THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 16, 1995 TAG: 9509150011
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: Pat Lackey
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
Growing up out in Kansas in the '50s, I lived in Stockton, population about 2,000, then Mankato, population 1,500 or a little less, and finally Belleville, with a whopping 3,000 people and two truck stops.
The sum of all the people in the three towns of my youth was 6,500.
That's roughly 2,000 fewer people than live in Franklin, Va. - a town described in a Sept. 1 Daily Break feature as a ``mecca of boredom.''
A back-hollow West Virginian once said, ``Everyone's a relative.'' Wait, that's not what I meant to write. Albert Einstein said: ``Everything is relative.'' He was right.
Franklin has never struck me as small, because I came from places smaller, even though I've lived the past 11 years in sprawling Virginia Beach and worked on the edge of downtown Norfolk.
When I was growing up, a day trip to a town as big as Franklin was cause for high excitement. Maybe we'd see a four-story building. Part of me feared getting lost.
I cracked up as I read the Daily Break feature on Franklin, well-written by two teenagers seeking boredom and finding it there. The authors captured brilliantly the modern teenagers' genius for being bored - and blaming their surroundings.
The authors seemed bored almost to the point of pain by a town that would have excited me as a youth, and that, in fact, I enjoy visiting today, especially to eat at Fred's restaurant downtown.
One of the writers, John Eischeid, lives in Franklin. The other, Alicia Luma, visited him from her home in Norfolk, hoping she'd more fully appreciate her hometown after visiting a really boring place.
In Franklin, John met Alicia at a McDonald's restaurant that presumably is the same as thousands of other McDonald's around the globe. Why not meet at Fred's? No other city in the whole universe has Fred's.
The teenagers blew a couple of hours on a movie, ``The Bridges of Madison County,'' which probably is showing on 2,000 screens across the land. Why not arrange a tour at the Union Camp paper mill, the area's largest employer and a world leader among paper mills in environmental protection. They could have seen some highly high-tech stuff.
I fondly remember my Boy Scout troop's visit to a Coca-Cola bottling plant, maybe 40 years ago. I can see, in my mind's eye, the bottles whizzing by too fast to count while machines squirted in Coke and stamped on caps. I thought I was witnessing the industrial revolution up close.
Many Franklin residents were appalled and hurt by the two teenagers' piece. Mayor C. Franklin Jester Jr. fired off a letter to the editor that concluded: ``It is really depressing to think of the damage your article has done to the years of effort we have put forth in making our community a good place to live and work.''
A Franklin dentist called this paper's public editor and listed roughly a zillion things to do there.
But surely most readers understand that the authors' quest was not for an understanding of Franklin. It was for boredom. Given their frame of mind, they could have found boredom in a combat zone or Times Square.
Boredom, today, is practically an art form that young people spend long afternoons and nights perfecting.
If I had complained to my parents back in Kansas that I was bored, they'd have looked at me funny and said, ``So?'' My boredom was my problem.
To be truthful, though, I can't recall boredom. Needless to say I was misunderstood and underappreciated, especially by girls and coaches, but I wasn't bored. If all else failed, I had drums to pound on, and my two dogs and I had rabbits to chase.
I don't know this firsthand, but I've read that spiritually enlightened people are in a constant state of amazement. You can bet they are not bored.
Maybe it's fashionable to seem as bored as a vacant-eyed store manikin, but boredom is no fun. Better to go to Franklin to experience Franklin than to be bored.
Adults like me should remember that Alicia and John were writing with tongues partly in cheek, and we should wish all teenagers wrote so well. I agree with their conclusion:
It's not what you do but who you're with and what you make of the situation you find yourself in that makes fun fun. MEMO: Mr. Lackey is a staff writer.
by CNB