers back there dearly and my best friend, Kathy, and there's lots of wonderful people that I just adore and love so much back there. But I do feel that I've changed so much in the 15 years that we've lived here that I could not live in Oklahoma again.
So now do you think then that Braggs is just too small? Yes, I do. And when you were growing up there and when you were living your whole life there before you moved to Montana, would you ever imagine that that would be true for you? No.
No. Growing up there, I never even dreamed in my wildest dreams about moving away from there. I just always thought, I'll just meet someone here and get married and live the rest of my life here. Really?
Yes. I guess your dream didn't come true. Is that okay with you? Oh yeah.
Yeah. As difficult as it was moving to Bozeman the first few years in all the changes, it really for all of us was a good move. Sara Vals moved to Big City, Bozeman was so successful that she decided to repeat the experience. She moved to Portland, population 500,000, Washington, D.C., population 600,000, San Francisco, population 700,000, and then finally Chicago.
Population 2.8 million. Act 2. How do you keep them down on the farm? Mariam.
All across America people are moving away from small towns and rural areas in steady streams. So if you have stayed, in a place, where there aren't many people, and the ones that are there, you've known since birth, how do you find somebody to marry? We might join singles in agriculture. They hold get-togethers for singles all over the country.
A reporter Liz Weil went with this American life producer, Lee Siegel, to a recent get-together in Galveston, Texas, at the flagship hotel, on the beach, jetting out onto the water. There were about 25 people from 26 states at meals and meetings, day trips, and dances. Jim's an extreme case. Smart, charming, 52, looks 40.
Living on a farm outside I own a South Dakota, population 4. It's 30 miles to the nearest grocery store. The weather is still punishing, cows freeze solid, standing up. His dilemma?
Nobody wants to move to his ranch, and he doesn't want to leave. This is not bragging on myself or anything, but I've had a girl offered to buy me a farm in another state if I would move and marry her, but I just can't leave it. Was that a hard choice? Yes, it was.
I couldn't see why, if I met that much to her, she couldn't move there to my place and stuff. Her land had been in her family for a long time. This is a typical problem for people in SIA. They're all farmers, all tied to their land, though Jim's situation is particularly harsh.
He tells me he realized that a few years ago when the group's director went out to visit him. Even she was stunned by how isolated he was. She said it would take a remarkable woman to move to his ranch. Do you realistically think you're going to get married?
I would like to. I guess it's always in the back of your mind, you would hope to, but you want an honest answer. I don't think it's going to happen because it's going to take a special girl. You're a city, both of you are.
Would you be willing to live out, even give the consideration of living out and trying something like that? Jim's own mother even admitted that had she known where she'd been moving, she might not have married his father and moved to the land. It's Thursday night, the first night of the get-together, and we're all at a dance in a Victorian gazebo, with wood floors so old women have been asked to wear boots, not heels. Everyone's so happy to be here.
I have the sense I'm talking to people who don't get to talk to other human beings enough. About ten, I sit down next to Martha, a twice widowed woman from Indiana. She's small, nearly 60, wearing a sweatshirt she's decorated with glitter and beads. SIA is the focus of her life.
It gets me something to live for, because I'm very lonely and I need this to keep me going. Because the first camp out I went to, I cried when it was time to go home. And they was saying in church music and I couldn't say I was crying so hard, and I would give it everybody hugs, and I love hugs. And as one guy just held me and he said, are you okay?
He just held me and held me until I got kind of calmed down, you know? I said it just shows how lonely I am, I guess. Martha tells me that her favorite dance is the waterfall. How it works is that the women form one line, the men form another, and the two meet in the middle like a zipper, couples dancing up the floor.
Martha tells me she likes the waterfall because you don't need a partner. You just stand in line, and the line moves. You pull a body close, get hugged. The next day is Friday.
Half the farmers board yellow buses for the NASA Space Center. The other half track to Houston for a world's fair style livestock show. About every 15 minutes over the course of the day somebody tries to convince me no, this group isn't about hooking up. It's about friendship, camaraderie, everyone's one big family.
But later in the afternoon I bump into a group of SIA women who are clearly on the make. One's just bought a T-shirt that reads cowboy butts drive me nuts. My own shirt ladies, my own shirt, to the left. Oh, when we were eating, they walked past us.
No, no, the best one was the guy that was showing the family in a horse, he was good. A little bit of black hat right here. So what do you look for in the deal? These leave eyes, Wranglers.
What's in them? These girls are a rowdy hardcore bunch. They're youngish, around 30, loud, constantly making cracks. Kate the most vocal of them is broad and strong, a dairy cow wrangler from Wisconsin.
