Southern Illinois. The friendliness. The clean air. The tow trucks.

I grew up in the humble province of Steeleville, which is about 30 miles northwest of beautiful downtown Carbondale. The livestock outnumber the humans but even if you happen to be a silly farm animal you could still park your car downtown without fear of a tow.

You can park your car just about anywhere in Steeleville any time of day without the fear of being towed. As a matter of fact, Steeleville does not even have a tow-truck service. If you wreck your car or hit a deer, better call up your relatives to come and push you out of the ditch. You can repay their kindness with the flattened deer off the side of the road.

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I have never seen a car get towed anywhere but in Carbondale. Maybe a town slogan reads, Need a non-consensual life? Come to glorious Carbondale the biggest little conspiracy in Southern Illinois.

When I was just 6 years old, my mom and brother and I congregated in our off-green 1976 Thunderbird on a very cold day. The car was parked outside of Steeleville’s First National Bank, but could not start because it was so cold.

My mom told me to walk the frigid five blocks to my Nana’s and Papa’s house while she and my brother waited in the T-Bird. I arrived, slightly frostbitten, at my grandparents’ house and was then driven to the stalled and frozen T-Bird. It received a jump-start from Papa’s car.

Now, picture our T-Bird being stranded in a parking lot in Carbondale. I can already envision the tow truck backing up to the 76 T-Bird; the tow truck would hoist the car, my mom and all.

My brother, Joshua, would cry out, Please don’t tow us, my brother just ran off to our grandparents’ house so we can get our car started.

The tow operator would part his evil lips slightly at the corners and would say, Now if y’all don’t exit the car and get out into the freezing weather, I am going to have to tow you along with the car.

It costs extra to tow with people in the car, he would sneer.

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So, when I would arrive at the location 20 minutes later with my Papa, the car and my family would be en route to an automotive slum protected by inbred dogs.

Life doesn’t work like that in Southern Illinois not in Marion, Sparta, Belleville, Percy, Chester, Red Bud or any other decent community. Students are being had, and being stripped of basic vehicular rights. I am so sorry, fellow students. Some things that go on in Carbondale would never be allowed to happen to any other town within a 10-county radius.

Oh well, I guess a town that is run inefficiently can’t admit not being able to make ends meet. So, they have to admit it indirectly through such things as non-consensual tows.