Bio
I Was Young When I Left Home
Introduction I Was Young When I Left Home Against the Eighties Out of the Nineties My Aughts All You Need to Know The Beginning and the End Further Reading
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John Proctor

I've never even been to Salem. I'm a writer.
Bio
I Was Young When I Left Home
Introduction I Was Young When I Left Home Against the Eighties Out of the Nineties My Aughts All You Need to Know The Beginning and the End Further Reading
More Writing
Blog Scottish Places Personal Essay Critical Work Annotated Playlists Ephemera
John_Brown_Painting.JPG

Against the Eighties: In which I plan my escape

The town of Lawrence, where I grew up, is considered by most as either the redheaded stepchild of Kansas or the state’s only merit. An abolitionist stronghold after the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 with the streets at the center of town named after the New England states the settlers came from, it was burned to the ground in 1863 by a band of mercenaries and thugs led by William Quantrill. After the war, it then secured the University of Kansas (nearby Leavenworth got the federal prison) and is now called variously a progressive bastion and a refuge for aging hippies. Sometime before I started junior high, the Lawrence City Council decided, in the spirit of economic equalization, to bus the residents of lower-income North Lawrence, where I lived, to upper-middle-class Lawrence South Junior High School. My friend Adrian, with whom I used to compare the size of the cockroaches in our respective houses, was permanently scarred. He recently posted on Facebook that he still hates Swatch watches, as that was how the natives separated themselves from the imports. I looked at it differently. That bus commute was my underground railroad.

Newer:Against the Eighties: In which I troll merrilyOlder:Against the Eighties: In which I'm busted
PostedSeptember 18, 2013
AuthorJohn Proctor