Terra Extraneus

Have you ever visited Dustbury, Oklahoma? Dustbury is a very real place just down the information highway, an unusual little world with a permanent population of 1. One eccentric, witty, irreverent, self-deprecating old coot named Charles G. Hill.

Dustbury is one of Oklahoma’s most popular blogs; it was voted the best-written blog in the 2005 Okie Blog Awards. I’ve been following Dustbury for a while now. I enjoy it a lot, and I added Dustbury to TerraX’s “Best of Okla. Blogs” some time ago.

Dustbury’s mayor, chief citizen and resident sage is Charles G. Hill, a middle-aged computer guru slash homespun philosopher. Hill has two adult children, two grandchildren and an ex-wife. Why hasn’t he remarried? “The level of desperation reported to exist among contemporary women is highly exaggerated.” Hill writes about many things, almost everything, including frequent observations about being single in the second half of life. Last week he wrote:

“Alone,” of course, does not equal “lonely.” But I’ve always believed that there’s a reason besides mere etymology that they share most of their letters.

Hill remains an Oklahoma Democrat long after most of the state has converted to GOP-ism. Sometimes he writes about politics, state and national, but he also serves up an eclectic mix of news, philosophy, music, poetry, computer tech notes – and a thousand other subjects. Among the numerous choices on the Dustbury menu is “The Vent,” a weekly column Hill has been writing for the last 10 years. That makes 488 Vent columns to date, and those columns alone make a drive to Dustbury worth the gas.

Hill is an eccentric. He still has his e-mail archives dating back to 1994. He has worn the same Casio watch for more than 25 years. He can tell you, in case you were wondering, the mathematical average of all of the zip codes at which he has ever lived. And, if you believe everything he says, at home Hill lives pretty much in the nude (Charles, too much information!), although he assures us that he suits up to do his lawn work.

Where is Dustbury? Hill is an Oklahoma City resident, but Dustbury is not confined to the city limits. “We want ritzy suburbia, but we know how hard it is to shake off the red clay of the country. Upscale, but still possessed by poverty: call it Dustbury — the dream home on the edge of nowhere.”

Here’s a short and clever 1997 piece introducing Dustbury, in which Hill manages in a few paragraphs to touch on the Trail of Tears, the Oklahoma Land Run, the Dust Bowl days, mentioning John Steinbeck and Walt Whitman along the way, and taking the obligatory potshot at the Daily Oklahoman. “What Is This Place Called Dustbury?”

This isn’t at all a bad place to be. The sun shines most of the time, and the feeling is laid-back; while wages are definitely on the low side, the cost of living is not disproportionately high; and for every single example of Oklahoma stupidity and venality you see in the media, I can show you a dozen examples of Oklahoma brightness and kindness. I’ve done a stint on the Left Coast and one on the Right, but just about half my life has been spent here among the Sooners, and for the most part, we get along just fine.

Dustbury’s archives go back to 2002, but the site contains articles dating back more than a decade, salvaged from previous Hill websites, and the site boasts: “founded: April 9, 1996.” Reading Dustbury is the kind of non-linear experience that exemplifies the way the Internet is supposed to work – but almost never does. A Dustbury visitor glances through Hill’s FAQ, where he clicks on a hyperlink to “mysterious people,” which mentions “She Who is Not To Be Named,” which clicks to another page that offers a poignant account of a heartbreak. And no buttons or links back or forward to any other page except the homepage. So the reader is forced to click back to where he started, ready to take another ride. Before long the Dustbury visitor has started several articles and finished none, doesn’t remember where he began or everything he has seen along the way – but he enjoyed the trip.

There’s nothing fictional about Dustbury. It may not be on the map, but it has a very real URL address, and I recommend a visit. The site gets more than 800 visitors a day, and has had more than 1 million visitors since 1999. Dustbury offers literally thousands of pages of good reading, with more served fresh daily. Dustbury is what a blog can become, when a talented writer with a keen wit pours his life into its creation for several years. As Michael Bates over at Batesline says, “Dustbury is the epitome of a blog … By comparison, other blogs are mere shadows on the wall of a cave.”