The question isn't, can you go home again? The question is, do you want to? From the day he left the small town he grew up in, David thought he did. He left Allendale, South Carolina for Princeton, then law school. I really see myself as being a black Matlock or something like that. I mean, I'm into that idea. I'm into the idea of being the lawyer in town. Just recently, he was offered a job with a country lawyer back home. And so he and his wife have to decide, what are they going to do? She grew up on a farm outside Allendale. They were childhood sweethearts. And deciding where to go, it's the biggest question in their marriage. I try to conceptualize myself. Could I really live in a community that small? Could I live in a town with two traffic lights? And I could not see it. I could not visualize it. And I think that only a couple of weeks ago, I told David that I could definitely never live in a town like Allendale. That's pretty strong language, Lee. In a sense, their dispute comes down to a difference over how they view a central fact of small town life, that feeling that comes when you know everybody knows you and knows your business. He likes that feeling. People knowing your business or wanting to know your business, I mean, it sounds like a horrible thing. But that, whatever, nosiness, in some respects, keeps you in line. People knowing that my car was potentially parked at Letta's house at a time that it shouldn't have been keeps me in line. I mean, so you don't do that. You don't do the things that you know the neighbor next door can report back to your mom. You just have to be a good boy. And that's the way that I see myself in Allendale. I'm Allendale's little, good boy. And I think that I always bucked against being a good girl. I mean, don't get me wrong, I was not a mischievous child. I didn't have any discipline problems. But I think that, at a very early age, I was fiercely an individualist. And I think that, when you want to take stake-out, and behave in your own way, and have a personality that may not be assimilated to everyone else's, it's just painful in a small town, because it sticks out. Her views on abortion and race relations didn't square with the prevalent opinions in Allendale. The speech she gave as high school valedictorian, a speech critical of the school system, was a minor town scandal. People apparently talked about it for months. And so, for now, they're stuck living in Manhattan, trying to decide if they see small town life as cozy or as claustrophobic. Well, from WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you a variety of stories on that theme. Today's program, Small Towns, the claustrophobia and freedom and yearning for small towns. Act One, Country Mouse, City Mouse, a family moves from a tiny town to the big city, or what seems to them, anyway, like the big city. Act Two, a get-together of single farmers who are trying to get other farmers to stay in rural America by marrying them. Act three-- Three Chicago teenagers make the argument that the public housing project that they live in, a high rise building here in one of the biggest cities in the country, is actually a small town. Stay with us. Act one-- City Mouse, Country Mouse. One of the classic American stories is the migration from small town to big city, and all the personal growth, and dangers, and freedom that happen when you make that move. Our contributing editor, Sarah Vowell, went through that change yourself, with her family, but with one small catch. The big city that her family moved to wasn't New York, or Los Angeles, or Boston. It was Bozeman, Montana, population 30,000. Which sounds like a small town to anybody who lives in a city, but it was, in fact, 30 times larger than Braggs, Oklahoma where they started. We were hopeful immigrants from small town Oklahoma who set out for a better life in small-town Montana and became new people. Where else but America can an okra-eating, twang-talking, God-fearing, good girl like me be given the opportunity to turn into the liquored-up, opinion-mongering heathen I am today? My twin sister and I were born Okies in Muskogee, because that's where the nearest hospital was. But we lived in Braggs, a dusty little Muskogee county nowhere, home to a 1,000 people, four churches, one school, a couple of stores, and a much vilified bar called The Little Oklahoma. Our mother took us to Braggs' Pentecostal church three times a week, where I got saved, got baptized, and prayed with her and the others in the ladies prayer meeting for The Little Oklahoma to be shut down. And I sang, sang in church, sang at home, sang along with my transistor radio to the Tulsa country station. I sang for God, because I knew God was listening. When I was six, I got a tape recorder for Christmas. And here's the first song I sang into it. [SINGING] I will be a helper at home, at church, at school. I will be a helper, obeying Bible rules. When there's work for me to do, I'll do it happily. I will be a helper to everyone I see. I hate that song more than any other. Every time it pops into my head, I shiver, because it's a spooky reminder of the docile woman I might have become had I stayed in that town, in that church, where there are so many rules and so many eyes upon you. Not to mention the fact that God himself ran the biggest stake-out of them all, and you knew that, come Judgment Day, you'd account for every last slip your preacher and his minions had somehow missed. Small towns are always hotbeds of surveillance, but when you add fundamentalist religion to the mix, the things you can't do outnumber the things you can. Sex is bad. Drinking's bad. Smoking's bad. Women standing