In a Town This Size

John Prine has a song " In a town this size"

In a town this size there's no place to hide
Everywhere you go, you meet someone you know
You can't steal a kiss in a place like this
How the rumors do fly in a town this size

In a smoky bar
In the backseat of your car
In your own little house
Someone's sure to find you out

What you do and what you think
What you eat and what you drink
If you smoke a cigarette
They'll be talkin' about your breath

In a town this size there's no place to hide
Everywhere you go, you meet someone you know
You can't steal a kiss in a place like this
How the rumors do fly in a town this size

Oh, I had a fight with my girlfriend last night
Before the moon went down, it was all over town
How he made me cry, how I said good-bye
If it's true or not doesn't seem to count a lot

In a town this size there's no place to hide
Everywhere you go, you meet someone you know
You can't steal a kiss in a place like this
How the rumors do fly in a town this size

In the middle of the night The Commander asked Kadizzle " Are you awake?".   Unable to sleep we conversed in bed about the local vandal network.  In a town the size of Hazen the network of degenerates is not too hard to sift out.  Hazen is maybe 2,500 people or so.  Throw out all the old people, throw out the little kids, throw out the people who have a decent job and work, throw out the normal families, and you just have a small hand full of potential miscreants.  You could print out a little map of Hazen and circle the nests of mischief.  You could draw lines from one nest to the next and see how they interconnect.  Once you get to the intermingling things start to emerge.  You begin to see patterns.  Age is one thing that quickly enters into the analysis.  The oldest misfits usually are younger than forty.  The old ones have had time to reproduce and with them are the children left over from misfired relationships.  So now you have young apprentice degenerates.  The ones in that age group from 20 to 25 are the failures to launch.  Their main goal is to drive around town, make a lot of noise, get drunk or drugged, and defy the reality that they are broke, uneducated, and in a hopeless state.  The older degenerates are the idols of the ones still in high school.  The older ones supply the beer, the drugs, and give the younger ones a glimpse of what is in store for them. Finally you get to the saddest bunch of all, the little ones.  The little ones are like crumbs on the plate.  The little ones are the kids in fifth and sixth grade who stay home with no mother while dad is drunk at the bar. 

Most amazing is how quickly you can get to know the ins and outs of the network.  The younger ones have no sense of privacy and will spill the beans very quickly.  Years ago it was hard to imagine Hazen had such an underbelly, but now oil has done it's magic.  The oil boom west of Hazen has spilled into town.  Desperate people have come to try to hit gold.  With them comes all their problems.  One unique aspect of the imports is what they get sent from home.  Among the local problem children there is a special group.  Kadizzle has found about three of these specials.  Here is how it works.  A kid in California is in a mess with a messed up life and family. The kid is in trouble. What is left of his family has a solution.  Ship the kid to Hazen where his uncle is making oil money. The police and social workers in California like it.  Now Hazen has a professional big town degenerate spreading the worst culture in the country to small town Hazen.  Of course the uncle in Hazen has no vested interest in supervising the young criminal he is harboring. So the kid roams free showing the local kids how crime is done in the big city. 

Once the kid gets caught by the local law enforcement, guess what?  The kid gets shipped to another uncle or back to the original garden of evil where by now they forgot about how messed up he was. 

Well the morning is going on and it is time to wrap this up.  The long and short of it is that finding a needle in a haystack is difficult, but finding a needle in the sewing drawer doesn't take much.  In Hazen you could probably sift out about twenty hardcore people very easily.  You could know them, watch them like hawks, see how they interact, and keep the lid on them.  The school system could work on the problem,  the police could get off their ass, the social system could do something, and the almighty churches could actually do what they preach and help these kids.  However, this is America, and "It ain't my problem".