Editor's Note: This interview first appeared in the May/June 1989 issue of Chicago Times magazine.

Country Girls

By Anthony DeBartolo

We used to call them country girls. Young women from family farms

and sleepy towns throughout the Midwest and beyond.

Why they embraced Chicago and not a greater coast reflected as much sense as sensibility. The Midwestern capital was closer in miles, if not in mind. We were somehow more familiar.

Perhaps our broader shoulders and narrower minds filled a void once filled by their much-loved fathers. Stalwart, stoic men who plowed the fields and worked the mills without question. Men who firmly demanded, then silently prayed, that their daughters stay home.

Yet they came, by bus and train, to a Chicago of the fifties and sixties. When the view from the fortieth floor of the Prudential Building was an august sight to behold. When O'Hare, McCormick Place and the expressways all opened, and ninety-five at Our Lady of the Angels died.

When we read their names under headlines like, "Country Girl Robbed," "Country Girl Slain," they became our Sister Carries. The ones whose sense of wonder was taken for all it was worth. And we shook our heads in shame.

Today they come, by car and plane, to a Chicago of the eighties where the view from Sears Tower is as vast as it gets. Where O'Hare has grown too small, McCormick Place not enough, and the expressways have catch-up problems all their own. A place where Speck, Gacy, and Dann created a new order of natural disaster.

But the girls have changed, and come to us in a different way. All those videos watched and magazines read have shown the magic possible here, as well as the necessary caution. Fear gets packed now, along with their high heels, and so do plans for a new face to nurture along with their nails.

They're country women, now. Career women here. Their city sisters said long ago that was their due. And they'll take it. That's why they've come. From struggling farms and given-up towns through- out the Midwest and beyond.

It was my good fortune to meet two of the new country women living here. They hadn't met before but both readily agreed to drop by one evening, sit around the kitchen table a spell and talk: why they came, what they left, what they found, how they changed in the process. Their expectations vs. our reality.

JP, 25, grew up on a 1,400-acre farm near Richmond, Illinois (population 1,068), just this side of the Wisconsin border. PE, 30, spent her childhood near the east Texas town of Lufkin (population 28,562), about 100 miles northeast of Houston. - AD

How do you feel about city life?

PE: Whenever I go to the laundromat pulling that red shopping cart, loaded down with laundry, I always think to myself, 'Is this the glamorous life?' It's not. It's not what I thought it would be. I almost moved home after three weeks here. It was too much to take. . . Imagine having your whole life turn upside down, and it was of your own making. You did it to yourself and you spent a small fortune getting there. And you've brought everything with that you could get in a box. And then you don't like it. And you think, what the hell have I done?

JP: Maybe my expectations were different, but I didn't get that kind of feeling . . . Back in Richmond, I just stayed home. The only thing that's there are taverns, not bars, just little dark taverns. And they were horrible and filled with people I hated, that I hated since grade school. . . In Richmond, everybody's the same, everybody's white bread, everybody's made with the same mold. My parents and my grandparents went to my high school. It's so ungodly stifling there. Nobody ever challenges the way things are done.

PE: They don't realize there's another part of the world besides Lufkin, Texas, and Richmond, Illinois. They never leave. They stay there, their kids stay there, their grandkids stay there, everybody stays there. . . From childhood, I was always different from my sisters. Always different. My sisters played with dolls, I played tea party. So what does that tell ya? Suzy Socialite was what I wanted to be, and you can't do that in Lufkin, Texas. . . Do you get those phone calls asking, 'When are you moving home?'

JP: My father does that. I think he does that 'cause he knows it'll get a rise out of me. He has told me in no uncertain terms that I'm welcome to live in his house, under his roof, until I am eighty years old. And that I better do that. There were several times when I was in big trouble. When I got robbed [in Uptown, one month after moving here], the same weekend I wrecked my car, rolled my car and totaled it: I'm without wheels, I'm without half my belongings and the police are calling me all the time. I was in bad shape. I was in horrifying shape.

