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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Presidential candidate John Hagelin and I come from different sides of the tracks in Fairfield, Iowa. And finally, I'm OK with that.
Aug 25, 2000 | Today there is yet another outsider in our midst. In case you're not familiar with Reform Party (and Natural Law Party) presidential candidate John Hagelin -- and judging by a July 17 Reuters poll in which he got exactly zero percent of the vote, you're not -- let me tell you: He's a "roo." Lately Hagelin has tried to distance himself from his roo roots -- strategically understandable, but ultimately unfortunate. Because the roos, as politically maladroit as they may be, are good folk.
I grew up in Fairfield, Iowa, population 9,768. At 35 mph, it takes five minutes to pass through. It is the home of the Fairfield Trojanettes (state basketball champs, '83), a historic town square with a great Christmas-light display, a brand-new Burger King, an original John D. Rockefeller library building and a tiny little movie theater called the Co-Ed, where I worked as a teen.
Fairfield's also the home of the Maharishi University of Management and the Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment (preschool through 12th), an educational system based on, among other things, a system of deep rest and stress release called transcendental meditation. MUM, where Hagelin is a physics professor, was founded in 1979 by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi -- who is best known as the guy who taught TM to the Beatles. The centerpiece of MUM is two enormous domes used for mass meditation, which can result, supposedly, in yogic flying -- a period of heightened awareness that manifests itself in high hopping or levitation. (Masters of this technique sometimes engage in "flying" contests that involve racing, high jumps and hurdles.)
In Fairfield, you are either a "townie" or a "roo," which is short for "guru" -- Fairfield slang for meditator. I was a townie and, like all townies, thought the roos were completely out of their minds.
The roo adults, being in touch with their mind-body connection and whatnot, were prime targets for townie ridicule. The women wore flowing hemp skirts, the men had long hair. They appreciated art (the freaks!) and they hung out in the lobby of the Co-Ed as I tried to close down, discussing the performances and cinematography. On occasion, I'd get really oddball requests -- one roo patron insisted that I plug in a digital clock somewhere in the theater, as it would help the film's "transmission." I never did figure that one out.
The roo kids were just as easy to spot. Many, being vegetarians, were skinny and pale. Some were foreign. Roo kids wore white MUM uniforms, had punk-rock hair, rode skateboards and listened to music we didn't like (or wouldn't discover until college). In a city of reasonable size, roos wouldn't have been given a second look, but in Fairfield, they were sideshow curiosities: raving street lunatics dining on spinach pie and room-temperature water and talking about building an ideal society.
Besides, we townies -- cruising around "the loop" in our Guess overalls, hair-sprayed bangs and rattail mullets, listening to the progressive sounds of Alabama and Whitesnake while chewing plugs of Skoal -- were, quite obviously, already the picture of Utopian civilization.
Townies drank beer to spice up what was essentially a monotonic existence. The roo kids did drugs, we speculated, to find respite from the cultlike atmosphere at MUM. Ignorant of our basic sameness, S.E. Hinton-style rumbles would result. If you were an oddsmaker, you'd favor the townies (hey, we were bigger), but, as any townie would concede, you could never count out the roos -- those crazy sumbitches were liable to go postal on your white butt.
