What do we mean when we say “small-town feel” or “preserving our small-town character?” These are easy terms to throw around, but on the face of it, these sentiments don’t mean anything unless we can define what a small town is, how it feels to live in a small town and what exactly we’re saying when we talk about character.
This post is what a small town means to us.
A small-town feeling is when you need to get something done, you can call Frank who knows Bill who has a tractor and a skid steer to move some dirt around for you. It’s knowing your favorite auto repair shop dude Steve who takes cash and is an expert at buffing out small scratches to fix that little ding your mother-in-law made on your car while visiting for Thanksgiving. It’s about knowing the school zone schedule so that you don’t get trapped behind a parade of parents, but if you do get trapped it will only cost an extra 10 minutes of your life.
It’s when the trees get knocked down from a ripper storm and your neighbors crowd around to help with a chainsaw, their truck and hard labor. It’s when a family member passes from this earthly plane and everybody you know huddles around and shares your grief with love, laughter and food.
It’s a place where you can have an existential conversation with a checkout cashier in 30 seconds and a 30-minute talk with a neighbor who you haven’t seen in six months that doesn’t mean anything at all but still feels good and leaves behind a lingering tingle. It’s somewhere you can’t hurl a rock without it landing at a house of worship and a place that has so many food kitchens and pantries that there’s rarely an excuse to go hungry or be spiritually poor.
It’s the feeling you get when you drive around town and slow-roll a few stop signs and there isn’t an officer posted up behind a tree ready to hand you a ticket. It’s the feeling you have when Bubba calls you Bubba at the hardware store and Sheila calls you Honey in the drive-thru at Burger King. It’s the fact that any of us can show up at a government office and ask for something, and not only do they help you immediately, you get to chit-chat about development and the last storm that came through.
It’s having your bank be a physical thing where your friends work behind the counter. It’s having local restaurants that you’ve just got to know about through word-of-mouth because the extent of their advertising is a large stucco’d pig on their lot or a burned-out barrel smoker that only comes a couple times a month. It’s when you can look someone in the eye, shake a hand, and strike a deal without paperwork or fear. It’s about having friends with boats to take you and the cousins out on the lake for a day, and it’s about knowing the right people who have the best tree stands so that you can harvest a year’s worth of venison before taking it to the local processor, who himself only has a shingle hanging on the door.
It’s about spotting the tiny local honey spot on the way out to Normandy, swinging in and gathering three pints of bee’s nectar that will cure your seasonal ailments faster than a trip to Florida. It’s about wine clubs and golf tournaments, car shows and hot rod garages, pawn shops that are gun shops, and it’s about connecting through Ray or Phil or Jim to the guy that gets the good hickory chunks, perfect for a hot fire or making axe handles, and it’s only $60 for a truckload of aged splits that will keep the chill gone off the back porch.
It’s about knowing that Hank has a 20-foot car-hauler that if you ask sweetly enough he’ll let you use for a day or two. It’s about seeing the same faces on a regular basis, either in the stores or the streets and it’s about seeing our government’s leaders at events or church and being able to communicate with them your thoughts on the state of the city.
It’s a place that is full of good people with good hearts that care about the future, their children and their aging parents. It’s about being welcoming to new people, creating the conditions for their success and it’s about teaching the value of taking the time to communicate and understand what it means to live here.
We’d love to hear your answers—please share them in the comment section.