\Population: 485"" drives down dirt roads with an ambulance's lights flashing and nothing but the northern Wisconsin woods for company. The book sifts through the life of the volunteer fire department in New Auburn. Composed of ""part-timers, novices and rogues,"" it manages to perform its duties faithfully whether those duties are putting out a fire, saving lives at an auto accident or running a beer tent.
Michael Perry relates his experience as a prodigal son returning to his hometown to stop some bleeding and insert himself back in its social stream. He is ""a dyed-in-the-slop farm boy"" who hunts in swamps, attends poetry readings and quotes Kierkegaard at a brat dinner. He is a Renaissance man in a town with one gas station.
The book has you crying with heartbreak from the first chapter when the population drops to 484. It makes up for this loss with a plethora of thoroughly developed characters that embody the correct mixture of strangeness and accessibility. They come together to constitute a place and by doing so they transform it from 11 streets off of Highway 53 to something that can truly claim to be a community.
It is hard to get through a paragraph without wanting to read it, or at least some part of it, again. A bookmark is used guiltily, knowing that to put it between the pages implies that the ones that follow will not be read immediately. ""Population: 485"" is moving but real, honest as a farmer's grin and may be considered the great rural epic told with one siren at a time.
Could you describe the exact moment when you decided to go back to New Auburn?
I grew up there and it was always in the back of my mind to go back there. I had got to the point where I was surviving as a free-lance writer and I realized that, thanks to the Internet, I could work just about anywhere'so I went back home.
What were your cowboy days in Wyoming like?
When I was 16, I started spending summers out in Wyoming working on a ranch. It was a regular working ranch in the southeastern corner of Wyoming. I'd go out there and work on the hay crew. Then a couple of summers I went out earlier and worked on the branding and round-up crews. It was real ranch. I lived in a one-room log cabin next to the Medicine Bull River. There wasn't running water. We were fed in a cookhouse, just like you would expect in a ranch and it was good.
You graduated with a nursing degree?
After high school, I went to the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and got a bachelor's degree in nursing. I worked as a nurse for a couple of years.
Do you ever feel like returning to the farm?
Well, no. I love the farm, if you're talking about the dirt and the trees and the field. I didn't mind milking cows, but I did just enough to know that it's not what I wanted to do. Actually, as it turns out, I was one of the last of a generation of farm kids from a typical family farm.
Have you noticed a renewed veneration or reverence for firefighters and EMTs in the past year, even in a small town like New Auburn?
I'm always careful with that because, as far as the events of 9/11 are concerned, there's no question that there's profound bravery exhibited by those folks and it therefore brought more attention to firefighting. Many people have written far more eloquently than I'm able to about those events. Sure, there is some increased attention.
For every talk of heroism, it's also true that part of the reason I'm a decent EMT is that I don't flinch at the sight of blood. That's really fundamental, actually. For whatever reason, puke doesn't bother me or a cow raising its tail.
Did you get any flack for returning to your community after being gone so long?
I left town as a good student and a fair defensive end. When I came back I was a longhaired writer with soft hands and a nursing degree. There was some explaining to do. All in all, I was welcomed and treated very well back there. Certainly I had developed interests that weren't parallel to those of my buddies on the department'like going to poetry readings. But I also still love to go to stock-car races. So, without any sense of post-modern irony, I just dig it. There's no question that I'm a farm kid and that I'm blue collar, but I had to address the fact that I write for a living. You have to be honest with both sides'it's also a great source of humor. I could win the Pulitzer Prize and my father would say, ""Great, go get a haircut."" You know what? I'm grateful for that.
Did you write with a particular audience in mind?
In general, I was thinking of writing for someone who hasn't been there and could read this and find it germane and entertaining. But, there's no question that when you're from a place like that and you want to live there for 20 years, you are also thinking if you're being fair to the people you live there.
You didn't really set up Beagle and other people as eccentrics, but definitely as characters.
The Beagle is such a fascinating character. Here's a guy who can't get gas at the only station in town because both his ex-wives work there. But the beautiful thing is that those characters are in every small town and those small towns aren't just 400 people, they could be 5,000 or 10,000'it just depends on what they're used to. They're just folks. The truth is that everywhere you go'it doesn't matter if it's Wal-Mart or the Ritz Carlton'the person working behind the desk or checking you out has a story. More often than not it's a pretty fascinating story. In my case, I was just lucky to be able to write about some local folks.
How does a fire truck handle on a dirt road?
The thing to remember about a fire truck is that it's more important to get there than get there fast. The most dangerous thing is to drive a tanker that's half full, because there's a big slosh. Any kid that grew up on a farm and watched a milk truck back up knows this for sure.
Do you feel like a celebrity in New Auburn?
I hope not. I am, first and foremost, Mr. Perry's boy. The other thing they know is that they're very aware that I write for a living in the same way that some of them work as butchers and truck drivers.
Did you ever end up on the writer's float for Jamboree Days?
That highlights it'I am not comfortable with the idea of highlighting a profession for whatever reason. I'm a writer, that's how I pay the bills. Jamboree Days is still, nonetheless, my favorite event of the year. I often say that it's one of the biggest events of the year, but it's the biggest event of the year and basically it consists of a five-minute parade and a softball tournament. It's slightly bent in that small town way, but it's very warm and inviting.
