I’ve been saving this one up.
My first week back in
“I’m a single, divorced twenty-nine year-old woman living off my unemployment with my cat in your basement. Are you so proud of me right now?”
“Shut up, Sarah.”
“When you run into people you haven’t seen in a while and they ask what I’m doing, what do you tell them?”
“Enough.”
Ah, it’s funny because it was true for about a week.
Since my return, I keep trying to pontificate about small towns, the simplicity (both a pro and a con) of the lifestyle. I love that people always wave. No matter what, if you wave, they wave back. I love that every child has 4,235 parents looking out for them at any given moment. But this is starting to sound like the rough outline of my graduate school admissions essay. I’ll save that entertainment for another blog altogether, but it should be noted that this illustrates the beauty of the hamlet. And reader beware: I have many thoughts, stories and examples and will likely keep espousing this move I’ve made.
That first Thursday, my mother and I decided to meet for a beer after work (her work, not mine). So, we met at the nearest town to my parents place,
Evidently, Thursday is regular’s night at the Rocheport General Store, which is exactly that, right on the main drag. The only drag, really. Beer, wine, a bit of nosh, some sundries, occasional bands. You know, generally, a fun place to be. The regulars are the townies, some of whom have lived in or around town their whole lives. They pull tables and chairs out onto the sidewalks, they drink Miller and Bud Light like it’s a race to the end of the keg. Kids write on the sidewalk with chalk, dogs walk from person to person looking for love. The more beers consumed, the louder the din gets. They holler at folks they know (which is everyone) as they drive down the street. When the mayor, a thirty-something kayaking buff turned village-politician, and his wife and kids show up for ice cream, they heckle him good naturedly.
My mom and I follow suit with the chairs and tables. My parents aren’t quite locals, having officially moved to town just a few years ago. However, the fact that they raised their children just down river in Boonville grandfathers them in. There’s this guy, Dean. He’s the guy who takes care of Rocheport. I would call him a maintenance man, but I don’t think that’s quite descriptive enough. He mows, he takes care of big issues, works with the utility companies, but also, the little old ladies in town know that they can call him and he’ll come help them out.
Dean recognized my mother and came over to chat. He is a slight man with gray hair, a deeply lined, suntanned face, but youthful eyes and a bright smile. He spoke deliberately, with a soft voice. And, just to complete the picture, he wore a tie-dyed t-shirt and Hammer pants. The dog, not his, stayed close by. Neville, the kid, also not his, hung on him, poking his face and nudging him as if they were related. A good egg, as they say.
“What’s up with the cop car that always parked, empty on the hill?” My mother asked.
Dean grinned for a moment, pausing for effect. It was obvious a story was coming.
“You know Rocheport doesn’t have a police department,” He began.
Rocheport does not have a police department. They depend strictly on the
The creative solution they came up with was this: purchase an old City of
Just take a second, please, to let that sink in…how awesome is that? I love when people take the law into their own hands...and what better way to deal with a pesky issue like this one. Think about that…could Tower Grove South really take in upon themselves to dummy up a cop car to combat speeding, or burglary or car theft? Not a chance.
If that isn’t amusing enough, the story gets better. There are a handful of people that have keys to the cop car. The mayor, Dean and another dude (and I don’t know what he did to deserve a copy of the keys). It seems that there may need to be a check-in and out system for the car, because those with the keys often utilize the car for non-speed reduction related issues.
For example, we offered to buy Dean a beer. He thanked us and said “I wish I could, but since my truck transmission is on the fritz, I’m driving the cop car. Gotta be in decent shape to drive if I’m gonna drive that thing.” Mind you, Rocheport is about ten blocks by ten blocks. He looked up, serendipitously at just that moment to see someone driving away in the cop car.
“Dammit. There’s goes my ride. I guess I will have that beer now.”
He told stories about tooling around
Seems to me that you can do whatever you want when you drive one of those black and white Crown Vics.
God love the small town and good old fashioned ingenuity.
