III. "A Nice Place to Live"

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New Hinton is a decent-enough place to live. It has plenty of walking space, clearly marked roads, several schools, parks, shops, restaurants, a community center, an old steeple church, a bustling downtown area full of book stores, art galleries and antique stores, several fraternal organizations, and an engaged citizenry. 

 

There is also a burger joint and a car wash that lets you sit in your car while it goes through. The Cineplex always has long ticket lines on the weekends, and the bowling alley and roller skating rink are frequently packed with fun-seekers. Everyone is very cordial and neighborly, and, well, if this all sounds like something that has been portrayed, ad nauseam, as the ideal American city in dozens of old black and white movies, you would be right. New Hinton is a cliche, a beloved and revered stereotype. Upon entering the main road going into downtown, there is a nicely painted sign, carefully adorned with an array of petunias and marigolds at its base. It states the obvious: 

 

New Hinton - “A Nice Place to Live.”

 

There’s nothing particularly remarkable about New Hinton, except for the fact that everything runs like clockwork—including the people who live there. Everyone has a role and they perform it seamlessly, without complaint—from the crosswalk guard to the street cleaner, the baker to the window washer. Even the garbage collector moves through his routine with effortless precision. I suppose that’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s likely the reason New Hinton functions so well. The town operates like a finely tuned orchestra, each part in perfect harmony.

 

People own things, but there is no hoarding, and in general, everyone is frugal. Most have just one pair of shoes, and wear through their clothes until they are almost thread-bare, and even then, patch them to extend their life. Every household has a maximum of two cars, and all the kids ride either bikes or skateboards. Again, like everything else, people use their modes of transportation until the wheels literally fall off, and even then, will try to fix it using duck tape and spare parts. As a result of our thriftiness, there isn’t much trash to be collected, or lack of resources. Everyone seems to always have enough and is happy with what they have. 

 

Absent in the community is what people might’ve called in the past “status-seeking” or “self-promotion”—bygone terms that are no longer in use. Don’t get me wrong, there are leaders, but only because it’s known by everybody that they have the skills for being one. In short, it is their role to be a leader, just like it is the role of the garbage collector to collect garbage. Leaders, such as the mayor, not only lead and propose solutions, but are also models of wisdom, kindness, and selflessness. As a result, there is a kind of humility and collective sense of responsibility that imbues New Hinton. People come out in the evenings to interact with their neighbors and participate in civic engagement. Businesses and politics prioritize long-term communal well-being, over short-term individual gain. Sure, New Hinton has its cast of characters and challenges, but in general, it lives up to its description.  

 

I once met an old foreigner at the book store where I used to work who compared New Hinton to a movie he saw many years ago. When I asked him to describe the plot, he said it was about a man who, unbeknownst to him, grows up on an actual television production set as the star of the show. This poor guy later discovers that his entire life has been scripted and that all the town’s people, and even his wife and best friend, are just actors! But I have never seen such a movie at the Cineplex or on television, and doubt that it even exists. And yet, sometimes I sense that, like the story’s clueless protagonist, I’m also living on a production set and that nothing is what it seems.

 

Several people say they’ve witnessed UFO’s and other unexplainable phenomena. One time, at noon on a cloudless day, a darkened and strangely geometric-shaped “hole” seemed to form in the sky. We all saw it. It seemed to grow in size, it’s edges flickering with a shimmering glow of red, blue, and green, and then suddenly it dissipated as the actual sky began to fill it in with sequential blocks of blue. Reality itself seemed to be repairing the breach. Oddly, the news never reported it, and everyone just seemed to stop talking about it soon after. 

 

Another time, for several days, there was no night. An entire week passed by without darkness. This, of course, had the effect of throwing off everyone’s circadian rhythm so that people were walking around at all hours of the day like zombies, working, shopping and getting chores done. Some people reported not being able to sleep for days. Needless to say, when night finally returned, the whole town took a long nap. 

 

According to NASA, the event was caused by a “solar flare-induced atmospheric reflection.” A write up in the paper described how such an event occurs when a massive and highly charged solar flare interacts with Earth’s magnetosphere, ionizing the upper atmosphere in a certain way. The ionization creates a reflective layer that refracts sunlight around the planet, effectively eliminating night by scattering light across the sky continuously. An interesting theory.

 

However, there were conflicting reports that said the week of sunlight was caused by an axial shift of the Earth due to “an unknown celestial event,” for example, a rogue planet closely passing by. Others said it was a solar reflection caused by a giant alien structure in outer space, or that it was a “time dilation bubble,” which I never bothered to ask about.

 

However, I’ve also made some of my own observations about New Hinton that I would categorize as oddities. I can’t really say whether they are inherent to New Hinton or not because I’ve never traveled beyond the city’s parameters, nor has anyone I know. The foreigner I met at the book store is the only outsider I ever encountered. 

