Catherine Mailloux

Writing 205
Linda Godfrey
October 13, 2014
If My Town Was a Sweater
Between the southern tip of Cayuga Lake and the Pennsylvania border, there is a number
of small, traditional looking, run down farming towns. State routes stretch through them and
many drivers whizz through, bustling off to where they go, sometimes with a small face pressing
its nose against the window in the back seat. You might hit a stop light in one of these towns,
like the one where Rt. 96 and Rt. 34 meet. If you didnt know it like I do, youd come to a stop
and wait your turn. But if youre from where Im from, you know that you only ever need to wait
when its rush hour, and the school busses slow down the flow there. The town is called
Spencer, and you would probably never notice it unless you lived there, like I did. The pit of the
town area only takes up about 1 square mile, the residential streets few and short. Its probably
an up to date version of what it was when settled in 1794. 1 small grocery store with 3 aisles, a
bank, a recently defunct gas station, a combination fire station and library (whosever great idea
that was), and a pizza shop make up the main drag. Across the street sits a large pond with a
fountain and fake swans bobbing in it. The rest, over about 45 square miles, rises into hilly lands
where people usually have large plots to themselves, sometimes with a pond, some woods, or
both. Only about 3,000 folks live there, 97% white, 13% under the poverty line. Dairy farms dot
the land, fields of corn sway in the summer time; all turns bleak in the winter. I can say from
experience the culture of this place is textbook, with a side of political blue, bleeding down Rt.
96, from the liberal oasis of Ithaca, the town to the North. My parents became non-generational
transplants from San Francisco perched above the town on the boarder of Danby, making my
relationship to Spencer like a somewhat itchy Christmas sweater; familiar and warm, but never
the right color or proper fit.

When I say non-generational, I mean that Spencer is a town of families. Its that kind of
small. The same names crop up town-wide as cashiers, teachers, political representatives, shopowners, and reverends. I know, as everyone knows, whose cousins married, who is Finnish, who
stole whose cows in 1896, and when she had her last baby. Its the kind of place where if you
make a wake youll be sorted into a group and everyone will act different around you. Youll be
reduced to small talk to avoid any sort of misstep in the cog of the decrepit and old machine
called tradition. I know, as everyone knows, which families are Christians, which ones hunt for
food, and which ones are crazy and dont fit in. Thats where my parents fit in. They dont.
However, the blue line drips down into the red, gun-shootin, beer drinkin southward land for a
reason. A whole bunch of families dont fit in. That might be why we decided to settle there.
Oh, this looks perfectly uncomfortable! Lets rear the little ones here.
Sprinkled into all those agricultural fields and up in the hills, musicians play, herbalists
brew, artists create, and woodmen carve. Hills inherit the names of their settlers, like Dawson
where my mother lives, and the one just to the west, called Fisher. My father cleared the woods
from the overgrown Fisher Settlement where you can still find stone foundations of shacks and
barns. He built something of a dolls house, hearts carved into the dark green shutters.
Meanwhile, my pregnant mother carrying what would become myself, along with a set of 5-yearold twins, stayed on a sheep farm with a friend and some Finns. Much of the land and houses in
Spencer are inhabited by Finnish immigrants after one Finnish son became a real estate broker in
1909 and published his listings in Finnish newspapers nationally. While thats a different story,
its important to mention that winter saunas were definitely a thing, and Christmas was always
accompanied with Yule. My family had an endearing community of friends for solstice holidays;
thats how I made many of my childhood friends. We never feared running through the woods at

night, or jumping into frozen ponds, or a lamb roast over a pit fire. It all seemed fairly normal. It
wasnt until grade school I started to feel like a splinter in smooth skin.
It didnt happen all at once, but I started to notice that I was quite different in the eyes of
those around me. I used to dress some days as a boy, with my hair in a hat and cargo jeans. Other
days I wore pink dresses. In the classroom, I might get distracting by what was outside of the
window rather than on my desk. I had never, and still have never, been to a Christian church
function and didnt know the significance of a bible when I started 2nd grade and we had did a
unit on world religions. There was no doubt about it, I didnt fit the mold of Christian, straight,
and interested in school. When we got to high school, we had bloomed into cliques, like any
other American high school. Being so small, our groups fit more like loosely defined roles. The
jocks, boys and girls who got good grades, played lots of sports, and were simply gorgeous, the
celebs of the halls. They looked like fashionistas of Target and all other horribly boring fabrics.
The hicks who were poorer, liked to party and create trouble, and took pride in dirt, chew, and
guns. The academic crowd cramming in classes, clubs, bands, and volunteering experiences,
some had more money than others, but they didnt compete that way; they fought for GPA
points. And then there was my group. A changing hodge-podge of people, looking around my
lunch table, at one point or the other, I saw gamers, obnoxious socially awkward kids, a
homeschooled religious freak, gays, goths, hoodlums, druggies, painters, crafty hipsters, and new
kids. We always had the new kids sit with us until they found their group. Many stayed.
Everyone knew that in class, one of my group was bound to challenge the ideas taught, to
be told to stop doodling and pay attention, and for gods sake please stop making innuendos out
of the lecture. People called us hall scum, gym cutters, and pranksters. Sometimes we protested
things that were unjust; sometimes we protested things to distract the institution from its normal

