“A small town is a place where there’s no place to go where you shouldn’t.”
The morning is chilly. When I woke up, I was glad for Gracie and the warmth of her body. It was even cool enough to bring my furry slippers out of their seasonal retirement. The sun this morning looks muted. It sits behind grayish white clouds. Maybe it will rain was the best the weatherman could do.
My town had the usual stores, the sorts every small town had back then. It also had a hospital, a zoo and a town pool. It had one movie theater, a couple of bowling alleys, a miniature golf course, a Dairy Queen and O’Grady’s diner. My town always felt huge to me. The Independent was the town newspaper. It was published once a week and was crammed with every tidbit of town news. We knew the grandsons of the Riley family were visiting and that the Roberts had celebrated an anniversary. All the pages and stories were filled with names of locals. I even made it myself a few times. The police blotter listed every call. We knew whose cat was caught in a tree and what old lady heard strange noises at night. For a short while, when I was in elementary school, I delivered the Independent. When I was in high school, I wrote a weekly column in the summer about the drill team and the competitions we had every weekend. I loved seeing my by-line. The fire station in town was an old brick building covered in ivy. It was across the street from the town hall. On the grounds of the town hall was a small shaded walkway with a few benches. A World War II memorial in front of the building named every resident who had served. I always stopped to read my father’s name.
In my memories, that town, where I grew up, was idyllic, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating. It had everything a kid could want. We had woods, railroad trains and tracks, Saturday matinees, berry picking spots, the swamp, an ice skating rink in winter and a playground in the summer with its games and sports and all sorts of handcrafts. All of my friends lived there.
When I was forced to move to the cape, I was devastated. I went from everything to nothing. On most weekends that first year I took the bus back to my town. Gradually, though, those bus trips became less frequent and then they stopped. I stayed home.
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keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
June 9, 2010 at 1:48 pm
My home town was bigger than Yours, but we always felt that our district was a town of its own. We had to cinemas and every time the street car went by all seats shaked like it was an earth quake 🙂 🙂
Later on in life I heard that Majorna, as the district is called, was the slum of Gothenburg 🙂 That might be true to be honest. Half of the families had an alcoholic or worse and it happened that they found a body in the garbage now and again. But I never felt unsecure there.
All older people kept an eye on us kids and if we were somewhere they thought we shouldn´t they sent us home directly (even the alcoholics di so). Every one was poor and when the end of month came we all borrowed tokens to be able to cook food on our gas stowes. Or someone wanted a cup os sugar and an egg and so on 🙂
We didn´t always have heat in wintertime because the land lord were drunk and had forgotten to order oil to the central heating 🙂 🙂 But most of us loved that place!
When we finally moved, it wasn´t especially far, everything changed. People had more money and couldn´t care less about their neighbours. I´ve always missed the place I grew up in. Nowdays it´s a place for rich people 🙂 🙂 But I´ve heard that otherwise it´s just the same.
Have a great day now!
June 10, 2010 at 7:34 am
Christer,
I laughed at the shaking seats. That might have been perfect for a scary movie or one with an earthquake.
I think kids don’t often see the underbellies of their towns. They see the kid stuff.
Back then we all felt safer knowing everyone was keeping watch.