up to their husbands is bad. Questioning scripture is bad. Not attending church is bad. Cussing is pretty damn bad. And, as my father would soon find out, moving away is really, really bad. If you ask him why we left Braggs and moved to Bozeman-- and believe me, my mother's family has never stopped asking-- he'll launch into this whole song and dance about his health. One of the main deals was my asthma, health problems. Now, Dad, you've been giving us the old, health line for years. Yeah, that was one of the reasons for leaving there. Yeah, what was the real reason? The real reason, I wanted out of there. Why? Go somewhere that was a lot cooler, and-- And any other reasons? I mean, what, specifically-- The hunting is real good here. Dad, you're not answering the question. Tell me what you hated about Oklahoma. Mainly, kind of the heat in the summertime. My dad's being diplomatic. No matter how many times I reassured him that this radio program is not on any stations in Oklahoma, and that no one in our family would listen to it if it were, he still didn't want to come right out and say why he wanted to leave Oklahoma. It was to get away from family, his and my mother's. They were nosy, and they were everywhere. Every summer, itching to get away from them and Braggs, he'd drive us to the Rockies. Oh, look at the pretty mountains, Mom would say. That Old Faithful sure is something. My mother, my sister, and I just thought we were on vacation. Turns out Dad was scouting out an escape route. He still wanted to live in a small town. It's just that he wanted to live in a small town where he didn't know anyone. So he picked Bozeman. It was the right size, surrounded by gorgeous mountains, and best of all, had the vital statistics he was after-- Vowell family, 4, acquaintances 0. Arriving in Bozeman at the age of 11, I felt like we had just moved to Paris, a town of culture and ideas, of libraries, and movie theaters, and record stores. I still celebrate the first day we got there, June 5, as a birthday of sorts. Bozeman had miles and miles of cement for us to rollerskate around on, instead of the stunted 50-foot strip of sidewalk in our Braggs backyard. My sister Amy remembers pulling into town. I remember coming over the pass, and we'd been driving through the mountains or whatever, and it seemed really, super huge. It was weird being around so much concrete and just organization. We were just set loose out in the world, too. Where, in Oklahoma, we could wander around, but it was always like in the front pasture, or the back woods, or walk over to our pa's house or something. None of this like, just cruise around a whole town. And it kind of freaked us out. But it was exciting, too. It was. One of the things I liked about living in Bozeman was that there was a library. Remember in Braggs, the whole school, wasn't it like a shelf with some books on it for 12 grades of people? And Bozeman had separate buildings that were libraries, and how fun that was to just go and look at all the books we wanted. In Bozeman, I thrived, my sister blossomed, my father found his thrill, but the move was hard on my mom. She missed her epic family. The thing that made my father squirm about small town life, being surrounded by people who know you, was exactly what she'd loved about it. Her family is huge and hilarious, with big mouths and bigger hearts. And up north, she missed her fiery, southern-style church. There weren't any other Pentecostals in Bozeman, so we ended up at the most frigid, watered-down, nondenominational Protestant house of worship possible. We were used to this wrathful, angry, Old Testament Creator. And sitting through week after week of God is love got pretty bland. And after a few years, our church visits tapered off, which was fine by me. Mom, on the other hand, had to deal with not only her own loss of spiritual guidance and community, she had to sit by and watch her children losing Christian steam. Well, let's talk about something we generally avoid talking about. Do you think-- Well, as you know, at some point, I basically lost my faith and never got it back. Is that a regret of yours? Do you think if we had stayed in Oklahoma, I would still be right there by your side at church with you? That's interesting, Sarah, because I do think about that a lot. I used to just really think, especially when I found out that you had lost your faith, I thought, if we would have stayed in Oklahoma, this wouldn't have happened to Sarah. I feel really guilty and really bad that we moved to Montana, and Sarah has lost this. But over the years, as I've seen you grow up and realize and know what kind of person you are, I'm wondering, even in Oklahoma, would you have began to search in different areas and maybe doubt? Are you calling me a bad seed, Mom? No, no. I'm not. No, I'm not. I'm not. I love you very much, and I'm very proud of the person you are, and that's your choice. But it don't keep me from praying every night that you'll return to your faith, Sarah. Amy told me-- I don't remember this-- but Amy said that once, when we were about 13 or so, when we were in Bozeman, you sat us down, and you asked us if we wanted to go back to Braggs. And I would assume the reason for that is, that if we would have said yes, because you obviously wanted to go back, then we would have ganged up on dad or something. Do you remember that? Yes, I do remember that. Were you really? How was it for you when we said we didn't want to go back? Oh, I was totally devastated. Yes, I remember that very well. I think you were pretty quiet. And it was really neat what Amy said to me. She said, Momma, we understand that you're very unhappy here, and