In Another America

"20070303 12 Spring, Grove and Fulton, Elgin, Illinois" by davidwilson1949 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Life in a small town is very different from life in the city, as member Daniel Nardini learned for himself.

Over 20 years ago, I had moved to a part of northwest Illinois near the Mississippi River. It is a very rural area, with maybe 27 people per square mile.

But this alone is not the greatest shock that I encountered here. One of the first things I did was inquire whether I could work on any of the local newspapers. Since I had worked at Lawndale News for 20 years in Cicero, Illinois (a small city next to Chicago), it should have been no problem getting a job writing for a rural local newspaper.

Or so I thought. I applied to three newspapers, only to be turned down every time. Why? I was given no answer.

I learned sometime later that all three newspapers had hired local boys who were half my age. They had no education higher than high school, and this was their first job. They were hired because the editors who ran these newspapers knew who their parents were.

I would come across this all the time and everywhere here. You got a job, a house, a business, and even a political office because people know you, your family, and your ancestry. There have been people living in this area of The Prairie State for 175 to 200 years, and who you are in this place is defined by your family, your place in the class hierarchy, and everything people know about you.

The local police chief, whom I know very well, knows everybody in town. He knows their kids, he knows their families, he knows the good kids and the not so good ones, and he knows what they might do. There are 500 people living where I am, and the police chief knows the kids and their parents by their first names. 

And everybody knows their place in this local society. They know if they were part of a middle-class family, or a poor farmhand family. The ones in the "well-to-do" families hold control of the local government and business community. They serve as judges, community leaders, local business entrepreneurs, the police, and editors of the newspapers.

Everyone else served as the farmhands, the local farmers, the car mechanics, the local factory workers, etc. Some might make money and advance in terms of social class, but the class lines are pretty much fixed. They have been this way for generations.

So who you are is what family you were born into, what your family did, and whether you were "raised right" or not. People here will respect you if you try to be good and know your place. 

What job you will have and where you will live is determined by who you know, and if you have a skill that is useful. But even if you do not have a skill, you can get work if people know you. And this is where my problem starts.

I was not born and raised in this region of the state. Therefore, I was never a member of a family they know, and my background remains now, as when I moved here, mysterious to them. How do they know I am who I say I am?

Because no one knows who I am, I have no place in their society, no place in the local class structure, and no one wants to hire an "unknown quantity." I learned to my chagrin that merit, job skill experience and higher education have little to no meaning to the people here if they do not know you.

Despite this handicap, I was able to get work at the Fulton Journal, one of the better known local weekly newspapers here. This newspaper, going back to 1854, covers local news in Fulton, Illinois, a well-known Mississippi River town.

I was hired by a very young lady named Olivia (she was only 23 years old at the time). She had become editor of the newspaper just months before, and she desperately needed a news correspondent to cover local news because her other one had been hospitalized and could no longer do the job. The moment I applied, I was immediately hired. She desperately needed someone, anyone, to take the job. The job worked great for me, but nobody locally could figure out how I got this job because I have "no connection" to this area.

I have lived in this area for 20 years, but even with this length of time I am still not considered a "local" resident. There were other people like me from the Chicago area who had moved out to here, but after less than ten years they all moved back. They found this place too backward.

The place is what it is because for the most part the state politicians have neglected this region for decades. The local people have been left to their own devices to survive as best they can. They are in so many cases deathly suspicious of "outsiders" because more often than not they have been shafted.

The local people have built a stable yet closed society with little to no crime, a safe and clean environment where their children can play all day, and where justice is meted out quickly for those who get out of line. Even though I am still an outsider, they have at least finally accepted that I am not a threat. 

Daniel Nardini spent 22 years as a newspaper correspondent for Lawndale News and The Fulton Journal. He has published six books, including his eyewitness account of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, The Day China Cried. He is listed as an Illinois author in the Illinois Center for the Book.

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The Modern Whig Institute is a 501(c)(3) civic research and education foundation dedicated to the fundamental American principles of representative government, ordered liberty, capitalism, due process and the rule of law.

Opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Institute or its members.