Hollow Houses

My car needs work so this afternoon I drove to 5th Street, where I was told there is an auto body shop. Until this afternoon my first impression of this place was exactly what the Chamber of Commerce wanted me to think of their home. It's quaint and clean, mostly. My apartment is in between a lake and a train track. The trains are quiet and the lake, I'm told, unswimmable. I work near the downtown area.

5th Street took me into the heart of the town where the 27, 000 or so residents actually reside. Sunrise Estates was immediately on my left. A shirtless man with dirty blond hair pushed a lawnmower over the grassless yard of the trailer park.
I was suddenly struck by a feeling of having witnessed something pathetic.
I want to smoke a cigarette and share a laugh with the man so I don't remember him as the man who mows dirt.

I passed a man on a motorcycle. He wore glasses and had a dark mustache.
Ken's Auto Body was closed. So was Tom's. Only bars, liquor stores and churches are open in the afternoon on weekends.
I turned back onto 5th and began driving the direction I'd come from.
I passed the man on the motorcycle. We looked at one another, keenly aware that we were both either lost or unfulfilled.

I'm still not sure which I am.
My car still isn't fixed, and I've learned that this beautiful little town has an underbelly.
There are teenage mothers and alcoholics here. There is at least one man whose house is hollow. He works on a rusty old pickup truck in his driveway with the garage door open. You can see his bed from the street.

I've found the poverty here. I want to hold it in my hands and understand it.