PE: Are you sometimes afraid here? Sometimes I am. Afraid that somebody's going to follow me home, somebody's going to be waiting in the foyer of my apartment building, that somebody's going to try to rip my purse off with a knife and accidentally cut my throat. . . I guess I'm a pessimistic person. I'm a planner. I think, now could this happen if I go there?

JP: My roommate does that for me. She's that element of my psyche. She'll say: Don't carry your purse that way. But that's not really necessary. I've always maintained if you live in the country you'll know about the city. . . You can learn anything about the city by watching television. All television [shows are] based in cities. You can learn almost everything you need to know, I think, about the city, because you can learn that kind of fear sitting on your farm watching television. But you can't learn about the country living in the city. You can't do it. It's not a reversible thing. The most fun thing on my farm was to bring a Chicago kid up and make them touch the electric fence, because they don't know. You can't learn about an electric fence here. Where you gonna learn about an electric fence?

PE: How long did it take you to learn that 1600 west, 2200 south, all that mess? . . . It's like, what the hell are you talking about? Why don't you just tell me which way to go, which way to walk? Don't tell me east or west, 'cause I don't know the difference. I always keep enough cab fare to get home if I ever get lost. Because any time you ask somebody how do I get to so and so, you're immediately a victim. Cause they think, this crazy white woman don't know where she's at. You just want to put a label on your forehead - Lost Victim . . . Did I tell you my mom's advice? Always make yourself as unattractive as you can, and don't wear jewelry on the train.

JP: Ya, I know about the jewelry. Somebody told me if you think someone's watching you, start to pick your nose and they'll stay far away from you. I thought, God, that's a piece of advice I can use.

How about ethnic diversity?

PE: Let's talk about inbreeding. Let's talk about every nationality in the world conglomerated here. Let's talk about whites being the minority in Chicago.

How does that make you feel?

PE: A minority ruling a majority? Isn't that what it's like in South Africa?

JP: I like the ethnic diversity. It's very important to me. I was expounding earlier on the white bread philosophy of where I'm from, the cookie cutter people. It's nauseating. . . I grew up with grey on grey. The color here is beautiful.

PE: I have never been around so many blacks on a day-to-day basis. They're treated better here, I would say, than they are in the south, in general. They're not discriminated against like they are down south. . . Texans are real close-minded people. I am. And as far that goes, for me to see a white woman with a black man, you know, that's not right. It's that inbred, Southern Baptist mentality that you never get over.

Let's talk about men.

JP: Yuuck. You don't have enough tape . . . I knew a lot of city men in school, at Bradley, in Peoria. Most people at Bradley are from Chicago or St. Louis. . . The first thing I noticed was their driving. Right up on other people's bumpers. Stop, start, stop, start, stop, start. No coasting, no in-between, honking the horn at pedestrians. . . But I don't think the urban male is any less of a jerk than other males. No, no, no. That's entirely too negative. . . I don't know, are men in Chicago different from the men in Texas?

PE: I have cowboy withdrawal. A man in a tight pair of jeans and boots. Every once in awhile you just want to see those boots with real cow dung on 'em. Those tight jeans with that Skoal circle on their butt pocket. . . I miss hearing a country man talk. It's so soothing, like a piece of home, to hear somebody talk. I miss that. . . The men back home treat you better. They just do more for you. They're gentlemen. I swear, I've had men almost run me down at the office trying to get on the elevator before me. They simply push you out of the way.

JP: I was treated worse at home. Wisconsin - cheddar-heads - you know. I don't want to be discriminatory against northern Illinois, Wisconsin-type people, but they're very non-genteel. I couldn't name a single gentleman out of all the men I've ever come across in my entire life there.

PE: [The men are] dippy here. Everybody's out for a one-night stand.

JP: All talk and no action. If I knew one man that ever did anything that he said he was going to do. . .

PE: If we could buy them for what they were worth, and sell them for what they thought they were worth, we'd be rich.