that you miss home, and if you feel that you need to go back, that's OK with Sarah and I. But we want to stay here. And I looked at you, and I said, do you want to stay here, Sarah? And you said, yes, I do. And so, I mean, I immediately wanted to burst into tears, but I thought, I need to compose myself here. And later that night, as I thought about it, I guess it was a real turning point for me, actually, to start being happy here in Bozeman. Because I thought, OK, I can't leave my children, so I better get it together. Because-- and I know you really don't like to hear me say this, Sarah-- because you and Amy have been and are the most important thing in my life. And so there's no way I could have ever gone away and left you. There's so much mother-daughter history in the way my Mom says, I know you don't like hearing me say this, because she knows I don't like hearing her say that I'm the most important thing in her life sometimes because of the guilt that involves. And before I started working on this story, I'd always felt badly about the way she sacrificed her happiness for mine. I grew up believing she would've been better off in her little Oklahoma hometown, surrounded by family, embraced by the church. But I found out I was wrong. Now, do you still want to go back to Oklahoma? Oh, no. No, I could never live in Oklahoma again. Why not? I really think that I've changed too much, Sarah. I mean, I love my brothers back there, dearly, and my best friend, Cathy, and there's lots of wonderful people that I just adore and love so much back there, but I do feel that I've changed so much in the 15 years that we've lived here that I could not live in Oklahoma again. So now, do you think then that Braggs is just too small? Yes, I do. And when you were growing up there, and when you were living your whole life there, before you moved to Montana, would you ever imagine that that would be true for you? No, no. Growing up there, I never even dreamed in my wildest dreams about moving away from there. I just always thought, I'll just meet someone here, and get married, and live the rest of my life here. Really? Yes. I guess your dream didn't come true. Is that OK with you? Oh yeah, yeah. As difficult as it was moving to Bozeman the first few years and all the changes, it really, for all of us, was a good move. Sarah Vowell's move to big-city Bozeman was so successful that she decided to repeat the experience. She move to Portland, population 500,000, Washington DC, population 600,000, San Francisco, population 700,000, and then, finally, Chicago, population 2.8 million. Act Two. How do you keep them going down on the farm? Marry 'em. All across America, people are moving away from small towns and rural areas in steady streams. So if you have stayed in a place where there aren't many people, and the ones that are there you've know since birth, how are you going to find somebody to marry? Well, you might join Singles In Agriculture. They hold get-togethers for singles all over the country. Reporter Liz Weil went with This American Life producer Alix Spiegel to a recent get-together in Galveston, Texas, at the Flagship Hotel on the beach, jutting out onto the water. There were about 250 people from 26 states at meals and meetings, day trips, and dances. Jim's an extreme case-- smart, charming, 52, looks 40, living on a farm outside Iona, South Dakota, population four. It's 30 miles to the nearest grocery store. The weather is so punishing, cows freeze solid standing up. His dilemma, nobody wants to move to his ranch, and he doesn't want to leave. This is not bragging on myself or anything, but I have had a girl offer to buy me a farm in another state if I would move and marry her, but I just can't leave it. Was that a hard choice? Yes, yes it was. I couldn't see why, if I meant that much to her, why she couldn't move there to my place and stuff. And yes, her land had been in her family for a long time, I guess it's-- This is a typical problem for people in SIA. They're all farmers, all tied to their land, though Jim's situation is particularly harsh. He tells me he realized that a few years ago when the group's director went out to visit him. Even she was stunned by how isolated he was. She said it would take a remarkable woman to move to his ranch. So do you, realistically, think that you're going to get married? I would like to. I guess it's always in the back of your mind, you would hope to. But you want an honest answer. I don't think it's going to happen. It's going to take a special girl. You're a city girl, both of you are. I'd ask you, would you be willing to live out, even give the consideration of living out, and trying something like that? Jim's own mother even admitted that, had she known where she'd been moving, she might not have married his father and moved to the land. It's Thursday night, the first night of the get-together, and we're all at a dance in a Victorian gazebo, with wood floors so old, women have been asked to wear boots, not heels. Everyone's so happy to be here. I have the sense I'm talking to people who don't get to talk to other human beings enough. About 10:00, I sit down next to Martha, a twice-widowed woman from Indiana. She's small and nearly 60, wearing a sweatshirt she has decorated with glitter and beads. SIA is the focus of her life. It gives me something to live for, because I'm very lonely, and I need this to keep me going. Because the first camp-out I went to, I cried when it was time to go home. And they was singing church music, and I couldn't sing, I was crying so hard. And I was giving everybody hugs. I love hugs. Then this one guy just held me, and held me. He said, are