By now you’ve probably heard more than you ever cared to about Springfield, Ohio. Thanks to the nonsense of Messrs. Trump and Vance, my hometown is receiving the 15 minutes of fame it didn’t ask for and doesn’t deserve. Their absurd, lurid fictions nullify so much about what makes Springfield special while cheapening the people who live there, flattening them into simple, small-town punchlines.
I’m from Springfield—third generation. I grew up in Springfield. Played backyard football in Springfield with my future groomsman. I went to Springfield North High School (Go, Panthers!) where I ran cross-country with spirited mediocrity and sat in class with kids whose parents were doctors, lawyers, farmers, and line workers. I knew one kid whose family raised pigs and another whose dad fenced stolen goods. I watched Robocop in the current mayor’s basement. Or maybe it was Predator.
I live in Los Angeles now, where I write children’s books. My first novel, A Drop of Hope, is a love letter to Springfield and the people in it. Like many love letters, it comes with its share of heartbreak. I won’t pretend that Springfield doesn’t have its problems or struggles. But it’s certainly not the ridiculous, George Miller hellscape that certain idiots would have you believe.
Springfield is a Harvester town and a college town. It’s an upbeat John Mellencamp song and a melancholy Bruce Springsteen song. And sometimes it’s an episode of The Twilight Zone (Rod Serling, in fact, went to college down the road, in Yellow Springs). It’s a town in which any where in it you go, you’re apt to run into somebody you know. Results may vary on that one.
It’s a town that has seen better days and, maybe, it will see them again. Because it’s a town that doesn’t give up.
It’s a town of stories.
That last one is my favorite. Because people from Springfield, they can tell a story. They just can. Maybe it’s something in the water. Maybe it’s because there isn’t much else to do (cow tipping is barely fun just the one time). Whatever the reason, I sincerely believe that a boring person from Springfield can tell a story better than most people in Hollywood who get paid for it.
Oddly, what might bother me the most about all this cat-eating slander is how it disparages the great storytelling tradition of my hometown. Because it’s not even a story. At best, it’s the promise of a story.
They’re eating the cats!
Go on . . .
But that’s it. They don’t tell a story; they don’t even try. Because stories connect people. And they sure don’t want that to happen.
So, to defend the honor of my hometown, I’m going to make good on this broken promise. I’m going to tell you an honest-to-God true story about someone eating a cat in Springfield, Ohio.
I had a history teacher I’ll call Mr. Ambrose. Imagine if someone left Tommy Lee Jones out in the sun for 20 years and then took away his comb—now you have a pretty good mental picture of Mr. Ambrose. Most days, he would stand behind a bulky podium made of sheet metal as he read off a small stack of notecards that he held in hands that were thick and calloused from driving railroad spikes in his youth.
Today, however, he had something on his mind.
“Who here has ever eaten rabbit?” he asked the class in a voice with more gravel than a Tom Waits album.
Kids who either lived in or had kin in the country shrugged and nodded. Some others shook their heads but didn’t find the question off-putting. The rest of us traded confused glances of Wait, is that even legal?
“There’s good eatin’ on a rabbit,” Mr. Ambrose continued. Then he added, somewhat ominously, “long as it’s your rabbit.”
Our teacher proceeded to tell us how one of his neighbors had been stealing the rabbits he’d rightfully caught, skinned, and hung off his back porch. Mr. Ambrose had a hunch which neighbor was stealing the rabbits, but he couldn’t prove it. The neighbor, it seemed, enjoyed that almost as much as free rabbit meat.
This vexed Mr. Ambrose to no end.
That is, until one day Mr. Ambrose found a dead cat in one of his rabbit traps. Now to him, this was the moral compass of the universe setting things back to due north. So, he brought the dead cat home, skinned it, and hung it off his back porch for his neighbor to pinch.
Some days later, the neighbor, thinking he’d again pulled one over on Mr. Ambrose, bragged openly about how his wife had recently made him the best rabbit stew he’d ever tasted.
Then he asked if anyone had happened to see his wife’s cat around anywhere.
Mr. Ambrose stopped there, and like an agrarian Aesop, repeated the moral of his story.
“Good eatin’ on a rabbit. Long as it’s your rabbit.”
To this day, if I’m back in Springfield and I run into someone from Mr. Ambrose’s class, there’s a decent enough chance that if I say, “Good eatin’ on a rabbit . . .” they’ll respond, “long as it’s your rabbit.”
Because that’s what any good story does, it connects people.
That is Springfield, Ohio. And I want my rabbit back.