NOTE: This is from an old blog of mine. I am presenting them as is, no updates or changes. In this case, I was angry and chose to refer to police officers as ‘pigs.’ I regret that usage now. This one is from August 2013.

Right now I’d rather be in bed, sleeping next to my wife, but sleep is hard to come by tonight. I hopped on Facebook to check things out and I see someone got shot in Rockwell City. Whoever it was, I hope they recover and live a good, long life. Senseless violence always sucks.

When I logged in and saw people gossiping and seemingly EXCITED something had gone down in RC, it turned my stomach. If I was still stuck there, I’d like to think I wouldn’t be like that, but something tells me that is just wishful thinking.

Instead of sleeping I’m thinking about RC and the time I lived there. This is odd only so much as I just don’t think about RC. Occasionally I bullshit with friends about those times, but that’s the only time it comes up in my life. Even then, those conversations aren’t about RC. They’re about people and situations. The location is irrelevant. Rockwell City is irrelevant.

I remember a time when Tod and I were considered the bad element in Rockwell City. Anything and everything bad that happened we were assumed to be the culprits. You would not believe the amount of shit they tried to lay at our feet. Something went wrong in that town, guaranteed one of the local pigs would come rolling up in their squad car when I/We were walking out of Kum & Go and they’d start to ask questions, trying to feel out where we were at such and such time on such and such date. Eventually they figured out Tod and I, regardless if we had actually done a anything or not, were not gonna flip on each other. One of the fucktards with a badge told me that one night, but still they asked their questions, hoping they might get lucky. They never did.

Except for the friends we let come around the house, people *hated* us in that town. Never to our faces, of course. Then, as now, most people, when it really counts, are spineless when it comes to having the courage of their convictions.

I haven’t lived in RC for nearly 20 years. Not 5 years ago, some folks from RC were in one of my ex-SiL’s stores in Ankeny. They mentioned they were from RC. My ex-SiL mentioned I was married to her sister, and they, right there on the floor of her store, proceeded to tell her what a doucehbag I was. They had me in their box and that’s where I was gonna stay. Apparently people aren’t allowed to grow and change. Coming from people that probably spent their entire lives in a town a few thousand people, I guess that’s to be expected.

I am thankful to Rockwell City for two things:

1) That was where I was introduced to Tod’s Grandma Kitty. She was a hell of a woman and I still miss her to this day.

2) It showed me I didn’t want to end up there my whole life. There were a few reasons I wanted to move out of RC, but chief among them was the thought of living there for another 50 years seemed like a slow, drawn out suicide.

I’m not weak-willed, lacking a spine, nor do I require a false god to give my life meaning. I don’t believe in any gods. But if I did, I thank it every fucking day for getting me out of that backwater, end of the road, nowhere shithole.