I left Mount Carroll hounded by the snow. Although the winter had been mild by Northern standards, the storm that was approaching that day in January felt like the sword of Damocles falling. Jennings Mace, a former literature professor, also comes to mind. Steeped as he was in the tradition of American Southern literature – which is not lacking in it’s use of metaphor and (biblical) allegory – he continually reminded us to avoid what he saw as a cardinal sin among literature students. He warned us against something he called symbol hunting. “Sometimes,” he often remarked in class, “a cigar is JUST a cigar.” He was unswayed by the counter argument that sometimes a cigar is a metaphorical penis, just as he was unconvinced of the phallic the shape of the Washington monument and the titular structure of the Capitol Building. (It was also possible that he was too much of a Southern Gentleman to acknowledge any such thing in public; but, being a natural born contrarian and from the north side of the Ohio River, I tended to reject such social niceties.) I tried to keep his admonishment in mind, however, as I rolled out of town with snow storm within view, following the Chicago-bound car I was in close enough that the rear bumper was kissed with frost.

But even if the weather was not metaphorical, it was certainly appropriate. And on some level, as hung down and low as I felt, I couldn’t help but appreciate that everything behind me was being erased. The car rolled forward and the past was obliterated. Nine years of marriage – my second – was over. It had been for a while, maybe longer than I wanted to admit to. The reasons were still vague. The description of the end was unsatisfactorily reductive. No one saw it coming. At least, that was what they said.

Mount Carroll is a small town. Not more than 1,300 people live in what is considered Mount Carroll proper, and the last census still seemed like a polite over-estimation. County wide, there isn’t more than 16,000 people – which, again, strikes me as generosity on the part of the census takers.

From everything my soon-to-be ex told me her primary concern at that time was that our private life not be splayed out for public display. No doubt her concern was rooted, in part, in the gossipy nature of small towns. If you’ve read Sherwood Anderson or Sinclair Lewis, then you might be inclined to believe that small towns are a microcosm America… that the actions, attitudes, and tendencies you find among the community members and residents (there’s a difference) are simply a smaller reflection of the actions, attitudes, and tendencies of the entire country.

With respect to Sherwood Anderson and Sinclair Lewis, I disagree.

Mount Carroll, like every other small town in America, is not simply a microcosm. A small town in America is an extract of America: all the elements of the region, the people, the country, and all that is good, bad, ugly, beautiful, epic, and miniscule about us is boiled down to a highly concentrated and entirely different – and sometimes incredibly potent – oil.Small towns are not microcosms. To be a microcosm suggests not only a lack of uniqueness, but a sort of simplicity that is simply not accurate. Small town life is slower, yes. There is less congestion, fewer traffic lights, a tendency to not get almost run over jay-walking across Main Street. But to ignore the deep rabbit hole of personal histories, traditions, and petty political natures that can crop up in any small town is not only an insult to the geographic majority of the country, but an underestimation of what people think is important. That two dimwitted aldermen and a former one (still dimwitted) from Mount Carroll have been engaged in an epic character assassination campaign against the mayor probably means nothing to you if you have never been to or have no connection to Mount Carroll. You can claim, with some authority, that it has no direct impact on your life in whatever other place you happen to live. You could argue, with a sense of certitude, that attempting to discredit the City Clerk because she would not join in on the cannibalistic feeding on the mayor’s political and private entrails does nothing to hurt or help your quality of life. But if your insist on believing that such petty, thoughtless pandering does not reflect badly on humanity and the very existence of such rank immaturity doesn’t drag us all down, then you’re not paying attention.

The other part of her concern undoubtably came from the fact that I have always written about my life. This isn’t unique and it’s not like I invented it. Maybe she wanted me to gloss over the less-than-rosy parts of our relationship. It was not long into my second marriage that I figured it out: most women want to be a muse until they actually are one. It’s not their fault: social indoctrinations, Disney movies, moody movie poets who can’t manage a telephone that really, down deep, just wanted to be saved.

But I never wanted to be saved. And as the snow hounded me into Chicago, being driven by a friend of Melissa’s who was probably unsure who he pitied more, I once again thought of Jennings Mace: that wonderful, misguided, and unreasonably optimistic southern gentleman.