#80 Demolition Derby 5/09

I love the diversity of my urban neighborhood. I love rubbing shoulders
with my African American neighbors, with immigrants from Southeast Asia and
West Africa, with other white folks who value this kind of community. I
made a point for many years of working with Italian and Irish Catholic moms
across the river, and building relationships in those close-knit ethnic
neighborhoods. It makes me feel safer to not be so separated from people
who are different from me. I can get to know human beings, and have some
protection from the trap of believing that those differences are too great
to be bridged.

Yet here, at the fairgrounds, in a rural county hours away from any big
city, I realize how separated I still remain. It is the day of the
Demolition Derby, an event that many locals look forward to all year. The
road along the fairground is lined with cars and trucks, and the simple
stands dug into the side of the hill are filled. Below us, eight old cars,
windowless and battered beyond belief, are crashing into each other in a
small enclosed space, vying to be the last one running.

I remember my first Demolition Derby, years ago when the boys were young, at
a county fair near where my in-laws live. It was the thrill of illicit
activity that drew me there. My parents—-middle class academic types with
progressive values—-would never have dreamed of lending their support to
such an uncouth spectacle; their disapproval would have been unconditional.
Yet, a theme of my adult life had been engaging with that disapproval,
throwing out any part of it that seemed rooted in fear or ignorance, testing
whether I wanted to claim any of it as my own.

So I came to face down my childhood; I stayed for the excitement. This was
a big, loud, outrageous world I had never even known existed. Just the fact
that people were intentionally ramming into each other took my breath away.
Then cars that looked like they could never move again, wheels askew or off
entirely, back ends demolished, found a way to keep going, roaring in for
another crash. At the end of the mayhem ordinary people stepped through what
used to be the windshields of their mangled machines to accept the applause.
We gasped and cheered. It was a totally memorable family outing. This
time, with some idea of what to expect, and the illicit thrill factor less
prominent, more of my attention was on the crowd.

We share a cabin in this county with six other families and have been coming
up since before the boys were born. We know a lot about the land—-our part
of it in particular. We look forward to reading the county weekly. With
the chatty local columns on who has visited whom, 4H Club news, police
blotter announcements of the occasional broken window or car accident,
photos of proud hunters with their prize turkey or bear, we feel light years
away from the big city.

Reading their news aloud to each other in the comfort of our cabin, however,
is different from joining much of the county in person in their
entertainment of choice. Surrounded by buzz cuts, cigarettes, tattoos,
flags, and cars smashing into each other, I was definitely out of my
element. My parents’ disapproval hovered. Why waste so much energy on such
needless destruction? What was the point? Surely people could find
something more civilized, something quieter to watch.

But if I were taken to a popular local spectacle overseas, I would go with
an attitude of respectful engagement—-and that was the attitude I was
interested in. These were my people, people I didn’t have a chance to rub
shoulders with on a daily basis, but people I needed to know and value if I
would claim them as fellow Americans. These were people who worked in our
forests, farms and factories, loved their children, did their best. I could
get to know them, learn about their lives, their strengths, their dreams,
the things that they--like my parents, like myself--feared and judged. Some
of them I would surely love.

Some might even enjoy other kinds of entertainment as well. But this was
where we were together right now. So I gave thanks for the opportunity to
be among neighbors I don’t always remember I have, and entered into the
spirit of demolition. A high point was watching a little green car in a
heat of compacts. Not much to start with, it got smashed in more and more
till it was unrecognizable as a vehicle. Yet every time we thought it was
done for good, it reached deep and found wholly improbably new life, to not
only move again, but go after other vehicles that still looked a little like
cars. At the end, one of the last three still running, out the windshield
opening came an unassuming young man, and we all gave a great cheer. It was
good to be a witness to such skill, tenacity and enormous will to life, good
to celebrate those qualities with my neighbors.