you OK? He just held me, and held me till I got calmed down. I said, it just shows how lonely I am, I guess. Martha tells me that her favorite dance is The Waterfall. How it works is that the women form one line, the men form another, and the two meet in the middle like a zipper, couples dancing up the floor. Martha tells me she likes The Waterfall because you don't need a partner. You just stand in line, and the line moves. You pull a body close, get hugged. The next day is Friday. Half the farmers board yellow buses for the NASA Space Center. The other half trek to Houston for a World's Fair-style livestock show. About every 15 minutes, over the course of the day, somebody tries to convince me, no, this group isn't about hooking up, it's about friendship, camaraderie, everyone's one big family. But later in the afternoon, I bump into a group of SIA women who are clearly on the make. One's just bought a t-shirt that reads, cowboy butts drive me nuts. Maroon shirt ladies, maroon shirt, to the left. Oh, when we were eating, oh, jeez did they walk past us. No, no, the best one was the guy that was showing the palomino horse. He was good. I'm looking at the guy in the black hat right here. So what do you look for in the jeans, Lee's, Levi's, Wrangler's? What's in them. These girls are a rowdy, hardcore bunch. They're youngish, around 30, loud, constantly making cracks. Kate, the most vocal of them, is broad and strong, a dairy cow wrangler from Wisconsin. In this crowd, she plays the tomboy. She brags about telling the men she dances with that if someone wants to pick a fight, she'll do the punching. But once alone in her hotel room, her tough girl attitude fades away. I think of myself as a lady. If you treat me like a lady, I mean, I treat them well. I guess, I'm more traditional, older-fashioned, I guess they call it. She goes on to tell me about a friend of hers, a woman who prayed every night to meet somebody and eventually did. So do you do that? Do you pray about what the kind of person--? What? Well, yeah. I mean, you pray that God leads you or guides you to, or guides him and you to meet sometime, and what kind of guy you would like. And she told me, be specific. You can't just say a guy that's got two legs, a hat, and whatever, a belt buckle. So are you following her directions? Are you being specific? No, I mean, I do this, like, every night. This going to smell terrible. Oh, it does. Down the hall from Kate are Ernie and Sally, a couple who met through SIA. He's 50ish, from Oklahoma, grows sesame and delivers mail. She's a school teacher from Kansas, incredibly hot, in a short, tight dress and baby-doll tee. At this point in their relationship, they only book one hotel room. And right now, Ernie is in there fixing Sally's boot. The smell of epoxy is mind-numbing. They detail their first date. We were going to a dance, Halloween dance, and I got to her house. Driving six hours to get there. Drove six hours to get there, and in less then 15 minutes, she was begging me to take her dress off. OK, let me explain. Ernie had brought over a blue flapper dress. His former wife had made it. Sally wanted to look at it, maybe wear it as a costume. I get there, and she's, oh, I got to try that dress on. She looked at it. She ran in the bathroom and put this dress on. And I waited, and I waited, and pretty soon I heard this, Ernie. Well, I put the dress on. Help me. And it was tight. It was really tight. So we kind of stand there and talk awhile, and I'm just thinking-- And I said, well, what do I do? And I was, where do you grab? He goes, where do you want me to get a hold of you? Both Ernie and Sally lost their spouses. They both felt sparks five or six months ago when they first met. They live a reasonable distance apart by SIA standards, but, and this is the problem with a national organization of rural singles, the logistics make it nearly impossible to date. 404 miles from my door to his door. And how often do you get a chance to see each other? About every two weeks we get together, every couple weeks. It's a good six-hour drive. I don't care how you go. Phone bills are pretty high, too. Be a lot cheaper if you married me, wouldn't it? He says I push him a little bit. Can you believe that? I can't believe that. Do you feel like she pushes you a little bit? No, not a little bit, a whole lot. Sally and Ernie have this little routine. Like most set pieces couples have, it's only half in jest. She ribs him constantly about getting married, he hedges. They love each other, but they're at different points in their lives. How long you been single? 11 years. Husband died, had a heart attack. And I've been a year and eight months. So I've got about a year before I might decide whether I'm going to do anything and who with. Ernie didn't expect to meet somebody so quickly. In fact, he wasn't sure he'd meet somebody at all. He married young, didn't have many girlfriends before that. Right now, this is his first round of dating. It's a heady experience, and one he's not ready to give up yet. Women knew, if you're widowed, they're interested. It's definitely a plus over someone that's divorced. Friday night is the second dance. And when I bump into Ernie, he's passing out these business cards. They have rainbows on them, and they read, Ernest Ernie W. Schmidt, married 32 years, widowed, I'm attracted to you, let's be good friends. Sally, as you might imagine, is not so thrilled about this. She has enough good friends, at least for the time being. While Ernie mingles, we talk to her in the back room. Oh, I would marry him. I mean, if we break up, I'm going to just be heartbroken. It's going to be really bad, because