Thoughts from the South Side

The location of my home tells you where I live, but nothing about my character.

Maybe it’s in every small town, but in my town of 7,500 people there’s an old habit of assigning character by address. I happen to be a southsider.

What I have been told by the locals in the 14 years I have lived in Creston (Iowa) is that the south side is kind of rough, blue-collar, and poor. What I have also gathered is that these labels were learned either at such an early age and or earned so many generations ago that no one has stopped to ask whether they were true in the first place.

Recently, someone I know casually referred to the residents of the southside as “trash.” It caught me off guard because she seems kinder and more intelligent than that, but it’s not the first time someone has reduced us into this singular stereotype.

I’m not going to lie: that comment still irritates me. However, I also sleep really well at night. We don’t have the biggest house, but we also don’t have a mortgage, car loans, or credit card debit that weighs us down. Our property tax could be covered with less than a month’s income. I make enough to travel and not need assistance to raise my child. We have everything we need and enough extra to help others. I am very privileged.

I am not envious of big homes, obsessed with owning all the toys, or keeping up with any Joneses. Some might be, but so many people who appear to have wealth are also the same people who are one paycheck or job loss away from disaster. I take pride that my car is almost a teenager, and that my son, who just finished freshman year, has worn the same coat and carried the same lunch box since 5th grade. I’ve offered an upgrade, but he says, “It’s fine.” Living below our means is what builds wealth.

I know millionaires who clip coupons and people who live in trailers who would offer you the coat off their back and the last of the food in their fridge. Appearance and geography have never been reliable methods of accounting.

Some of the most generous people I know live in homes that would never be considered for a real estate magazine or a candidate for the Chamber’s “Yard of the Month,” but they volunteer to make our community better. And they do it without asking for any kind of recognition. I also know people who somehow equate the expense of their possessions and the aesthetic of their space with virtue. But wealth and goodness aren’t synonyms.

If there is anything my parents have instilled in me that I have passed down to my children, it is this:

Take what you need, but give the rest away.

Modest living is a great life. Yes, enjoy the fruits of your hard work and splurge a little. Take the vacation. Celebrate your success. Go ahead and treat yourself. But never confuse having more with being more, or allow your comfort to become contempt.

In a time when we are increasingly pushed in to categories of red and blue, urban and rural, educated and uneducated, north and south side, I think the greatest act of resistance we can do is to assume less, ask more, and judge slower.

The location of my home tells you where I live, but nothing about my character.

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What I’m reading: The Iowa Writers Collaborative is doing what newspapers rarely can do anymore: move easily from politics to poetry, from sports to sharp human stories, capturing the full, complicated life of the state in one thoughtful sweep. It’s Iowa, reported and reflected by people who live here and pay attention.