Dispatches from the Midwest, Issue 6

Tuesday, 4 March: Afternoon and Evening

Shortly after I moved to California and became a librarian, I was flipping through a PW magazine one day, and something caught my eye: an article on small bookstore chains. It wasn’t the article itself that caught my eye, but rather the picture. To most, it was simply a picture of a bookstore. But to me, I knew it immediately as a seating area of my favorite bookstore, Half-Price Books in Indianapolis. I had spent many happy afternoons there, and although it had been a good long while since I had browsed there, I never forgot.

I still don’t forget. Every time I am in Indy, I go there, to the Half-Price Book Store on 86^th and Ditch. This trip was no exception, and on my way up to see Danielle and Robbie in Noblesville, I stopped in at my old stomping grounds. The layout is different, but the atmosphere the same…as is my propensity to spend more  than I ought!

From Indy, I head north to Anderson, to the Library there. This the Library that my friend Danielle has worked at since we graduated. She’s now the Digital Services Coordinator there, and it looks as though she’s engaged and happy in her work. And then, on the way home after work, as we stop at the liquor store, Danielle mentions she won’t be drinking.

“Why, did Robbie knock you up again?” I ask absently as I search for the cheapest wine labels.

“Yup,” she admits sheepishly, and I squeal with delight.

At their house in Noblesville, a suburb (oh! Suburbs! My secret dirty love for you) Robbie and Danielle and I catch up, and I watch as they play with their son Jace, and then give him a bath and put him to bed before marching down for a dinner of pizza. It’s a quiet, Middle-American evening, and of course I cannot help but to wonder about roads not taken. And that pondering doesn't stop when I go to sign on to the WiFi and see Middle America's quiet acknowledgment of the modern suburban way of life:

So many WiFi networks! Too many WiFi networks!

Too many roads not taken.

At least Middle America still has an honest sense of absurdity.