In this crowd, she plays the tomboy. She brags about telling the men she dances with that if someone wants to pick a fight, she'll do the punching. But once alone in her hotel room, the tough girl attitude fades away. I think of myself as a lady.
You treat me like a lady, I mean, I treat them well, but I guess I'm kind of like a traditional older fashion, I guess they call it. She goes on to tell me about a friend of hers, a woman who prayed every night to meet somebody and eventually did. What do you do that? Do you pray about what the kind of person?
Well, yeah. I mean, for that, you pray that God leads you or guides you to, or guides him and you to meet sometime, you know? And what kind of guy you would like, you know, and she don't be specific. You can't just say, you know, a guy's got two legs and hat and whatever, bellpock, you know.
But, uh, Are you following her direction? Are you being specific? No, I mean, I do this like every night, you know. That's what's going to smell terrible.
Dude, guys. Down the hall from Kate, Ernie and Sally, a couple who met through SIA. He's 50-ish from Oklahoma, gross sesame and delivers mail. She's a school teacher from Kansas, incredibly hot, in a short tight dress and baby doll tea.
At this point in their relationship, they only book a one hotel room. And right now, Ernie is in their fixing Sally's boot. The smell of epoxy is mind-numbing. They detail their first date.
We were going to a dance. Halloween dance. And, uh, I got to her house. And...
Six hours to get there. Six hours to get there. And in less than 15 minutes, she was begging me to take her dress off. Okay, let me explain.
Ernie had brought over a blue flapper dress. His former wife had made it. Sally wanted to look at it. Maybe wear it as a costume.
I get there and she's, oh, I gotta try that dress on. She looked at it. She ran in the bathroom and put this dress on. And I waited, no, I didn't pretty soon.
I heard this. Ernie? Well, I put the dress out. Help me.
And it was tight. It was really tight. We kind of stand there and talk a while. And I just think...
What do I do? And I was... Where do you grab? What...
Where do you want me to get home? Both Ernie and Sally lost their spouses. They both felt sparks five or six months ago when they first met. They live a reasonable distance apart by SIA standards, but...
And this is the problem with a national organization of rural singles. The logistics make it nearly impossible to date. 404 miles. And my door to his door.
And how often do you get a chance with each other? Oh, another rate. Two weeks. Every couple weeks.
It's six hour drive. I don't care how you go. Phone bills are pretty high, too. They lot cheaper.
Don't marry me, Linda. No. He says I push him a little bit. Can you believe that?
I can't believe that. Do you feel like she pushes you a little bit? No, a little bit. Hold on.
Sally and Ernie have this little routine. Like most set pieces couples have, it's only half in jazz. She ribs him constantly about getting married. He hedges.
They love each other, but there are different points in their lives. She isn't. How long have you been single? Eleven years.
Husband died. Had a heart attack. It was a year and eight months. So I got about about a year before I might decide whether I'm going to do anything.
And who happened? Ernie didn't expect to meet somebody so quickly. In fact, he wasn't sure he'd meet somebody at all. He married young, didn't have many girlfriends before that.
Right now, this is his first round of dating. It's a heady experience and one he's not ready to give up yet. Women do. If you're widowed, they're interested.
It's definitely a plus over someone that's divorced. Friday night is a second dance. And when I bump into Ernie, he's passing out these business cards. They have rainbows on them and they read Ernest, Ernie, W.
Schmidt. Married 32 years. Widowed. I'm attracted to you.
Let's be good friends. Sally, as you might imagine, is not so thrilled about this. She has enough good friends, at least for the time being. While Ernie mingles, we talk to her in the back room.
Oh, I've been marrying. Yeah. I mean, if we break up, I'm going to just be heartbroken. It's going to be really bad because my husband's been gone for 11 years and I haven't met anybody that I would marry her.
Sally stops her interviews saying she better get back to Ernie. She's worried that he'll miss her. A moment later, we head out from the back room. I see Ernie with a blonde woman, two stepping on the dance floor.
Two weeks later, we get on. Half an hour later, we run into Ernie and Sally kissing on the veranda. Sometime after this, Sally sends me a note. On the envelope she writes in all capitals, I will marry Ernie someday.
The night starts winding down. At least I think it starts winding down until I realize something. Nobody's planning on going to sleep. The people who come to SIIs spend a lot of time alone.
They crave company, affection, basic human contact. It's past midnight when the farmers leave the gazebo and return to the flagship hotel. Everybody's tired, but they don't go to bed. They hit the beach.
