in which it turns out you can go home again

here i am, in the good old south, where my own personal spouse has gotten a shiny job.  this is just the regular south, as opposed to the deep south, like mississippi, or the caribbean south, like new orleans, or the cosmopolitan south, like miami, etc., etc.  we are in the blue ridge mountains, close to many different states,  at a big football school where there was a terrible tragedy last year.  got it yet?  

in any case, the town, which i will call whitesville, revolves around the university, and is nearly identical to the town that revolved around the university where both me and m.o.p.s. went to graduate school.  except, of course, it is in the south, and so there are more super crappy houses and super old cars,* as well as the occasional confederate flag on a pickup here or there.**  but seriously, this town exists in the same universe, with the same crappy mexican bar/restaurant where students get gonorrhea, the same indian restaurant, the same low mountains that attract outdoor enthusiasts, the same uncomfortably placed trailer park from leftover zoning laws, the same giant and brand new shopping complex, the same one dark bar that attract grad students and professors, the same football cultists, the same problems of retention for young professors (!), the same fancy restaurant near campus where faculty take visitors, the same town-and-gown issues, the same lovely and well-maintained campus, the same rural surroundings.  it's so weird and uncanny.  i even think there are doppelgangers of people in our grad school town here.  whitesville is also expanding very rapidly, as our former town did, i think largely because of the football fans ageing and having money.  anyway, having become somewhat familiar with several different regions in the U.S. in my years, I have become aware of the huge differences in the quantity and quality of wealth, poverty, education and racism between locations, but here those things match up almost perfectly with our former grad school town.

*which by the way, i finally just put together is largely because of the mild mild weather.  when there's no hurricanes or snow storms, and the temp is always between 30 and 80, why bother putting up anything besides what will be good enough?  and of course cars don't have salt and don't corrode and so there it is.  lots of old but totally serviceable crap.

**nothing makes me feel more like a liberal yankee snob.  i mean, come on.