by George Bowering
EXCERPT
WHEN PEOPLE START raising a fuss about the place being built by Mr. Weatherall, they should have been taking a good look at themselves and the town they were living in. All in all, it was pretty silly, what he was doing, but the complainers were living in Hummer by choice, most of them, and that wasn't exactly the most rational choice in the world. Of course I lived there too, still do. Nobody has ever accused me of having too many smarts.
If you haven't been to Hummer, British Columbia, you haven't been nowhere, as they say. In fact there is some joker who keeps putting up signs reading NOWHERE on the highway at both ends of town, and the village commissioners keep yanking them down. They must have a good pile of them by now. It's kind of normal, and I think most people here like it. So I'd like to impress you with the fact that Mr. Weatherall was not the only loony in town. And Myrna Weatherall was not the only victim of looniness.
In fact, whoever started Hummer probably left the legacy for all the bush-heads who have cropped up since. Hummer is in the middle of the great semi-arid region of the BC Interior. They never stop telling you that, in school and in all the Chamber of Commerce propaganda. In fact, we're officially at the northern tip of the Great Sonoran Desert. You could check it out in the National Geographic. So maybe we were meant to be Mexicans, maybe that's our problem, we are in the wrong place.