After the 2016 election, Van Jones headed out to talk to some of the voters living in the heretofore labeled “flyover states.” Having been seemingly ignored by the Democratic candidate, CNN’s conscientious correspondent was hankering to talk to those people who helped put a Republican businessman reality TV star in the White House. His dispatches, and the efforts of other like-minded journalists, helped explain the unexpected (to me) outcome of that year’s plebiscite.
I thought of this right away when I began to read Terry Winckler’s memoir, Tule Town. The author, a reporter of national recognition and acclaim, takes a job as city scribe for the community newspaper serving the small town of Porterville, California, and right away is plunged into the world of lively local news. He covers the arrival of pay-for-tv porn offered by a mom-and-pop hotel, a traffic sign peppered by shotgun pellets, and a mass shooting.
All the while he shares with us his past and how he ingratiated himself into the local community of engaging oddballs who are now his neighbors. He fishes alongside them, flirts with a bride-to-be, and gets high with a little help from his new friends. He moves into a trailer on the outskirts of this out-skirted locale and gets a dog. His big brother visits.
I read and smiled in sincere recognition of the residents living along the Tule River, for in many ways they are my people, my mom’s family having come here during the Dust Bowl disaster and laid some claim to this marvelous, beautiful, impossible state. Winckler’s story, written in a sassy voice that reminded me of my uncles and aunts—if you’re not being teased you’re not being loved—is fun and important. This is a broad and ridiculous country, where wealth and attention is unevenly dispersed.
The people in Tule Town are not invisible to themselves or each other. They live and work and struggle and parade proudly (look for the Jackass Mail Run), and from the efforts of the author they become more visible to us, the lucky readers. And if Van Jones, or you or me, had the chance to sit with them over coffee or a beer, we’d find what Winckler found, the hope of the world, our shared humanity.
Join the author, Alameda resident Terry Winckler, for his book launch at the Alameda Books Inc. on Park Street on Sunday, August 20. at 2 p.m. Details.
Gene Kahane is the founder of the Foodbank Players, a lifelong teacher, and former Poet Laureate for the City of Alameda. Reach him at [email protected]. His writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Gene-Kahane.