my husband's been gone for 11 years, and I haven't met anybody that I would marry but Ernie. Sally stops her interview, saying she better get back to Ernie. She's worried that he'll miss her. A moment later, we head out from the back room. I see Ernie with a blond woman, two-stepping on the dance floor. Half an hour later, we run into Ernie and Sally kissing on the veranda. Sometime after this, Sally sends me a note. On the envelope she writes, in all capitals, I WILL MARRY ERNIE SOMEDAY. The night starts winding down, at least I think it starts winding down until I realize something, nobody's planning on going to sleep. The people who come to SIA spend a lot of time alone. They crave company, affection, basic human contact. It's past midnight when the farmers leave the gazebo and return to the Flagship Hotel. Everybody's tired, but they don't go to bed. The hit the beach. Come on, I got to show you something out there. Just remember, I'm a very strong girl. Jim, the first guy I talked to back at the first dance, drags a fully clothed women into the water. Ah, you're crazy. Is it cold? There's something really high school-esque about the whole SIA experience. Like right now, the moon is out, the air is salty, and we're in this huge awkward group. And what do people do to cash in on the moment? Pair off? Nope. [SINGING] Germs, germs, go away-- They sing. --never, never come to play. I call you ick, you make me sick. Note, none of them has had a drop to drink. Evening winds down, and the couples at SIA head toward the climactic night of their weekend, in a minute, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week we choose a theme, of course, and invite a variety of writers, and reporters, and documentary producers to take a whack at that theme. Today's theme, Small Towns. Liz Weil's story continues about a four-day get together of SIA, Singles In Agriculture. Saturday, we wake up to some incredibly tedious meetings, which, by some heroic faith, people manage to love. It completely undermines all critical standards of what's compelling, what's fun. Event financial record be forwarded to the national office within 90 days of the last day of the activity. Later Saturday afternoon, I catch up with Martha, the woman who told me that SIA gives her reason to live. She's in her room, sewing the final beads on a sweater she's making for tonight's banquet and flag ceremony. The handiwork seems to relax her. She's got this other sweatshirt, her hug sweatshirt, that she wears at the end of every SIA retreat. I met this friend, and she sent me this bookmark about why God made hugs. And I don't remember it, but I had my daughter enlarge it on the computer and put it on a scroll. And I put it on the sweatshirt. And I tell people that I didn't invent the hugs, God did, because he gives a reason in this poem why. And you've seen pictures of how much he loves us, and stretches out his arms. And I like hugs. Martha tells me she's a recovering alcoholic. She tells me that one of her children, her daughter, died in 1981. She works evenings at Kmart, because she can't stand to spend her nights alone. It seems like I've had so many bad things happen in my life that now something good is happening, meeting these people. My friend in Florida thinks I ought to go to AA and tell my story, Because she said, Martha, you've been through wars. Martha goes on to tell me that before SIA events, she gets so excited that she worries that she'll have a heart attack or a stroke. People spend a lot of time getting ready for Saturday night's banquet. Women wear dresses with slits and sequins. Men wear jackets, bolo ties. This is the big event, the final showdown. The evening starts with a prayer. We take pause before you God, acknowledging we can rest quietly in your arms, with confidence and assurance of your love, grace, and mercy, as we walk through this season called singledness, as we ask, hope, and believe all things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. OK, flag bearers, here we go. What's going on here is really rather incredible. There are 50 men and women lined up in long aisles by twos. Each person is bearing a flimsy, nylon handkerchief-sized flag on a long, thin pole. It would be campy if people's eyes weren't so reverent, so serious. They march towards the front of the room. After dinner, a man gives a very boring talk on Russian agriculture. Plaques are awarded to old board members. Election results are announced for the new. At the end of the banquet, Eldon, the outgoing president, gets up to make a speech. He's good-looking, jovial, in his 40s. He beats the podium nervously with his hand. A smile creeps across his face. So I guess I got one more thing I got to say, or I'm going to be a dead duck before this night is over. A year ago, I could not find hired help to go on harvest. I was ticked off, I don't mind telling you. My income was just plummeting like a rock. Well, I got to go to Indiana. We got a board meeting. And I'm not harvesting, so I don't have an excuse. I met somebody there that, she probably won't like this, but at the time, didn't really help my mood that much. Fortunately, she didn't give up, and she stayed in contact with me. So you people, you got to remember, I've been in this thing a long time. And I guess I wouldn't say that I had given up, but I really wasn't searching that hard. And I found somebody, and it's going to result in a wedding dance April the 5, and anybody-- Everybody stands up and claps and hollers for what seems like a good 10 minutes. People are so exquisitely happy, wistful, jealous, and proud. The scene feels oddly like the end of a Miss America Pageant. Women cry