For the past four years we’ve made annual trips to South Carolina during the summer. While some plan and save for vacations with exotic destinations, our batteries are recharged when we find refuge from the busyness, crowds, and big-city feel of where we currently live. I know there are many who are energized by living somewhere that seems never to sleep, where they can have authentic Ethiopian food delivered at 3:00 a.m. or find a club just shutting down at 5:00 a.m. I am not those people. To quote a popular 80s song, “…I was born in a small town/And I can breathe in a small town,” and that’s just fine by me.
Now I know that small towns have their share of challenges. Access to quality health care, well-stocked libraries, or Target is not guaranteed. Not everyone there has had the benefit of an extensive formal education; some might never have travelled more than a few miles from where they were born. Family and community beliefs might have been held for generations, and that can be either a bad thing or a good thing. There was a time when I associated larger towns with open minds and plentiful opportunities. Of course, sweeping generalizations about anything point to faulty reasoning, and anyone who’s watched the news lately can attest to the fact that there’s evidence of closed minds and inhumanity in nearly every corner of the world.
While we were back in our hometown, our days included stories of the neighbors’ donkeys getting loose and grazing in my parents’ backyard until a group could be assembled to herd the wayward livestock to their pasture, conversations with the gas station cashier about where to find good hash on the Fourth of July, and hearing nothing but cicadas humming at night.
Driving around a little community we hope to call home one day soon, we decided to stop and check out a few shops to get a sense of what it would be like if we lived there. The small grocery store we visited first looked identical to the Community Cash where my family shopped in the 70s. It wasn’t a deliberate attempt at “retro” or “vintage;” no, it was clearly a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach. On the end caps of aisles were taped encouraging quotes and Bible verses that appeared to have been created using a dot matrix printer from the last century, and shoppers were able to pick up Hostess snack cakes, t-shirts supporting the local high school football team, and live bait if they were so inclined. As we walked up the cereal aisle I paused to admire the selection of grits, a food completely absent from Colorado supermarkets, when my gaze fell to a handwritten note taped below the shelf of oatmeal. It read, “Please do not steal the oatmeal. If you need a box, I will buy it for you. Thank you, Manager.”
That note summed up so much about what is beautiful about small towns all over. Their residents come together when there is an unmet need. Yes, theft is wrong and it affects many, but people in these small towns recognize that when someone is struggling, that, too, affects many and their first instinct is not to persecute (or prosecute) but to help. Life in smaller communities doesn’t always look like an episode of The Waltons. Just before we arrived home, a young police officer had been shot and killed conducting a wellness check. He had only days before learned that his wife was expecting their first child. There is crime, poverty, and anger to be found everywhere. It is how these are addressed that reveals the heart of a town.
I’m proud of the town where I was born and raised. I’m proud that its residents don’t turn away when they see something that needs fixing. They don’t see the “other” when they look at someone unlike themselves. They rally. They have bake sales and fund raisers for a newly-widowed expectant mother. They shake on a deal and keep their word. They help change a flat tire and expect absolutely nothing in return. They look their neighbors in the eye, know them by name, and slip a much-needed box of oatmeal into a grocery bag, paid in full by a store manager who can’t bear empty stomachs. We have a lot of growing left to do, and probably always will. But there’s nothing a 24-hour falafel shop or trendy night club can tempt me with; give me a roadside peach stand and a town that hugs necks and blesses my heart any day instead.
PartWolf 