Men, I take it, don't play a very grand role in your lives?

PE: No, not in mine. I'm not looking for a husband here. Not at all. I don't want to marry one of these men. I plan on moving home and settling down with Joe Nextdoor. This isn't home. But I'll stay until I'm unhappy, then I'll move home.

JP: I'm never going to get married. I spent my whole life raising other people's kids. I certainly don't want any of my own. I baby-sat my whole life. That's all there was. There was no McDonald's to go work in. . . Men are my friends, the closest friends I've had most of my life. But when you meet a guy here who wants to get to know you, and all of a sudden you start relating to him on a buddy level, he can't deal with it. It's too different from what he expected you to act like . . . When I was in high school, there was no ring the doorbell, bring flowers, go on a date. There was no place to go. You could go to a movie, but you always went with three other couples. . . So I don't have any preconceived ideas. I'll call somebody up and say, 'Get over here, we're going to Metro. Get over here and wear your scary clothes. They'll come over, and I'll be like, Oh, you look more scary than me. Stay there. And I'll run and put something else on, Come on, let's go. And if I run into someone I know, they'll just come too. . . I have one of those work-related, big black-tie kind of annual goony things coming up next week, and I'm going to take Tommy, my best friend. Because I know he and I are just going to scare people. We're going to get dressed up, and we're going to look hot. And he's going to pick me up in his 300ZX, and we're just going to tear up the town. We're going to look like poster people, and we're going to act like poster people. And then we're going to get ripping drunk and insult the people we don't like. And that's what's going to be fun. And I'm going to come home, and he's going to sleep on the floor. That's it. And it's going to be a great time, because I don't have to worry about impressing somebody. . . Somehow I just think the dating thing is not honest. It's deceptive.

PE: When you're at a bar, you're at your very best. You're looking your best. You're at your peak best.

JP: And maybe it's not even your best. It's somebody else's best. Maybe that's not even You. You put on another skin, another pair of clothes when you go out. You become somebody different. All of a sudden, I'm not JP Farmgirl. All of a sudden I'm like - beware, beware, she's got rock and roll hair. Who is this?

PE: So, we're kind of schizophrenic, aren't we?

JP: We are. We're definitely schizophrenic. More than people who've had only one straight kind of story going on.

Since city men play a limited role in your lives,
what do two country women do about big city sex, considering what's going on out there?

JP: I kind of prey on my friend's friends. I'll sit around with my friends and go, Hey, what about your brother's roommate's old friend. What's he doing these days?

PE: I buy myself something. I spend money.

JP: That helps. . . Earrings. They're so cheap. Five bucks and you've got a whole new life.

PE: Don't get me wrong, it's not difficult to find men. If you want to lower your standards you can get some any night of the week.

JP: Smorgasbord. It's so nice to be able to pick and choose. At home you don't pick and choose, because there's ten men and twenty women. There is a set pool to work from. . . Here, Tommy and I will go to a bar and I'll say, Her, go get her. And he'll say, Then you've got to get him. And I'll go, Phssst. No problem. I know, that's mean. It's terrible to pick on people like that, but it's a fun bar game. And you never go home with that person. Because if you're that easy, then you're that easy. Good-bye.

PE: The first one to get the ugliest man in the bar to dance with them.

JP: That's another one. It is malicious, but it's not intended to be malicious to the other person. It's just because, because you can, I guess.

PE: Would you give up the way you were brought up if you could?

JP: No, no. I think being brought up on a farm is the best thing.

PE: I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. Not the way I was raised . . . Simple values. You don't expect as much out of life. You just have real simple goals. If anything, we're underachievers. You have to work harder at what you get. There was no pressure on me to go to
college after high school. After twelve years of school my parents asked me, What are you gonna do now? I don't know, why don't you tell me? My parents told me what to do all my life. I never, never made any decisions.

JP: I think my parents realized right away I had this wicked independent streak, and they kind of decided to surf with it instead of fight.

