My Hometown

I’m from the front pew of a wooden white church.
A courthouse clock that still don’t work.
Where a man’s word means everything.
Where moms and dads were high school flames,
Gave their children grandmother’s maiden names.
Yes it may not sound like much,
But it’s where I’m from.

Where the quarterback dates the homecoming queen.
The truck’s a Ford and the tractor’s green.
And Amazing Grace is what we sing. 
There’s a county fair every fall,
And your friends are there no matter when you call.
It may not sound like much,
But it’s where I’m from.

Where I’m From – Jason Michael Carroll

…..

I was born and raised in Los Angeles. Not exactly the town described in the Jason Michael Carroll song above. And, I was born in the city of Los Angeles, not the “Los Angeles area.” I went to 3rd-6th grade in an LA Unified District Public School and graduated from High School in North Hollywood. I received my undergraduate degree at UCLA in Los Angeles and got my master’s degree from USC in Los Angeles. This was all in the 50s, 60s and early 70s. LA was the 3rd largest city in America then. 

It is a very different place now. 

I walked, usually by myself, to that LA Unified school. I could ride my bike along the streets to where the ice cream shop, toy store and “general store” were located. Families lived there for decades. We lived in a house my grandfather had built. So did the girl I married (and to whom I am still married), who lived directly across the street from me. We went to the Rose Bowl a number of years and always speculated on how many people from the rest of the country would move to LA as a result of seeing a beautiful January day in Pasadena on TV. I never thought I would leave. Why would I want to?

Now, I don’t ever want to go back, even to visit. I don’t even recognize Los Angeles today. Adults who live where I grew up won’t even walk in front of their houses for fear of a drive-by mugging on the same streets where I walked alone as an 8-year-old without worry. In the Neil Diamond song “I am, I said” Neil says about LA “the feeling is laid back…palm trees grow and rents are low”. Palm trees do still grow there. His other two descriptions are not even close to being the case now as road rage and unaffordable housing are the norm. 

I feel as though the place I grew up is now gone. Completely and utterly destroyed as much as if it had been bombed. It was not destroyed in war, however. It was destroyed by the culture, politics and economics of the left. No tanks were necessary to obliterate what once was and replace it with domination and control by an authoritarian leftist culture. I realize I’m not alone here. Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco and increasingly Seattle and Portland are all cities from which long time and multi-generational families are fleeing in search of a better life. Few long to move to LA during the Rose Bowl anymore. Now, people are clamoring to get out. 

All the while the Cabal of media, entertainment and big tech act like the crime and deficits and high costs are all no problem and merely go on as though nothing is wrong because to admit that would be to challenge their own deeply held leftist beliefs. 

My mother who raised me in Los Angeles, was herself born in a little Kansas town called Cottonwood Falls. Today it has a population of about 930 people. It was much larger when she was born in 1914. Like many small towns across America, it withered for decades and nearly died. Many neighboring towns did die off, as farmer’s kids moved to the city and didn’t come back. There were no jobs for them to come back to anyway. But the photos I have of the main street (Broadway) in Cottonwood Falls in the 1920s don’t look much different than a photo today. There’s no movie theater anymore showing silent films, but the building is still there. 

America’s cities, and its coastal states, have long been the engine of America’s economy, education and innovation. That is still true to a large extent today. But things are changing. The homelessness, filth, crime, corruption and leftist culture of many of America’s cities are not conducive to business, science and innovation. You are seeing new centers of these things crop up in Texas, Alabama, Colorado, Tennessee and hopefully Kansas just to name a few. 

But small town America has always been this country’s soul. And it still is. A country with money but no soul is like a person with those same characteristics. They are an empty and vacuous vessel. 

I am planning to spend an increasing amount of time in that little town in the Flint Hills of Kansas. Forty years ago, rural towns were isolated from most of what was going on. In some cases, you had no TV at all, for example. But today, you have satellite TV, broadband internet, and your favorite streaming service. You can have anything from anywhere delivered to your door by the daily UPS and Fed-Ex trucks. You can get gourmet meals delivered too. And there is no crime, no homelessness, little corruption and you can put your kids in the public school because the teachers are your neighbors. You can work remotely for any number of companies worldwide. If we are going to start returning manufacturing to the U.S. as part of securing supply chains, an area like this is a good place to do that. The workforce is honest and hardworking and the cost of doing business in everything from electricity rates to property costs are low. 

I may be seeing something that is farther in the future than I think. But these small and medium sized towns in America’s red state heartland have a lot to offer. More than just low taxes and less regulation and the right to keep and bear arms. But a better, more fulfilling life in a culture more similar to that which built America than the culture of leftism that is trying to tear it asunder. 

You will hear more from me over the next year or so about Cottonwood Falls, Kansas and its neighboring areas. Not because I think this is the best place there is. But because it is like so many other places in this great country that can lead us back. 

So, what is my hometown? My heart says it’s that little town in the Flint Hills. It’s definitely not where I was born.

Just like the Jason Michael Carroll country song with which I began this writing, a man’s word means everything in that part of Kansas. I have been buying some land and making some leases, all with handshakes. That’s all you need. 

And the courthouse clock in Cottonwood Falls. It works!

I remain respectfully,
Congressman John Campbell
Drive fast & Live free