I am a bit confused by what happened to my town. When I left, it was a town of about ten thousand, with a weird mix of the young and old. McKenzie Station is home to Hawthorne College, a small, liberal-arts college situated at the center of town. Hawthorne was always in the center of town, but then as you went in any direction away from it, the age and property values seemed to rise, culminating with the city limits. On the edge of town there were gigantic, country homes built by people who got rich because of the Willmettes, or retired college professors who made a bunch of money selling their theses and going on the lecture circuit, or even rich old farmers who sold their land to a corporate farm. Some of the really rich, really old people still had money from when McKenzie Station was a locomotive hub in the late 1800's, or were living off the money from the ancestors who did.
There always seemed to be a general understanding that the hirsute, powerfully liberal, almost always unwashed college kids didn't get involved with anything outside of their little circle in the middle of town, and the older, wiser, probably washed older folks didn't have (or want) anything to do with the college. It seemed like a pleasant balance. The older folks even had a shopping district that the college kids never went to. That section of town was generally just referred to as Old McKenzie Station. It was full of antique shops and fabric stores and stores full of faberge eggs and Hummel figurines.
Now, the college had taken over the town. It seemed that any of the middle class families that still lived in McKenzie Station all had something to do with the college either directly or indirectly. Hawthorne had become a community in and of itself. Old McKenzie Station still had its share of shops designed for the wealthy, but they were becoming more and more extinct. Where it used to go antique shop, antique shop, collecitbles store, upscale clothier, fabric store, collectibles shop it now went head shop, coffee shop, coffee shop, theatrical shop, coffee shop, music store, live music venue, antique store, music venue, art store. It was as if the college had spread out and turned McKenzie Station into a sort of mini-Austin. A place where young people had a lot to do, a place where art and music and free thought flowed a little heavier than in most burgs, and a place where the older residents resented what their town had become.
When I moved, Poop decided it would be a good idea to move with me. I'm not sure why, but he figured he could write wherever he wanted and just fly into LA for various pitch meetings if he really needed to. Plus, his father had sold Willmette Seeds to a Belgian financier and moved to Portugal, so he really wasn't going to have to deal with his father constantly getting him to take a job and a corner office and a shower. Plus, I don't think he could stand to be without me, which is kind of sweet in a gay way.
Poop bought a house just off campus and I moved in with him. He paid straight up for a small ranch house, which made me wonder why exactly we had been paying rent for so long in LA. I guess it wasn't like I payed rent in either place. I still hadn't decided what I wanted to do now that I wasn't going to be an actor, but I figured with the influx of coffee shops and bodegas, there would be a job somewhere for a thrity year old high school graduate who lived with his best friend.