functions. One time we covered the lunchroom ceiling with smashed bananas. We had an
undeniable grit. The ones you love to hate, my group sometimes called itself the misfits, after the
punk band so dear to many of us. We stood out in our group from other groups because we all
agreed on one thing: People shouldnt agree on anything. I believe the reason a lot of us got
along because of our general opposition to what seemed normal. Cant you just feel the lunacy in
these words? Thats the point. We wanted to represent the flip side. Our environment was
starving us of alternative views and lifestyles, so when we found others groping for an outlet, we
stuck like glue.
It wasnt always the most comfortable, but heres the thing. Most people got along with
us. It wasnt the type of deal where my friends and I would get invited to outings often, but
sometimes wed have bonfires or parties with other groups. Anyone could generally put on
different groups hats and mingle without too much fear. It wasnt hard to agree to disagree at
Spencer High, but it would limit the closeness of the people you interacted with. For instance,
being gay would certainly put you at the sidelines at the dance, youre mere presence might
make people uncomfortable. You might even get shoved around or beat up. But in school, youd
likely have support. If someone slurred something at you, which would certainly happen,
someone you didnt talk too much would probably back you up. Its true, the hallways could be
cold and cutthroat, but there were almost equal amounts of rapport and solidarity. It was
impossible to not be a part of your classmates lives, given an average grade size of about 80. In
overheard conversations, the ease of getting the beef on the last parental brawl, awards won,
records broke, deaths, hooks ups, break ups, and the whole nine was inescapable. In some sort of
confusing common-sense, even though youths at Spencer High lived in an isolating way that
separated us by class or family history, closeness grew anyway simply because we lived in such

close proximity and interacted with so few other individuals on the day-to-day. Communal
moods were not an option, but a mere reality.
The pockets of parents that raised free-thinking weirdos got the best of both worlds. They
had a short drive to a groovy college town vending local foodstuffs on one hand, while they
enjoyed somewhat lonely, off-the-grid wood fire stoves in the other. The environment invited the
perfect challenge course for those growing up there, how to be comfortable not fitting in. At the
same time, parents at the PTA learned that theyre kids would have to learn to be okay with
people that acted and lived differently than they do. I learned that if you arent fitting in, youre
helping keep the strange alive. This goes way beyond preserving individuality, for living this
way is a lesson in tolerance. And its a two way street. Challenge others to love you for being
different and vice versa, and find that normalcy can go as far as its allowed to.
I wouldnt call the town progressive by any means, but it has elements of its precursor
called acceptance. At its core, I see Spencer as a white aging overweight man. He has smoked
every day since he was 8, he goes to church but drinks away his nights, only to rise at the crack
of dawn to drink black coffee and move over the fields in a gas powered noise maker. He wont
eat dinner with the vegetable farmers down the street, but will haul the snow from their driveway
in exchange to hunt in their wood lands come next fall. He is quirky yet serious, aggressive yet
quiet, set in his ways with a streak of something different. All in all, you can count on the fact
that he will likely act the same way each and every time, even if it isnt what you might expect.
I used to be extraordinarily shy, and at times a little too imaginative. I spent the years in
Spencer chasing artificial potentials, and counting the days until I could leave. I didnt like being
the punchline of homophobic and sexist jokes. My best friend and I ruled over our lives as
queens against the grain, but the way that you like it. Many nights her and I would leave my

house and walk down the dark streets under the stars, no streetlamps, and meet other kids of the
neighborhood, at times meeting miles from home. Wed stay up all night, drinking in fields
and yelling and singing while the boys played guitar. Having nowhere to go allowed us to build
relationships in a unique way because social constructs were often built from the ground up.
Growing up in Spencer allows the freedom to develop ones own norms, for better or worse. This
was the kind of town were many girls were supported by friends and family in choosing
pregnancy at 15, or teachers would date students right after graduation, and several other moral
lines would blur over time, despite its traditional and boring facade.
Yet as I grew into a young lady, I started crave an environment that had already built. I
wanted to plug into a new community that already had values and priorities and with some kind
of code of courtesy. I wanted to see new faces every day and meet people I hadnt known since
the age of 6. I ended up here in Ithaca, where my mother went to grad school, Friscos little
sister, in order to remain connected to the land that I grew with under me. The prospect of a city
feels unattractive because I know that Ill have to eat food grown several miles away instead of
in my yard. Being connected to a place is jumping naked into a January pond with 5 naked
friends. And the people here have seen every part of my heart too; the ugly, the sad, the growth,
the triumph. For these reasons, Ill always call this place home and carry with me the imprints it
left on me. I know that Ill travel far and wide, but always to return with more lines on my face,
more memories crammed into my timeline, only to stroll down the main drag where Mr. Bailey
is riding his bike around town, the Vennel boys playing ball at the courts, and a pond full of
algae. No matter where I am, I can put on the old itchy Christmas sweater; disliking its painfully
awkward shade and texture, while reveling in how lovely Ive felt in it in past times.