 

One peculiar observation is how certain people, even animals, sometimes appear to be repeating the same task, as if stuck in a loop. It can be bewildering, like the way the same bluejay always swoops down, just missing the tip of our garden fountain at exactly quarter-past eight every morning. Or how the mailman always takes exactly three steps back after putting the mail through the door slot—small things you wouldn’t necessarily notice, but where you might recognize a certain pattern, if you know what I mean.

 

There’s a young kid, Timmy, that delivers our newspaper on an old Schwinn with large canvas bags full of folded papers tied to the handlebars, and he always seems to be in one of these “loops.” It’s not just the method in which he delivers the paper—after all, tedious, repetitious work lends itself to patterns—it’s the way he goes from house to house doing his monthly collection.

 

I’ve watched him several times and he always behaves the same way after collecting his payment: he turns around, walks to the end of the driveway, removes his cap, wipes his brow with the back of his left hand, looks at the ground for a few seconds, and then grabs his bike and goes on to the next house. He never deviates. 

 

He also seems to be easily thrown-off by inconsistencies, like when the neighbor’s Pomeranian got out and began chewing on his pant leg. To the neighbor’s astonishment, Timmy just got on his bike and started peddling—as if nothing had happened! The neighbor had to get in her car, find him, and then plead with him to stop in order to get her snowy white “Princess,” marked with chain grease, back. Needless to say, she canceled her subscription after that little incident.

 

When I’ve mentioned my hypothesis about Timmy to my parents, they always tell me to stop being so critical. Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Just one of the many biblical phrases Mom likes to use in order to make her point. 

 

Regardless, one day I decided to put Timmy to a little test. 

 

I saw him approaching our house to make his monthly collection, and let Mom answer the door. As they were talking about the weather or some thing, I ran out the same door, said “Hi” to Timmy, and then bent down next to him as if my shoe lace had come undone. At the same time I was pretending to tie my shoe, I untied his. I then proceeded to walk across the street and hide behind a parked Buick to see what would happen next. 

 

After Mom and Timmy had finished their small talk and Timmy got his check, he did the usual: he turned around, walked to the end of the driveway, removed his cap, wiped his brow with the back of his left hand, and looked at the ground for a few seconds. But when he noticed his shoe was untied, he appeared perplexed and stood there for what seemed like an entire minute just looking at it. He then began to slowly walk in circles, stamping the foot with the untied shoe on the ground, like some kind of injured animal. This continued for a while until something clicked, and he had the wherewithal to bend down and tie the shoe lace. 

 

My conclusion was that, unlike the Pomeranian, this little diversion had the effect of breaking the loop, which inevitably left him searching for an appropriate response that he couldn’t find. I thought about doing a follow-up test, just to confirm my theory that he really was in a loop, but I didn’t have the heart to follow through with it. I mean, maybe he was just weird like that? Anyway, if anyone found out what I was doing, they might think I was mocking him (which wasn’t my intention, I was just curious). Nevertheless, I had to be careful, especially being vulnerable to ridicule myself. In the end, I promised myself that I would be extra kind to Timmy the next time I saw him.

 

However, Timmy isn’t the only one who has driven me to wonder about such things. All around me, I’ve noticed a certain rhythm to everyday life in New Hinton. It’s in the way the way school bus driver always arrives perfectly on time, not a minute too early or too late. The way the checkout girl at the hardware store always greets us with the same “How are you today? Did you find everything?” Or the way the firemen are only seen when there is an emergency, and then mysteriously disappear into their residence, never to be seen again until the next one. 

 

Just last week, the aging mayor of New Hinton was giving a speech in front of the press and froze on live TV with his mouth left gaping, as if someone had pulled his plug. An aide had to gently walk him back to his office, like a mother with her child. People were saying he had a mini-stroke, and yet, the next day I saw him coming out of the post office by himself, perfectly fine.

 

Then, there is the peculiar woman who works at the pharmacy, downtown. Last week I decided to drop in because they always have a good selection of magazines, including my favorite—Mad Magazine. When I discovered they had the latest edition, I asked her how much it was, and she oddly replied, “Be careful to take it only once a day, and not before bed.” 

 

Confused, I looked around, just in case she was talking to someone else, but there was nobody else in the store. So I brought the magazine to the counter and asked her again. She then said, without a hint of irony, “Young man, I’m afraid I can’t let you purchase this without a prescription from your doctor.” I was waiting for her to break out into laughter and tell me it was all a joke, but she just stood there, staring at me with a pleasant smile. Puzzled, I gently set the magazine on the counter and walked out. “Have a nice day!” I could hear her say.    

 

Sometimes, I doubt myself and think I’m being overly suspicious and conspiratorial, and trying too hard to make something out of nothing. My mom says I shouldn’t be asking so many questions or trying to be too smart. I think it’s strange how she warns me that over-analyzing things will only lead to my own self-destruction—whatever that means. But I can’t help myself. Those who seek the truth do so, because they must. For us, it’s not a choice whether or not to seek the truth. We would rather lose everything than remain ignorant.  

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Continue to Part IV: At the Edge of the World

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