Population: 485: Meeting your neighbors one siren at a time

The 13 chapters of Population 485 read like 13 long form magazine essays loosely tethered around the theme of rural Wisconsin life told from the perspective of a volunteer fire fighter/first responder. Unfortunately, despite my love and bias towards all things Wisconsin, this book never captured me. In part, I felt like I never picked up on the rhythm of Perry’s writing; his prose teeters on the edge of aiming to be poetic, especially when talking about the rural environment, e.g. the rolling fi

The 13 chapters of Population 485 read like 13 long form magazine essays loosely tethered around the theme of rural Wisconsin life told from the perspective of a volunteer fire fighter/first responder. Unfortunately, despite my love and bias towards all things Wisconsin, this book never captured me. In part, I felt like I never picked up on the rhythm of Perry’s writing; his prose teeters on the edge of aiming to be poetic, especially when talking about the rural environment, e.g. the rolling fields formed in the age of the glaciers, etc. etc…At the same time, the narrative pushes forward through the anecdotes of Perry and his local cast of characters that he meets along the way. Maybe it’s just that I’m not necessarily a lover of lyrical, idyllic, poetic prose, but I found myself following along with a story, getting sidetracked during an idyllic interlude, having to reread aforementioned lyrical interlude, and then upon rereading, realizing that I didn’t miss much.

My other hang up was that I felt like a reader on the outside looking in from the sense that I’ve never lived in rural Wisconsin, have never been a volunteer fire fighter or EMT, and didn’t quite identify with a lot of Perry’s observations. Interestingly, however, the best essay of the bunch, “My People” was the chapter centered around the ideas of belonging and acceptance and Perry’s struggle to straddle the line between redneck and poet, liberal and conservative, lifer and prodigal son. It seems that he too feels like a quasi-outsider in his town. “The Arty Redneck. I imagine myself bridging two cultures. Truth is, I’m a dilettante in either camp.” This is the essay that acknowledges that how you define ‘my people’ can change from minute to minute and universal inclusion is a fool’s errand. “From noon ‘til three on Sunday, Packer fans are of one accord; by evening, they’re flipping each other off in the Wal-Mart parking lot.” Living in New York currently, I especially found connection to his experience of ordering the sea bass at an upscale Upper West Side restaurant while out to dinner with his agent. On the one hand, there’s the urge to note that you could have an all you can eat fish buffet back in Wisconsin for ten bucks, but on the other hand, the quality of culinary experience that you can consistently get in NYC is unrivaled, and to fail to acknowledge as such is to wear your ignorance as a badge of honor. Not to turn the review into a political statement, but this essay puts the reader in the perspective of both a ‘red-stater’ and a ‘blue-stater’ and articulates a really refreshing way of cultivating an outlook that finds room for acceptance of both of those worldviews.

As mentioned before, I didn’t love the rest of the book. If you borrow it, don’t feel obligated to read every chapter or to read the chapters in order. Make sure to read ‘My People’ as well as ‘Death’, which talks about Perry’s perspective on life in the face of seeing death as an EMT. Also make sure to read the last chapter, ‘Sarah,’ which is aching, but pulls together a lot of the themes of the book and expresses the value in being part of a group, whether that group is defined as a family, a group of colleagues, or a community of 485 people. Aside from that, Go Packers.