and clasp hands over their mouths. When the ovation fades, they gather around the bride-to-be. [UNINTELLIGIBLE] I'm so proud. I'm so glad. So am I. I'm so happy. I bet you are. I'll bet you are. Whoo hoo. In the crowd, I see Martha looking overwhelmed. She embraces Eldon's fiancee. Oh, quite a shock. Oh, but you're so lucky. I think I'm lucky, too. No, I'm not lucky, I'm blessed. I know I'm not supposed to envy people, but I do. I'm blessed. Keep looking, Martha. I want love so bad. By tonight at the dance, any reserve the farmer's had has pretty much faded away. There's more winking, more flirting, more moving of hips, less chat about seed corn around the edges of the room. When the "Macarena" cues up, Jim shakes his South Dakota booty with heartbreaking deliberateness and intent. Meanwhile, Kate, the tomboy with the eye for cowboy butts, remains in the back of the room. She spent most of her evening tangling with Rod, a tall, crazy-haired rancher who apparently does not like to dance. From 10:00 to 11:00, they pull and punch each other, get to know one another's bodies by yanking skirts and stealing hats. It's classic mating, junior high style. When they head out on the veranda, my producer and I follow. So how is your night going? How's my night going? It's all right. Any excitement? [LAUGHTER] Any excitement, depends whose excitement we're talking about. Yours. Well, it's different. Kate's been working on Rod since early this morning. They have similar ages, energy levels, goofy karmas. While Kate's been talking to us, Rod's been leaning on the railing, a couple of yards away. Just now, though, a tall brunette walks over and starts chatting him up. Kate doesn't move. She just gets quiet, and loses interest in our interview entirely. Listen, I can't [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE]. I got to listen to this girl talk over here, because she's like, she's saying, you're the most handsome guy here. That's what she's telling him. I can sure see that. I mean, I don't have to look at people, but I can hear what the hell they're talking about. And when I hear my name mentioned, I perked up a little bit. She's talking about you over there? No, she's not talking. She's after that guy. I mean, I knew that. She was with us today. She's after Rod? That guy? She's after that guy? Shh. See, I can just stand over here and make like I'm talking to you guys, and I can hear everything. Tell us what she's saying. She says-- she said something about play into this. Listen. Oh, she's going back. She ain't going to talk to him anymore. I'm going to see-- Oh, he's not going back. Kate snags Rod, and the two of them walk back into the gazebo. It's clear that this is only a minor glitch. The dance ends at midnight. Kate and Rod hop in a cab and head downtown. We make for the hotel. Jim offers us a ride in his van, which he bought especially for SIA events, and which feels like a huge babe trap. The van is dark red and finely upholstered. Riding shotgun is Marie. We're going to the hospitality room. Where you going? We're living it up. Where are you going? Don't know yet. Don't know yet? We'll find something. We'll go back to Marie's room and party, huh? Yeah, let's go to my room and party. Major plans decided, the moment gets more personal. This is the time for putting on moves, to make something happen tonight. This is my kind of music. What kind of music do you girls like? Well, this is OK, but I-- It's just OK, huh? Cat got your tongue? Later people, mostly men, sit around the hospitality suite. Jim pokes his head in. He grins and tells us that he's going upstairs with Marie. At 5:00 in the morning, Rod and Kate sheepishly come back from downtown. In the morning, the weekend ends with an egg and sausage breakfast, "Amazing Grace," and the SIA tradition of everybody hugging everybody else in the room. Everybody looks exhausted, like students after exams. Martha spends a long time crying at the window, watching the cars pull out, talking about how she already misses the hugs. She's wearing her special hugs sweatshirt, the one with the poem sewn on the front. The loop appears to be starting over. Martha's returning to her empty trailer in Indiana, where she'll be lonely, and work evenings at Kmart, and save up her money for the next SIA event. But then something happens. A man pulls a game store coin out of his pocket. He gives it to her. She reads aloud. Good for a hug and a kiss anytime, anywhere. It doesn't say, any place. Can I have it? No, it's the only one I got. Will you make a copy? Well, give me my kiss. Here, in front of everybody? Yeah, God too. God's watching. Oh, my gosh. When the two come out of the kiss, they both seem surprised. At the outset, they both expected a peck. But in the middle, something else kicked in. Something so basic, that when it hits you, you don't ask why. Hey, it's been a long time since I had a kiss. Act Three, Small town in the big city. The fact is a small town can be anywhere, even in the heart of what many people see as one of the harshest urban environments in the country. Paul Johnson, Carlos Appleby, and Sanantonio Brooks are teenagers living in public housing on Chicago's South Side at 4120 South Prairie. People who live there just call the building, 4120. It's a highrise building, 16 stories tall, 10 apartments on each floor, with an open air hallway on each floor that people who live there just call a porch. We sent them out with a tape recorder to their building to record what happens there, and then talked to them in our studios about how their building is like a small town. You can get haircuts there. Girls can get their hair done, their nails done in