Hometown Lost
Why I can never go to Marshalltown again

I grew up in Marshalltown, Iowa, and moved away in the 1990s. Of course, I can and will return to the geographic location. Family and friends are there, along with many other good people, and I occasionally visit. 

But I can never return to the Marshalltown of my youth. It's gone. A large part of that is because the town has changed, and not in positive ways. 

In the 1960s and 1970s, my maternal grandparents owned a small home in a sedate neighborhood that was populated mostly by families and older residents. People there maintained backyard vegetable gardens punctuated by ornate miniature windmills. Painted, wooden storm cellar doors were angled off their modest homes. And flamingo statues stood vigil on their painstakingly-manicured front lawns.

Today, I'm told, that neighborhood is no longer quiet, well-maintained, or crime free. In fact, a few years ago, I heard of a horrific, drug trafficking-related murder in Marshalltown. Identifying fingerprints and tattoos were sawed from the dismembered corpse, and its parts stuffed into garbage bags.

I remember thinking that my grandparents wouldn't recognize the humble town they'd so cherished, and whose affairs they daily followed via local newspaper and radio.

For years, I'd fantasized buying my childhood home and restoring it. But I'm told today that the old neighborhood has become so foul and dangerous as to no longer be viable.

Grisly devolution isn't particular to Marshalltown, of course. Similar stories can be found in many American regions, including here in Waterloo, Iowa.

So, it is heartening that President Trump has urged the nation's leaders to unite against the meth and opiod epidemics, as well as the scourge of illegal immigration that has so ravaged small towns like Marshalltown.

But astoundingly, influential persons who should be wiser and more caring of actual citizens oppose efforts to safeguard us, uphold federal laws, and restore American towns and cities to their former soundness. Marshalltown civic figures seemingly miss no opportunity to champion illegal immigration, despite its corrosive economic, legal, and cultural effects. 

(A high school friend who has remained in Marshalltown once lamented to me "we've practically become a Sanctuary City.")

As noted earlier, good people still live in Marshalltown, ones who who respect traditions, standards, and laws. But theirs seems to be a fading voice.

Perhaps not all in my Hometown Lost was as gladful as I choose to recall. Passing years may have softened in my memory some harsher aspects. And, as is typical of youth, I rebelled against established phenomena whose familiarity I only now appreciate, recognize to be of singular worth, and long to revisit.

You'll never miss your water, 'til the well runs dry
- "Rocky Road Blues" Bill Monroe