Tell me more about city life.

PE: There's everything here. And if you want to dig through all the crap, there's some real nice people here. . . I've met more people working at [my part- time bartending job in six months] than I've met for a year and a half going to other bars. I think that's because I went to the wrong bars. I was going to Neo's, Cabaret Metro, the Riviera, you name it. That's not where you meet people. You meet people in little out-of-the-way taverns where it's neighborhood people. . . I got caught up in those other places. You think, God, this is so glamourous and exciting. You think Rush Street is the ultimate because that's the first place anybody takes you here. Then after a while you think, this is horrible. All these teeny-boppers and suburban tourists. Everybody looking down their nose at you because you're dressed funny. They live a totally different life. They do not live the city life.

JP: They come to the zoo here. . . to see what's going on.

PE: And they think they can say anything to you because you are that kind of person. You are a city person. And they think you expect it. It's so weird. Suburban people and city people, they're like from different planets. Why? They live within thirty miles of each other. But suburban people, they have these little bitty minds, they have tunnel vision.

What do they say?

JP: Nice hair. Nice clothes, son of a bitch. I get a lot of that.

PE: They only do it when there's a whole slew of 'em. Never a single man.

JP: Suburban men come in packs. Car loads. . . And why are suburban people so different from country people? Because it's like there's three levels, three zones. Suburban people are the worst. You've got city people on this side, country people on that side and suburbanites in the middle. Maybe that's it. Maybe they suffer from a lack of identity or something, but they just feel the need to tromp on everyone. . . A city person won't go out of their way to annoy you, but I think a suburban person will.

PE: They all look alike.

JP: They all want to be the same person. I don't know who that person is, but they all want to be that person.

PE: They wear their hair the same, they dress the same.

JP: They shop together. Maybe that's it. A shopping thing with all those malls.

PE: You know there's something else I learned living here in Chicago. You keep your mouth shut. You don't say a word. If you see somebody on the El looking for a stop, you don't go up to them and say, Oh, can I help you, are you trying to get somewhere? You just walk past them. You keep your trap shut. It's safer that way. . . I shake on the inside. I put up this big, tough exterior. Like a city woman. I know where I'm going, don't screw with me. But on the inside I'm this twelve-year-old girl who's afraid to leave her house alone after dark. . . People offer you rides when you're waiting on a bus. Like you're going to crawl into their car. Sure, I'd love a ride to hell.

JP: That's what I call sharpening my claws. I did that in Uptown. The faster you walk, the more strength you show in your arms while walking the better. You look straight ahead, and you know exactly where you're walking. And you say to yourself, Please don't mess with me. Please don't mess with me. Please don't mess with me.

PE: You look 'em in the eye. You don't let 'em stare you down. You're not the one to turn away, they are. You kind of turn up your lip and give them that, that look. You know that look that turns people to stone? That one. You try to intimidate them more than they intimidate you. . . I am what I am around. I have turned into these people. You can't move from Podunk, East Texas, to Chicago and be the same person you were. . . They never have to pretend back home. When you've been there all your life, you don't pretend. What you see is what you get. It's not like that here. What you see is never what you get. Because I'm nothing like the person I pretend to be on the street.

JP: It gets easier and easier, doesn't it?

PE: Oh, it does. You can turn it on and off like a light switch.

Doesn't that get in the way of meeting people?
What happens if a man with honorable intentions approaches you on the street?

JP: You're immediately suspicious. That's just the natural reaction. . . I try not to be too negative. My immediate reaction is to go, OK, maybe he's not a son of a bitch. The chances are he is, but as long as I have that in the back of my mind, then I'm covered pretty much. Then I can start looking for signs that maybe he isn't a son of a bitch. You have to wait it out. You have to expect the worst.

What's the most bizarre thing that's happened to you?