there. Clothes, somebody that make clothes in the building. There's a candy store on five. Yeah, there's a candy store on five. A real candy store? Yeah, a candy store. A real candy store. There's a real candy store. There's a couple of candy stores in the building. And is it like a real candy store? It's like somebody's apartment, they have a little fix-it-up? Right, they sell food too. It's like our own community inside the building. Now that we are on the 12th floor at the candy store. They have, like, six different varieties of potato chips, all for $0.25 each. They have penny candy, meaning white candy, Laffy Taffys, and chews and things of that sort. They sell food too. They got Italian [? beefs ?], pizza puffs. The people on the 12th floor, they don't want to do our interview, because they refused. Because they ain't licensed. They didn't have, so we're going down to the fifth floor right now. Compare the two candy stores, 5th and the 12th, which is the better one? The 12th. The 12th. The 12th. Why? The food. They sell food. They sell, like, everything in a real grocery store. Everything. Every type of game. Almost everything you need, pencil, paper, cards. That's really the grocery store of the building. So what happens on the other floors? Tell me about what happens on six. What's it like? Six, it just-- That's the place for them little kids. That's where the little kids meet. That's where all the little kids be at. That's where all the crumb-snatchers run and play. What games do you all play? You all play, it? It, yeah, It. Ghosts. We play hopscotch. We play Bingo. Bingo. Bingo was his name oh. And And we play the Mario game. You all don't hang with no boys? No! No! What, boys yucky? Yeah! They nasty? Yeah! That's why you all don't like boys? Yeah! No! 12th floor-- 13 might as well be the Twilight Zone, don't nobody live up there. Right, no, nobody ever. And it's always dark. Nobody's living in any of those apartments? Yeah, they live there, but it seem like they don't. It's just dark. And on nine and eight, that's where, eight and seven, that's where all the fights at. You want to see a fight, for sure, there's going to be a fight on one of those floors. And why those floors? Because that's where most people hang out, on the nine, eight, and seven. Right, there's a fight, or you can play games or whatever you want to do. So what we want to do, play cards while you all get tea? [SINGING] In love with Mary Jane. OK, now you guys should explain where we are. Right now, we're on the eighth floor, in apartment 801. And is this a card game that happens all the time? Yeah. Now, are these guys your age or are they older? Older. Yeah, 21, 22, and up. What card game are they playing? Spades. Of the three of you, who's the best card player? Me. Me. Me. OK, let's play a little more of the tape. You ain't got no [BLEEP] job. How the [BLEEP] can you get fired on your day off? Man! What you got to be? You got to be a stupid [BLEEP] to get fired on your day off. Now, I've got to say, now when you first played this tape, when you first gave this tape to producer Nancy Updike and I, we heard this and we thought, yeah, how do you lose your job on your day off? Like, what is this with these guys? But in fact, there is something else going on here, isn't there? Yeah, they was acting out the movie, Friday. That was like one of the scenes in the movie. So they was like, re-acting it. Let's hear that scene. You ain't got no job? How the hell you going to get fired on your day off? God damn. You got to be a stupid [BLEEP] to get fired on your day off. You guys all act out scenes from movies a lot while you're playing cards? Yeah, everybody acting silly, cracking a jokes. That's when you play your best game, when you are relaxed. Now, you actually tried to interview these guys while you sat there playing cards. And you tried for, like, an hour. Well, we kept asking them questions over and over, but they pretty much tried to tell nothing, because they thought we was trying to help the law out or something. Yeah, they thought we was with the police. Trying to get indictments out on them, so they ain't want to say nothing. How long you been living in this building? Like, 10 years. 10 years? Do you consider this building a small town? Yeah, that kid's a [BLEEP] news. Is you a news reporter for real, man? Working for the white man. I'm just trying to get this story. What the [BLEEP] is this? I think we better go get the radio and play a song. [UNINTELLIGIBLE] that white man's world. So you all calling me white just because I'm asking -- No sir. We not, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You think in some ways it is like a small town? To me, it is. It is like a small town, because a small town, it's like everybody is family. And a lot of people, like Sanantonio, he got a lot of family in that building. I believe, we got the most family in there. Like on every floor, you'll find somebody in his family. Right, I got the most family. I think I got the most. All right, run it down. Let me hear. Who and who floor, give it to me from top to bottom. The 16th, let me see, I don't really got nobody on the 16th or the 15th. 14, I think I got a cousin. A cousin that's down on 12. 