Come on, I've got to show you something on here. Just remember, I'm a very strong girl. Jim, the first guy I talked to you back at the first dance, drags a fully clothed woman into the water. There's something really high school asks about the whole SII experience.
Like right now, the moon is out, the air is salty, and we're in this huge awkward group. And what do people do to cash in on the moment? Per off? No.
Germs, germs all the way. Never come to play. I call you if you make me sick. No.
None of them has had a drop to play. Andre. Sorry. I'm raring in the day.
Oh my god. I'm crying. Evening winds down, and the couples at SIA head toward the climactic night of their weekend. In a minute.
When a program continues. Disamerican Life on my request. Each week we choose a theme of course and invited variety of writers and reporters and documentary producers and documentary producers, to take a whack at that theme, to today's theme, small towns. Liz Wild's story continues about a four-day get-together of SIA, singles and agriculture.
Saturday we wake up to some incredibly tedious meetings, which by some heroic faith, people manage to love. We completely undermines all critical standards of what's compelling, what's fun. You've had financial record before we're to the National Office within 90 days of the last day of the activity. Later Saturday afternoon I catch up with Martha, the woman who told me that SIA gives her reason to live.
She's in her room, sewing the final beads on a sweater she's making for tonight's banquet and black ceremony. The handiwork seems to relax her. She's got this other sweatshirt, her hug sweatshirt, that she wears at the end of every SIA retreat. I'm at this friend and she sent me this bookmark about why God made hugs, and I can't, I don't remember it, but I had my daughter enlarge it on the computer and put it on a scroll and I put it on a sweatshirt and I can tell people that I didn't invent the hugs God did because he gives a reason in this poem, why?
You know, you've seen pictures of how much he loves us and stretches out of his arms. Martha tells me she's a recovering alcoholic. She tells me that one of her children, her daughter, died in 1981. She works evenings at Kmart because she can't stand to spend her nights alone.
It seems like I've had so many bad things happening in my life that now something good is happening. You know, meeting these people and my friend in Florida thinks I have to go to AA and tell my story because she said, Martha, you've been through wars. Martha goes on to tell me that before SIA events she gets so excited that she worries that she'll have a heart attack or a stroke. People spend a lot of time getting ready for Saturday night's banquet, women wear dresses with slits and sequins, men wear jackets, bellow ties.
This is the big event, the final showdown, the evening starts with a prayer. We take pause before you God acknowledging we can rest quietly in your arms with confidence and assurance of your love, grace and mercy as we walk through the season called Singleness. Because we ask hope and belief all things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Okay, here we go. What's going on here is really rather incredible. There are 50 men and women lined up in long aisles by twos. Each person is bearing a flimsy nylon handkerchief-sized flag on a long fin pole.
It'd be campy if people's eyes weren't so reverent, so serious. They march towards the front of the room. After dinner, a man gives a very boring talk on Russian agriculture. Placks are awarded to old board members, election results are announced for the new.
At the end of the banquet, Elden, the outgoing president, gets up to make a speech. He's good-looking, jovial, in his forties. He beats the podium nervously with his hands, a smile creeps across his face. Well, I guess I got one more thing I got to say I'm a little bit dead for this night's over.
Year ago, I could not find hired help to go on harps. I was ticked off. I don't mind telling you, my income was just plumbing and lack of rock. Well, I got to go to Indiana, we got a board meeting and I'm not harvesting so I don't have an excuse.
I met somebody there that, she just found out like this, but at the time it didn't really help my mood that much. Fortunately, she didn't give up and she stayed in contact with me. So you can be able to, you got to remember I've been in this thing a long time. And I guess I would say that I had given up, but I really wasn't searching that hard.
And I found somebody, and it's going to result in a wedding dance April the 5th. And anybody to tick? Everybody stands up and claps and hollers for what seems like a good 10 minutes. People are so exquisitely happy.
Whistful, jealous, and proud. His scene feels oddly like the end of a Miss America pageant. Women cry in glass pans over the mountains. When the ovation fades, they gather around the bride to be.
I'm so glad. I'm so glad. So glad. I'm so happy.
I bet you. I don't care. I don't care. In the crowd I see Martha looking overwhelmed.
She embraces Elden's fiancee. I'm quite shocked. I'm lucky too. No, I'm not lucky.
I'm blessed. I'm blessed. Keep looking, Martha. I'm so glad.
By tonight at the dance, any reserved the farmers had, he's pretty much the same. The farmers had, he's pretty much faded away. There's more winking, more flirting, more moving of hips. Let's chat about seed corn around the edges of the room.
