Thanks to Vanessa of Petal & Mortar for dropping a note in the prompt box!
Gentility
noun | gen·til·i·ty | \jen-‘ti-lə-tē\
1a : the condition of belonging to the gentry
1b : gentlefolk, gentry
2a (1) : decorum of conduct : courtesy
2a (2) : attitudes or activity marked by false delicacy, prudery, or affectation
2b : superior social status or prestige evidenced by manners, possessions, or mode of life
Signs run up and down the eastern seaboard:
hidden to the average naked eye;
revealed to those knowing the signs already.
Find a map: an honest-to-goodness paper
map stained with ketchup and mustard and grease
and oil and the grit and grime of road trips -
not some satellite-produced, digitally-
rendered version glowing on a glass-like
screen of modern technomancy.
Look at the names of counties and townships
and villages and roads, of lakes and streams
and rivers, of mountains and valleys
and other geographic terrain.
Pick a place at random: throw a dart, choose from a
hat, select a site with a nice-sounding name;
any place will do.
Visit the churchyard cemeteries: the old ones with
family plots marked out by mausoleums or low stone
walls or wrought-iron fences.
Open the phone book: few – if any – of the names
found engraved on these eternal monuments remain.
Drive the roads: the ones with nearly unpronounceable
names or names that don’t sound like they look they
should.
Ask the old timers and no two of them will agree
on how the name should be said.
Look around:
the brick buildings of the once-bustling downtown
with fading painted signage now converted into loft
apartments or the tourist-centered shops one finds
in any small town trying to regenerate before it
succumbs to the appeal and attraction of larger
cities or becomes boarded up all together
the old houses too large for the lots they sit on
surrounded by smaller houses
encroached on by modern buildings
threatened by trailer parks
pulled down by vines and weather
and ravages of time
Take it all in and consider it all together:
the cemeteries,
the names,
the architecture,
the decay,
and the signs all point to one thing:
the long, slow, inevitable decline
and fading away of a once-proud gentility.
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