11, I got a grandma that's on 11. The 10th, I got an auntie that's down on the 10th. Well, I stay on the eighth, auntie on the sixth. I stay on the fifth. And my other grandmother stay on the third. And just let me be sure. When you stay on the fifth, who are you staying with? My mother. And on the eighth? My grandmother. And you interviewed your grandmother, right? I interviewed my other grandmother. I stay with the one on eighth. But I interviewed the one on the third. And she grew up in a small town, right? Yes, in Mississippi. Do you get homesick to go back down to the South? No, you get homesick, I'd go down and visit my mom. But I don't get homesick near as bad anymore. I grew up in the South. I had a rough time in the South. I picked cotton, chopped cotton, picked for a little amount of money. And I chopped cotton from sun-up to sundown and didn't really make very much money. And we didn't have very much down there. If you had a choice, which would you think would be better to raise your children in, this building or back in the South? Well, like I said, basically it's the same now, because down South, there's about as much going on down South as there is here, because they learn here how to sell drugs, although they take it back down South. Now there's as much drugs down South, almost, as there is here. Now, Paul, you also interviewed your own mom. Yeah. OK, let's hear that. What is your name? Linda Johnson. How do you feel about the building? Well, I think the building is kind of nice. There's just too many rowdy kids. Do you feel like it's like a small town? Yes, because every damn body in here has got a damn child by somebody's man. Does like, everybody know everybody? Yes, everybody [BLEEP] everybody. Is this the way she talks all the time? Yeah. Now, Carlos, you're on the second floor, right? Right. And what's your floor like? My floor is just plain boring, because all the people down there-- They're hypes. They're hypes. Yeah, I got drug addicts on the left, drug addicts on the right. You're living around a bunch of drug addicts and it's boring? Well, it depends on if they had their daily medication. And the real definition for a hype is a person that smokes every day but don't have no money. They're dirty, have one pair of pants, no shirt, and maybe a half a pair of shoes or something, the people that'd do anything for the drugs. Now we see hypes coming up the street [UNINTELLIGIBLE] some rocks. Have you got some work, brother man? No sir. Let me just ask you to explain what work is? It's the drug, the crack cocaine. You know who working? I don't know. Check around by the store, in the back of the building. All right, man. What would you guys say is the biggest problem at 4120? Biggest problem? Yeah, for you all, anyway. It's the female situation. You got to leave the building just for you to have a female, because there isn't any your age. You either date 25 and up, or they a little kid like 10 years old and down. So that's pretty much the problem. Explain where the girls go. They just leave for some reason. They'll come in and stay a little while, and then all of a sudden, their family decide it's time to move on, so they leave. Now, do you just think it's a coincidence that girls leave? Or do you think it's one of these things where the families say, well, this building, it's kind of rough, and we don't want a girl around in this environment, we're going to take our girls out? Whereas people with boys, they just stick around. I think that's what it is. They just want to get their daughters away from the building. If it is some girls in there that are our age, we don't want to mess with them, because of the situation that they be in, and the situation that they be causing. You just don't feel that the girls in the building, there aren't that many who are doing that much that's positive? Right, most of them don't even go to school no more. Right. There's females that's dropped out that's younger than me. And I'm only 17. And they are, like, 14, 13. If 4120 is a small town, is it one where you guys would choose to live if you had a choice? It's OK to live there to me. It is OK to live there, but-- I want to live in my own house, to tell you the truth, a place where I have upstairs and downstairs. Yeah, a basement. Yeah, and all that. Why a basement, of all the things to name? Why a basement? You could throw a party down there, have card games. My auntie, she got a house with a basement in it, that's where she go when she don't want to be bothered with the people upstairs. She go downstairs in her basement. She got a nice little TV down there. There's some furniture down there. I'll always come back and visit the building, because that's where I grew up. It's fine there, but I wouldn't want to be there all my life. If their building is, in fact, a kind of small town, then when they move away, Sanantonio, and Carlos, and Paul will probably experience what Sarah Vowell's mom experienced, what the couple I interviewed at the beginning of this program experienced when they moved away from their small towns, which is, they find they don't exactly fit into the new worlds they move to, but they no longer fit in their hometown anymore, either. As Letta Sneed, the wife of the couple at the beginning of the show said-- So I do feel uncomfortable with living the city life, but on the other hand it's very hard for me to conceptualize going back to a small town. And I've often wondered, I often question myself, where do I fit? And I think for the past eight years, the sad truth is, that I feel in a way, a bit homeless, like I don't fit in either world. It's like you ate from the Tree of Knowledge. Exactly. Well, our program was produced today Alix Spiegel and myself with Nancy Updike, Julie Snyder, and Paul Tough. Contributing editor Sarah Vowell, Jack Hitt, and Margie Rochlin. Production help from Christina Stephens. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who could be heard most days wandering around the office singing this song. I will be a helper at home, at church, at school. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life.