JP: There was a dead guy in my alley. He wasn't really dead, but we thought he was dead. The bizarre thing is that I just accepted the fact that there was a dead guy in my alley, and I walked right past him . . . I thought to myself, What's happening to my brain. Am I becoming one of the monsters? . . But I realized that there's going to be so many strange things happening here, that I'm going to run into things that I never imagined I would. And I'm like, this is cool. Because this is what I'm here for. This is the life education thing. . . I think the worst part is putting the glass up. I don't mind putting distance between myself and the local kook. But I don't want to pretend he's not there. . . I don't like becoming hard boiled. I don't like to see myself becoming what I consider "city." When I was a little kid, it was kind of a negative thing. We saw the negative aspects of people who came out and said, Look at the country folk, ain't they cute. I'm going to buy myself a pair of overalls. And I'd be like, Don't you dare belittle my way of life, it's sacred to me. So I don't like to see myself doing anything that is spiteful or cold. Which I do, because this place makes you that way at times. I catch myself and go, Wait, that's not what I'm here for.

PE: When you moved here, didn't you miss going to your hairdresser, going to the usual stores that you shopped at, and they all knew you?

JP: Your own doctor, finding a new dentist. That's hell. Not knowing who to trust business-wise. Who's gonna screw you when you ask them to change your tire, give your car its thirty-thousand-mile checkup. I had no idea there were so many sons-of-bitches in the world when it came to auto maintenance.

PE: Also the phone bills. God. I call home too much. I miss my mom and dad, my sisters. Every time I talk to them, it's When you moving home?

JP: I wish they'd give up that crap. It only makes you feel worse.

PE: I tell myself, now this is it, I'm gonna break that string. I'm not gonna need my family. I'm almost thirty. When does that time come when you don't care what they think? I don't want to spend my vacation going home to Texas every six months, but I can't stop doing it.

So why stay?
It sounds as if you've been greatly disappointed
by what you found. Was it all an illusion?

PE: I think so.

JP: No, I still get it. I still get that sensation, dancing around Water Tower, knowing which bus to get on and everything. I get a real kick out of that. Because that's something I know nobody, nobody in that God-forsaken town, knows how to do. When I go back there, I know they're just saying, That girl is taking cabs. There are no cabs up there, no buses, no trains. It's so unique, and I love having that talent, and I love having done it. It's a self-esteem kind of thing.

PE: To come from Anywhere, USA, to this big city and be independent, it's a feeling of self-accomplishment.

JP: To talk about the 1400 block of something, they think I'm talking another language, and they think I'm cool. That's all there is to it. As stupid as it may seem, to impress the people that I care so little about, family notwithstanding, is a big deal to me. Because I can say, I remember you ignored me in first year algebra. You work in a factory and you've got five kids, that's it. I'm hip, and you're not. Sorry. That is important. I need that. I need to be able to walk down the street and scare the hell out of people. I can't do that here. I go back there and. . .

PE: You are a big-city, glamorous-life woman.

JP: For somebody to call me a city girl, I'm all set. I feel great. . .It would be the ultimate failure for me to move back in with my parents. I'd never do it. No matter how bad off I was. I'd borrow off people. I just couldn't go back. It would be very disgraceful to me. They don't think that way at all. They think I'm speaking Martian when I say those things, because to them it's no dishonor.

PE: It was such a trip to go home for my ten-year class reunion. Fly in from Chicago, and have somebody pick me up at the airport, and see all these people who married right out of high school. They've been there all their lives. They have two or three kids, their husbands work at the paper mill, they stay home and go to church on Sunday and teach Sunday school. And that's wonderful if that's what they want. But that was not enough for me.

You have something better?

PE: I have an awareness. I've seen a lot more things than they have. You feel different things.

JP: We have opportunities that they've closed themselves off to. . . We can do whatever we damn well please. We can walk to the 7-11 and hold it up if we want to. They don't even have a 7-11. . . There are things at our fingertips that they can't imagine, because they don't know.

How did you know?

