Journal Five: Ruksana Kabealo

One of the things I researched from our latest selection of Holding On profiles was from George Preston's profile. At one point Preston is describing the tent cities and he says "Years ago when people traveled they took their tent with them, and they slept in their tents. And I run a tent city right here. We charged fifty cents a day for a family." He claims motels replaced tent cities over the years. I researched how much it would cost for a family to stay in a motel in Belle Plaine, Iowa for one night today. For a family to stay in a Super 8 on Route 30 (the Lincoln Highway discussed in the profile) near Belle Plaine, it costs $59 a night. That's a 118x increase in cost. 

Another thing I researched from this profile for my own sanity was Preston's statement about nailing tires on cars. On page 151 Preston states: "Did you know years ago when I started in the business we nailed tires on cars? I'll show 'em to you before you leave!" This statement intrigued me because I had no idea what he could possibly be referring to. It remained interesting to me because I couldn't find anything he could be referring to through my research. It wasn't used as a way to hold spares on cars, nails weren't used to plug holes in tires, the tires themselves weren't nailed to cars (which makes sense, how would they move if they were?), and it wasn't any kind of cultural thing. 

A personal connection that I made for one of the profiles was from the Lucca's profile. At the bottom of page 164 Mr. Lucca says, "My paternal grandfather - my mother's father - told me, 'Mariano, when you got married, you got to get a wife five years older than you because the man gets older five years faster.'" I connected with this because my dad is also Italian (his maternal grandfather, my great grandfather, was born on the boat coming to the United States from Italy). But in my dad's family the advice to the men is to marry women three or four years younger than them, because the men die first. Same for girls: get a husband that's three or four years older than you. That way the couple dies together. It's half serious advice and half dark humor, but it's ingrained in my mind nonetheless. I thought it was interesting how it's the same genre of quirky-family advice we all laugh off but secretly take seriously, but the actual message itself is completely opposite. 

One place where I highlighted the writing at its best was from the Jim Bishop profile. I highlighted the paragraph on page 159 where Bishop was talking about why he didn't like high school: 

"I didn't really like high school. Dropped out in the eleventh grade. I was in class one day and some cheerleaders come in and said: 'We need a couple of volunteers to help us in the parking lot.' They had these chickens in the trunk of a car as a stunt for a football game that they had dyed all kind of colors - red, purple, blue, yellow. it was a hot day, and I go out there and open up this trunk and here's all these chickens suffering. Boy, it made me madder 'en hell! So I grab the chickens and walk in school, and I says, 'If that's what school's about, then i'm done!' So that's how come I quit school. The hell with that. I don't need that kind of crap"

I thought paragraph was so great because it was a great mini-story inside the profile. It illustrates so much about Jim Bishop's character in so few words: a straightforward man with a great respect for animals and nature and no time for superfluous bullshit. He quit school and he lives on the land and likes to be away from people who waste their time on stupid things (this fits with his actions later, when he doesn't seem to mind that his dad abandons the castle idea). He was mad as hell about the chickens, but if you'll notice he still has the presence of mind to rescue them from that trunk anyways. This anecdote really illustrates who Jim Bishop is as a man.