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'Bettyville' Author George Hodgman On The Fate Of Small-Town Missouri

George Hodgman is a writer and editor who's lived in New York and worked for places like Vanity Fair and Simon & Schuster.

After a childhood spent dreaming of New York and an adulthood caught up in the whirlwind of an intense career, he came home to Missouri to care for his ailing mother. Still, people from the small towns of his youth still think of him as the guy who went to New York.

So when he wrote a memoir, Bettyville, not about the glitzy social engagements in New York but about his childhood in Missouri, that meant something to people.

Just last week, he returned to Madison, Missouri — which had 554 residents as of the 2010 census — and gave a talk in a church basement. He regaled the town with stories about itself.

"When I go back to Madison, I can tell you every single house, who lived there when I was a kid. So I just rolled out this tapestry," he says. "I was able to give them a picture of a place they they loved rather than just a place in decline."

But small town Missouri is in decline — one small Missouri town is even preparing to vote on whether to legally dissolve its own existence —  and Hodgman's noticed.

There's a church Hodgman and his mother, Betty, pass every Wednesday on their way to enjoy a prime rib special. That church closed because it couldn't survive on donations. Every time they pass by, Betty turns her head so she doesn't have to face it. She dreads the day she suspects is coming: the day her own church will face the same reality. 

Hodgman says the schools in Paris, Missouri don't teach foreign languages. Foreign language requirements are part of qualifying to apply to the University of Missouri, so kids who attend high school in Paris are at a disadvantage. They require time in community college to get those qualifications.

Hodgman was born in Madison, Missouri and his family moved to Paris, Missouri when the lumber yard his father ran closed. After the lumber yard closed down, the rest of the town started gradually disappearing.

He left for New York in 1983, and he says the Paris, Missouri he's come home to is less vital than the one he remembers from his youth.

"Columbia seems to have really drained off these towns, because that's where the work is ... People have to find jobs," he says.

When he thinks of the Paris of his childhood, he remembers the shoe store as a busy place where everyone in town came and went. He also remembers a dime store, which had a glass candy case and distinctive smell he'll never forget. 

"And there were always like fifty beauty parlors," he adds.

He says that rural Missouri has a rich culture, one that even locals can overlook.

"It took me going to New York to realize that Missouri was a place. An interesting, unique place."

He pinpoints a Missouri sense of humor, which isn't about jokes or punch lines, but wry observations snuck into conversation in an understated way. He also sees the way old farmers spit as particularly Missourian. 

"Nobody can spit like an old farmer," he says. "I have a lot of very colorful pictures floating through my head ... I think we have to look really closely at what we're losing and why. Growing up is giving up so much you're familiar with. We all have to endure change. Yet, there is some change that I think we could possibly do a  better job of preventing."

People don't make cameos in news stories; the human story is the story, with characters affected by news events, not defined by them. As a columnist and podcaster, I want to acknowledge what it feels like to live through this time in Kansas City, one vantage point at a time. Together, these weekly vignettes form a collage of daily life in Kansas City as it changes in some ways, and stubbornly resists change in others. You can follow me on Twitter @GinaKCUR or email me at gina@kcur.org.
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