JP: Country girls look to Vogue a lot for their impressions on what things are going to be like in the world - with a capital "W". Vogue has all these women that are strutting about, they're fashionable, they look hip, they got cool jobs, they drive cool cars. If they don't drive cool cars, they get on cool buses.

PE: It'll ruin you when you live in the country and you get those magazines.

JP: That's it. Conde Nast. Let's nuke the place.

PE: My very first job, I spent all my money on records and glamour magazines - Vogue and Mademoiselle . . . And you think, this is really out there, I can have that. . . I tried it my first week here. I was the one in pumps rocking back and forth on the train. People look and think, She's new in town.

JP: I see those Vogue people. Not a lot, but I do see some. But you see lots and lots of pretenders.

PE: But. . . you still fantasize yourself living that life. I do. I say, Damn, I'm doing it. I am living that magazine.

JP: Well, I went to school to be an interior designer. That's straight out of Glamour magazine. They don't talk about women who head up major manufacturing companies.

PE: I use to think everything they'd advertise in those magazines, I had to have. I'm serious. At every ad I'd say, Am I supposed to have this?

JP: Career Woman. You kind of decide that you are going to become Career Woman. And then you get here and realize you have to put on tennis shoes to get on the bus and get to your city job to become Career Woman. And then you realize that you have to kiss up to that son-of-a-bitch boss of yours if you're going to be Career Woman. Only they didn't tell you that in Vogue. They didn't tell you that you were going to be harassed by construction workers.

PE: They didn't tell you if you couldn't afford the delivery charge you'd have to haul your bed a block and up three flights of stairs.

JP: That's right. And after the third move, you would not get any friends offering to help. Yep, they forget about those little details

What were they right about?

JP: They were right about lots of things to do. I love to call somebody up and say, Meet me for espresso. I actually do that. I actually meet people for some fun kind of cosmopolitan, you know, Haagen-Daas or something. It's unheard of to do that back home. That's some kind of dream fantasy stuff. My mom and I would play at that at home. She'd make up a pot of tea and I'd bake cookies. . . She knew the whole time I wanted to be doing that for real. That's why she's not the one that says, Come back to live, come back to live. It's my dad, he wasn't a party to any of these little things. . . He's the one that wants me back. I don't know what it's going to take to make him realize how important it is for me to be Ms. Vogue for a minute or two. . . I'm afraid of the failure thing. Going home with my tail between my legs - forget it. I'd rather be knifed in the street. . . I just don't want to be embarrassed. If I had to be brutalized, I don't want them to cut off my arms and still live . . . No, I'm not afraid to die. I'd be afraid if I wet my pants when it was happening to me, I'd be like, I'm going to be killed and now I've pissed in my jeans.

Ever think about getting a weapon?

JP: No. I've got guns at home. I hunt, I shoot, I'm proficient with them and I don't want one here because I know how easy it is for someone to snag it away and use it on me. . . It'll just get stolen and some street punk will kill fifteen other people with it.

PE: I keep a steak knife by the bed, like I could do something with it. Stop, I have a steak knife, I will slice off your nose. . . But, my worst fear here is, I don't want to get carted home in a box. I don't want that to happen to my family.

JP: That's a real worry. They're not going to like it if I die in any fashion. But if I die here violently, then they'll say they were right all along. Because they fear this place. Everybody I know has got Chicago phobia. Everyone hates this place. I don't like to drive there - so drive when there's no traffic. I don't like the way it smells - they're so dead set against this place, that's probably why they think I'm from another planet. . . I know a girl, one of my best friends, who is just the most country thing on earth. She didn't understand when she and her husband moved to a suburb of L.A., why the neighbors didn't bring over cake and cookies. It never fails that I am mortified beyond belief when she comes to see me, she just embarrasses the hell out of me. She'll walk down the street, and say, There's another black person or, Look at her hair. She never gets the hang of it. She's very country. She would be raped in an instant, she would be murdered in an instant. I guess she didn't pay attention to television like the rest of us did.

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