AMBASSADOR ME

 

This past weekend I was debating whether I needed to get a ticket to fly the thousand miles from my Patagonia home to Buenos Aires to present my credentials (or, perhaps better said, “rap sheet”) at the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So far I’ve received no specific instructions, but I just received word that I’ve been named “Ambassador”.

The appointment was extended in a terse boilerplate statement, but came with a badge—some would say, “of honor”. It’s a symbol of a megaphone.
I should hasten to say that this is not a federal appointment. It’s not even a diplomatic appointment from my home state of Ohio. I was named instead by my home town. Well, a segment of my home town—I know no few people there who wouldn’t mind seeing me tarred and feathered as a demonstration of their sentiments. Namely, the appointment was provided by an excellent Facebook group called If You Grew Up In Wapakoneta (Improved and Uncensored).

Specifically, I’ve been named Group Ambassador. It is my understanding that it is more honorary than anything else. The citation reads: “You and 2 others have grown membership of If You Grew Up In Wapakoneta (Improved and Uncensored) by sharing the group or inviting others to join. This badge displays for one month and only group members can see it.”

Please note that the parenthetical “Improved and Uncensored” in the name of the group is because there is another Wapakoneta site with a similar name. The whole idea of both groups is—or was in the case of the original one—to share stories and memories about our uniquely named home town. The idea of both sites is to express love for our town and our past. When the original group began, it was wonderful because it really became a place where Wapakonetans from every generation, whether they still lived there or their lives had led them elsewhere, dropped in and shared pictures, anecdotes, historical studies and current events strictly about our town.

But a number of folks who preferred a more realistic approach wanted to bend the “feel good” rules a bit and say, “Hey, our town’s great and all, but…” And the folks who went there to hear about the good ol’ days found these complaints offensive and basically argued back that they hadn’t joined the site to hear their town maligned. In particular, many of these feel-good hardliners espoused the idea that, if you no longer lived in Wapakoneta, you should keep your damned mouth shut about it.

It should be pointed out that the founding owner of the original group was very discerning and judicious in her decisions about which comments would be permitted and which wouldn’t. I learned to read her criteria and saw that, basically, she wanted to avoid having the site turn into a venue for political debate, for venting grudges or for digging into every skeleton in the town’s closet. She wanted it to be, pure and simple, a place where people could come to relax for awhile and indulge in neighborly nostalgia about our shared and, in most memories, idyllic past.

Her site. Her definition. Her decision. The group wasn’t meant to be an organ of the free press. She did a good job of refereeing arguments and of leaving in every memory that even loosely conformed to her rules. She was rewarded for her efforts by garnering a membership numbering some six thousand—an astounding number, considering that the standing population of Wapakoneta has always been fewer than ten thousand souls.   

I got it, and was more than content to share a very large series of stories that I’ve written over the years about growing up in smalltown America in the nineteen-fifties and sixties. My pieces drew a lot of comments and prompted a lot of other people to share their own memories. Because of that, the site owner was more than happy to receive my contributions, as well as all of the other interesting pieces of local history regularly contributed by other members. I simply learned to withhold any writing I did that focused on the more negative aspects of our history—undeniable past racism being the most sensitive of subjects, or, for example, a couple of pieces I wrote on the tragedy of the historic Native American removal movement that, still today, local officials do their best to cover up.

Sadly, the pandemic took the site’s owner, along with a million other Americans. And the truth is that, since then, the first If You’re From Wapakoneta group has fallen on hard times. There is clearly an administrator because things are constantly being removed without explanation after they are posted. Despite that fact, the person who seems to have considered him/herself the founder’s heir appears to lurk somewhere in the behind-the-scenes shadow where no one can contact them or learn their true identity.

I had, sometime before all this happened, joined the Improved And Uncensored group, simply posting my Wapakoneta efforts in both, so as to be able to share memories with friends in both groups. But from the time that the owner of the original site passed on, there seemed to be fewer and fewer posts of historical and nostalgic interest making their way into it. Eventually, I noticed my posts were no longer eliciting any responses and went in to find out why not, surprised to discover that it was because they were no longer there. I spoke to other regular posters on the site and discovered that a lot of their posts had been removed as well. These were people I knew to be proud Wapakonetans and to have always posted interesting stories and photos.

Little by little, it seemed to be a site dominated by announcements for pancake breakfasts and community fish-fries, or for pictures of unveilings of VFW plaques than a place to exchange nostalgic memories. I said as much in comments on my own Facebook timeline, and suggested that if anybody was still interested in sharing their memories without censorship, they might want to check out the Improved And Uncensored group. To my surprise, dozens of people who read and follow me on Facebook joined up.

I remained a member of both groups, but no longer posted on the first one—it was futile if everything I posted was going to be arbitrarily scrapped. Today, after my diplomatic appointment in the newer group, I wanted to see what was up in the first one. I found that it was no longer on my Groups list. And when I ran a Facebook search, I could no longer find the group, which leads me to one of two conclusions: either the original group has been shut down entirely, or whoever the Wizard of Oz behind it is, he or she has banned me definitively, which leaves me scratching my head, since no one in recent memory has written and published more about our home town than I have.

The spin-off group (Improved and Uncensored) is precisely that: people who enjoy sharing their memories of our town, but not always seen entirely through rose-colored lenses. This site still seeks, however, to trigger the best memories of our townspeople’s shared past. In its “About” section, the legend reads: Everything Wapakoneta—mostly sweet post cards and pictures from days of old. Also stories about Wapak for example: I love Auglaize Street. It smells nice. But in practice, the range of what we can recall there is considerably broader than in the original group.

Anyway, I had already earned a badge that looks like a tiny steaming cup of coffee next to my name in the Improved and Uncensored site as a “Conversation Starter”. That was kind of at the top limit of my expectations for Wapakoneta peer recognition. But I have to say that my being appointed Group Ambassador is really above and beyond. An honor I hardly take lightly.

That said, and on second thought, I fear I’ll have to forget about traveling to Buenos Aires to present my credentials as Wapakoneta Ambassador-At-Large in Argentina. It seems Wapakoneta ambassadorial postings are quite brief. According to the appointment, one month. Argentine bureaucracy is notoriously and glacially slow, so it stands to reason that, by the time I can register my papers with the Foreign Ministry as a member of the diplomatic corps and have them approved, my ambassadorship will have long since ended.

I’ve been thinking, though, once you’ve been an ambassador, the title is yours for life. So can I insist that people call me Ambassador Newland for the rest of my life? Hey, it’s worth a try!