When the Macarena queues up, Jim shakes his South Dakota booty with heartbreaking deliberateness and intent. Meanwhile, Kate, the tomboy with the ivory cowboy buds, remains in the back of the room. She spent most of her evening tangling with Rod, a tall, crazy haired rancher who apparently did not like a dam. From 10 to 11, they pull and punch each other, get to know one another's body by yanking skirts and stealing hats.
It's classic mating, junior high style. When they head out on the veranda, my producer and I follow. Can I go? Oh, it's my take on.
Sorry. Any excitement? Any excitement. Like, it depends on what excitement we're talking about.
Well, it's different. Kate's been working on Rod since early this morning. They have similar ages, energy levels, goofy karmas. While Kate's been talking to us, Rod's been leaning on the railing a couple of yards away.
Just now, though, a tall brunette walks over and starts chatting him up. Kate doesn't move. She just gets quiet and loses interest in our interview entirely. I can listen to this girl talk over here.
She's like, she's like, you're the most handsome guy here. She's telling my sister that I mean, I don't know if people like it here. When I hear my name mention, I kind of broke up a little bit. She's not talking about you.
She's not talking to that guy. I mean, I knew that. She's with us today. She's after Rod.
That guy. She's after Rod. She's after Rod. She's after Rod.
She's after Rod. She's after Rod. She's after Rod. She's after Rod.
I can just tell her everything. Tells me what you're saying. She says something about playing the disc. Listen.
She's talking about she's actually going to talk to me more. I'm going to see what. How is he not going back? Kate snags Rod and the two of them walk back into the gazebo.
It's clear that this is only a minor glitch. The dance ends at midnight. Kate and Rod hop in a cab and head downtown. We make for the hotel.
Jim offers us a ride in his van, which he bought especially for SIA events, and which feels like a huge babe trap. The van is dark red and finally upholstered. Riding shotgun is Marie. We're going to the hospitality room.
Where are you going? We'll go back to Marie's room at party, huh? Yeah, let's go to my room. Major plans decided the moment gets more personal.
This is the time for putting on moves to make something happen tonight. What kind of music you girls like? Well, it's okay, you know, but... It's just okay.
Yeah, get your job. Later people, mostly men, sit around the hospitality suite. Jim pokes his head in. He grins and tells us that he's going upstairs with Marie.
At five in the morning, Rod and Kate sheepishly come back from downtown. In the morning, the weekend ends with an egg and sausage breakfast, amazing grace, and the SIA tradition of everybody hugging everybody else in the room. Everybody looks exhausted, like students after exams. Martha spends a long time crying at the window, watching the cars pull out, talking about how she already misses the hugs.
She's wearing her special hug sweatshirt, the one with a poem sewn on the front. The loop appears to be starting over. Martha is returning to her empty trailer in Indiana, where she'll be lonely and work evenings at Kmart and save up her money for the next SIA event. But then something happens.
A man pulls a game store coin out of his pocket. He gives it to her. She reads aloud. Good for a hug and a kiss anytime, anywhere.
It doesn't say any place. Can I have this? No, I can't. No, I can't.
No, I can't. Look, make a coffee. OK. Well, give me my kiss.
Give me my kiss. You hear? Everybody? Yeah, I got it too.
God bless you. Give me my kiss. Give me my kiss. Give me my kiss.
When the two come out of the kiss, they both seem surprised. At the outset, they both expected a peck. But in the middle, something else kicked in. Something so basic that when it hits you, we don't ask why.
It's been a long time since I had a kiss. Actory. Small town in the big city. Practice a small town could be anywhere, even in the heart of what many people see as one of the harshest urban environments in the country.
Paul Johnson, Carlos Appelby and San Antonio Brooks are teenagers, living in public housing on Chicago's south side at 4120 South Prairie. People live there just called the building 4120. It's a high-rise building, 16 series tile, 10 apartments on each floor, with an open air hallway on each floor that people live there just call a porch. We sent them out with a tape recorder to their building to record what happens there, and then talked to them in our studios about how their building is like a small town.
You can get hair cutters there, you know, girls can get their hair done, they nails done now. Clothes, somebody didn't make clothes in the building. It's a candy store. Yeah, it's a candy store.
A real candy store. A real candy store. There's a real candy store. There's a couple of candy stores in the building.
And it's like a real candy. It's somebody's apartment that you have a little stuff right there. Right. It's sale food, too.
It's like our own community inside the building. Now that we are on the 12th floor at the candy store, they have like six different varieties of the teddy chips, over 25 cents each. They have a pitty candy, white candy, laffy taffy's and chews and things of that sort. They sell food, too.
