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From: GENE ROBERTS 1959 (GENE211) To: NICK JOHNSON 1993 (NJOHNSON3) unread

And Crestview is much better now that you left

I'm sure all the double-wide trailers shine just a little bit brighter, the KKK rallies are just that much more fun, and the teen pregnancy rate is even closer to the relative humidity in my absense.

In fact, I bet since I left, Wal-Mart has hired even more high school kids. There's probably even a couple new Tom Thumbs. If my departure really instigated overall improvement, there might even be more christians than ever and 30% more drunken revelry at the Old Spanish Trail festival.

Along with all of that, there are probably even more people complacent with their dismal surroundings and backwoods ignorance of what the rest of the world is really like. They'll all collectively take a long drag from their twenty-second cigarette of the day, whilst sitting on their porches and lamenting how much they dislike anyone who isn't quite as white as they.

And they're welcome to it.

On the other hand, maybe there are some people who are objective enough to realize that poverty, ignorance, hatred, bigotry, an old Chevy up on blocks in the front yard, and generally living in the early 1900's isn't such a wonderous thing after all, and they'll escape the clutches of the primitive quasi-suburban hell that is Crestview. But I suppose that's all just newfangled in-tel-EKT-u-al talk.

Excuse me for wanting to make something more of myself than a father of 4 at age 20, sitting outdoors on an old rusty wheel off the John Deere I wrecked at the last tractor pull, drinking bad American beer and beating my pregnant wife for not cleaning up the cat vomit to my satisfaction.

Try not to shed any tears for me as I make something real of myself. I'm sure you can find comfort in the knowledge that Crestview is better without me.

Nick