I grew up in a small town, and now I live in a super-small town. Small towns have certain disadvantages. For example, if you need to buy, say, a bra while in my town, you go to one store, choose from two colors and three sizes. Good luck. Need shoes? Outta luck. Small towns also often suffer from small-town-mentality, but I've found this stereotype becomes of little consequence when citizens choose to defeat it. With these, and a few other exceptions, my small town rocks.
Yesterday I dropped Levi off at his 'sports' class (his dad prefers that we don't call it 'dance'.) Then I dropped my car off at the local tire shop where the owner calls me by name. He knows me. I trust him. I strapped Isaac in the stroller and walked through our small town streets. It was a perfect fall day. No wind. No heat. No chill. No clouds. Blue sky. Orange leaves. Ripe pumpkins.
As I was walking, I was thinking that there is really no place in my town that I don't feel safe. That is worth something to me. We rounded a corner and saw an old man walking out to his garden. I didn't know him, but since there are really no strangers in my town, I waved to him. He hollered over, "Do you want some tomatoes?" Does that happen in the city? Well it happened in my town. I told him that I had been bottling tomatoes all weekend, but thanked him for the offer. We picked up Levi from his class and started walking back to the tire shop. Just as I was savoring the beauty of the pristine autumn day with my two amazing boys, we happened upon a huge oak tree which had dropped hundreds of acorns on the sidewalk just for us to enjoy. Acorns in the fall? That's like snow on Christmas! Levi, of course, was determined to gather as many as possible to take with us to the mountain to feed the squirrels and chipmunks. We eventually struck a deal to take just one.
In my small town, I feel completely safe sending my daughter off to school. I know she is watched over there. The faculty members call both Daisy and I by name. They know our family. In our small town, we love the library, the park, the one-stoplight-in-the-whole-county, the local drama productions, the recreation leagues, the mix of new and old, the four-way-go's (most of our intersections are not marked with any road signs,) the Christmas Festival, the rodeo, the 10-minutes-to-a-campfire-in-the-mountains, the front porches, the back yards, and the people. I love that there is no dreaded Wal Mart in my small town.
When I was younger I always thought I wanted to live in a big city. For now, I love having cows, chickens, a new puppy, lambs, cats, horses, and raising my family in a small, small town.
9 comments:
dito!
Your making me want to move to Nephi:)
Great post!! Being from a super super duber small town, I couldn't do it again. Not that small at least. You are right about Nephi though, I love being there. :)
Duper :)
I remember moving from Vegas to Kanarra! WOW! ;)
I agree, I love the small town atmosphere. I miss it and I sometimes wish I was raising my kids in one. But we are lucky enough to live in a great neighborhood where everyone on our street is friends. The past 2 nights, Kambree has taken it upon herself to eat dinner at our neighbors house. We feed thier kids, they feed ours. On any given evening, there are about 20-30 neighborhood kids riding bikes, scooters, playing hula hoops, football, just being outside. I really love it here and yes, I too despise Wal-Mart. But i do like my Target. ;)
We really love our small town to! I can relate. We have people drive by our house on a daily basis that honk as they drive to say "hello", where in the city it would be to say "get out of the way"
You should try living in Ohio. Just a thought.
Nothing is worse than having to drive 30 min to work each morning. Maybe Nephi will forgive me of my trespasses and let me move back someday. Tell the Jeffster hello.
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