Highways and Byways: Fairmount

By Maik Strosahl

I’ve discovered I haven’t been consistent.
    While recently watching one of my go-to-sleep movies—movies I enjoy and have seen so many times that they don’t need my focus, so I, in theory, can go to sleep—I found myself researching plot lines and history behind the show. Again not sleeping.
    The movie was Leatherheads, a box office bust inspired by the beginnings of the NFL. A little silly, a lot inaccurate, but a good waste of two hours. I like it.
    While researching the story, I was reminded that the Quad Cities had a team in the origins of the league. The Rock Island Independents actually played in the first game claimed by the NFL in their history, right down the hill from where my family held their reunions.
    It was one of those trivial moments mentioned when people talk of their hometowns and what makes them special. Like telling everybody that I am originally from Moline, Illinois, corporate home of John Deere—that in fact my grandmother was a secretary at the headquarters and my grandfather worked at one of the many factories Deere has in the region.
    And that’s where I discovered my inconsistency.
    You see, when I moved to Indiana, I kept hearing about a town called Fairmount, a town famous for one thing: it was the hometown of one James Dean and is the place where he is buried. His first six years were spent in Grant County before moving to California. After his mother died, his father sent him back to Indiana to live with relatives. He graduated from the local high school in 1949 and returned to the West Coast, becoming a Hollywood icon and the Rebel without a Cause. And every year, the town celebrates their hometown boy with the James Dean Festival bringing thousands to this small Midwest town.
    When I joined the poetry community, it seemed everybody had a romantic poem about James Dean. I went to Fairmount myself—not during the festival—and found it to be a town with not much left to offer. So, I set out to write an anti-romantic poem about him and came up with “Fairmount.”
    Now, I realize that I too am guilty of grasping at ghosts, claiming a heritage I left long ago to anyone who will listen to my long-winded stories.
    This week I am moving back to an everyday life in my home community, where nothing will be as I remembered it when I left and, even though the romance of being home is dead inside of me, I will hang on to the ghost, just as Indiana and Fairmount keeps clinging to theirs.
    Oh, did I mention that the NBA Atlanta Hawks started out in Moline and played in the same arena as my high school games were played? Or how about…?

Fairmount

The boys still lean
on cinderblock walls
to have a smoke
and contemplate life
away from these
vacant buildings,
this dying town
forever grasping
at the ghost
of a rebel.

The girls still walk by,
get a nod from the boys
and giggle
down the cracked sidewalk,
crossing the street
against the signal
without looking.

The boys
follow the girls’ figures
with unfulfilled eyes
as they slowly disappear
around the curve.
In unison,
they stub out their smokes,
flick them into the
empty parking lot
and plan another
Friday night escape
to Marion.

Someday,
they will leave for good,
only remembering this place
in trivial conversations,
where they will brag
about growing up
like James Dean.
_______________

Moristotle · Maik Strosahl reads a poem to help end childhood poverty

Copyright © 2023 by Michael E. (Maik) Strosahl Maik has focused on poetry for over twenty years, during which time he served a term as President of the Poetry Society of Indiana. He relocated to Jefferson City, Missouri, in 2018 and currently co-hosts a writers group there.