Staying and leaving:

Tim, JD, and Me sitting on a tailgate drinking coffee

I watched Tim Walz accept the Democratic nominee for Vice President and thought about what it is to stay and what it is to leave.

America loves this guy, and they love his story; raised on a family farm, served in our military, coached football and taught social studies in a small town.

I love his genuine small town fluidity. He seems to have clarity of what is right and wrong, like there is a consistent basis for his morals. As he speaks I hear this whisper of hope: maybe we could all share his clarity. We could all be in one community with him.

He repeats (as a good stump speech does) this small town golden rule: mind your own damn business.

He says that if someone needs help, you help them regardless of how they vote, how they pray.

I am pretty in to it, and so are a lot of Americans.

But I have a life story more like JD Vance, the Republican Vice Presidential nominee. I grew up in a small town and by puberty I was trying to find a way out.

I used college as my lever to leave, not the military as Vance first did. I am grateful that I grew up at the sunset of an era of affordable college education and believed (still do) in the hope of diverse liberal arts education.

I found places where people were my kind of weird. Where they were forgiving of my silliness. Where I did not fear punches and kicks for the clothes I wore.

I trash talked my home town for decades. (sorry Mom and Dad). For the sake of my sanity I established a 72 hour rule for visits. Anything longer would contort my psyche.

I embraced urbanity, folding myself into the prime era of Portland hipsterism. You should have seen some of my facial hair decisions. Unfortunately there are pictures.

Leaving rural America was the natural thing for me. It is the natural thing for a lot of people when they look at their place of origin and can't make themselves to fit.

Frankly, I used to think that staying where you came from was a defeat. I watched people like me struggle to make it out. They did not have the education ticket, the finances, or the luck to establish themselves elsewhere.

Many of us found cities exotic and dangerous. I was not confident I could figure out how to buy passage on a city bus or how to drive on a freeway.

I figured it out and thrived there. The fact it was a triumph to change myself enough to fit somewhere new gave me confidence and lift. Swagger even.

But now I am back where I grew up. I have been here for two years now. Unlike that clarity Walz showed, I am constantly sifting my own mix of urban and rural values. When we started Old Truck Good Coffee, I came out of the gate with a hard tale of my inner conflict. In retrospect, it was not the smartest way to present ourselves to the world. You can read happier things on the internet.

Since Sunday I have been deciding whether to kill my dog.

The article remains important to me; a genuine expression of my awkward fumbling dance. My heart and mind are in grand confusion, I hear different authoritative voices telling me what is right.

I understand that JD Vance's book speaks to the sense of disadvantage and abandonment he felt his community was under. I did not write a whole book (yet) about the perils of my small town existence, but like Vance I feel that the people and communities in rural spaces get abandoned, left behind, and then mocked for being behind.

Ultimately, my leaving and return feels very healthful for me. I wonder how healthful it is for Vance.

Like me, we left and lost out on maturing in place. We found a more comfortable place to live for a time. I hope he has healed some and learned some.

A lot of the urban rural interchange conversation in Old Truck Good Coffee is personal experience for me, and top of mind is the painful memories. But ultimately I hope the impact is social in and political — that urban people understand rural people better and vice versa.

Some family members and others I have spoken to about Old Truck Good Coffee say that they don't see the conflict that Leo and I are talking about. Perhaps they are more like Walz. Perhaps it comes naturally for them to hold their values and the diverse community at the same time.

Maybe those of us that leave did not see that these towns are wildly diverse in thought and experience. For every violent experience I had growing up, there were a thousand kindnesses and tolerant actions that I took for granted. Returning, I see the warm systems of community and trust in them.

There are other leavings that feel necessary but bring on the risk of damage. People leave a church that harms them. Then what do they do? Do they generalize that pain to all religion? Do they find another community that better suits them?

I was raised in a progressive, tolerant, and rather casual Christianity. It would have continued to embrace me no matter my life journey. I left that community as well, and my faith journey similarly found a new path after decades of isolation.

It occurs to me as I write this that I am rather inefficient at maturing.

I love watching Coach Walz demonstrate to America that a native-child rural progressive Democrat is not rare. It has always been completely normal. There are native progressives in every town.

Leaving is also completely normal, a story quite old and repeated a million times a year in America. My leaving was not a mistake, and I don't think Vance's was either. But now I look for the stories of staying and wonder about the intricate complexity of the mind and heart that stays.