They got a ton of bees, a piece of pups. People want to talk, but they don't want to do our interview because they're licensed. They didn't have so long. We're going down to the fifth floor right now.
Compare the two of candy stores, fifth and the 12th, which is a better one. 12th. 12th. Why?
They sell food. They sell everything in a real grocery store. Almost everything you need, pencil, paper, cards. That's really the grocery store.
What a building. What happens in the other fours? Let's talk about what happens in six. What's it like?
Six. That's the place where the look is. That's where the look is. That's where the look is.
That's where all the crumbs and that's around the plate. All right. All right. All right.
We're going to play. Y'all play it? Yeah. We play.
We play. We play. We play. We play the Harvey Y'all's with daddy.
Yeah. Y'all don't take it no boys? Yes. No.
Boy's yucky. Yeah. They nasty? Yeah.
That's why y'all don't like boys. Yeah. No. 12th.
The team will be just fine. They'll know I live with them. All right. No nobody else.
It's always dark. Yeah. They don't do it. They don't do it.
It seems like they don't. It's just dark. Nine and eight. That's all.
Eight and seven. That's all the fights. Right. You want to see a fight?
That's why most people hang out on a nine. Eight and seven. Right. It's a fight.
You play games or whatever you want to do. So where we going to play cards? Y'all get to eat? Yeah.
In love with Mary Dang. Okay. Then you guys should explain where we are. Right now we're on the eighth floor in an apartment panel.
And is this a card game that happens all the time? Yeah. Now these guys your age? Are they older?
They're older. Yeah. 21, 22 and up. What card game are they playing?
It's eight. Are the three of you. Who's the best card player? Me.
Okay. Let's wait one more time. You ain't got no motherf***ing job. How the f*** do you get back?
All your day. Oh man. You got me. You got me.
You got me. You got me back. Now I've got to say that when you first played this tape, when you first gave this tape to a producer and NC Update and I, we heard this and we thought, yeah, how do you lose your job on your day off? Like what's going on with these guys?
But in fact there is something else going on here, isn't there? Yeah. They was acting out the movie Friday and I was like one of the scenes in the movie. So they was like re-acting it.
Let's hear that scene. You ain't got no job. How the hell are you going to get fired on your day off? Damn.
You have to be a stupid motherf***er on your day off. You guys are like that scene in the movie, it's a lot while you're playing cards. Yeah. Everybody acting silly, cracking zeros.
That's when you play your best game when you want to relax. Yeah. Now you actually tried to interview these guys while you sat there playing cards and you tried for like an hour. Well, we kept asking them questions so we didn't know it but they pretty much weren't trying to tell us.
Right. Because they thought we was trying to help the law out. Yeah. Now we was with the police.
Trying to get indictments. I don't know. So they didn't want to say nothing. How long have you been living in this building?
Like ten years. Ten years. Yeah. You can sit at this building in a small town?
Yeah. I like your f***ing news. It's your news report for real man. White man.
What the f***? I think we better do this. The radio. The white man's world.
Yeah. Y'all call me white just because I'm asking you. No sir. No, no, no, no.
No, no, no, no, no. You think in some ways it's like a small town? The media is. A lot of people like San Antonio.
Yeah. A lot of family in the building. I believe we got the most family in it. Like on every floor.
You got somebody in this family. Right. I got the most family. I think I got the most.
Alright. Run it down. Let me hear who won here for. Give it to me from top to bottom.
The 16th. Let me see. I'm really getting nobody in the 16th for the 15th. 14th.
I think I got a cousin. A cousin that's down the 12th. 11th. I got a grandmother that's down the 11th.
The 10th. I got an auntie that's down the 10th. Well, I stay on the 8th. Auntie on the 6th.
I stay on the 5th. I stay on the 8th. My grandmother. And you interview your grandmother, right?
I interview my other grandmother. I stay with the one on the 8th. But I interview the one on the 3rd. And she grew up in a small town, right?
Oh, yes. In Mississippi. Do you get homesick to go back down to the South? No.
You get homesick. I go down and visit my mom. But I don't get homesick and kneel down anymore. I grew up in the South.
I had a book time in the South. I picked Captain. I picked Captain. I picked him with a little amount of money.
I chopped Captain. Slapped him down. Didn't make that much money. And we didn't have very much down there.
If you had a choice, which would you think would be better to raise your children in this building or back in the South? Well, you know, like I said, basically it's the same, not because of down South. If there's much going on down South, it's here because they learn here. They learn here.
They learn here how to see a drug and all of they take it back down South. Now there's a much drug down South. Almost it's here. Now, Paul, you also interviewed your own mom.