Livin' Large in a Small Town

I thought about titling this post: "The Top Ten Reasons I love living in a small town." But, I immediately decided against that, since there are many more than just ten reasons I love living here.

It's been almost 10 years since TH and I moved the family from the craziness of the suburbs to a little town in the Minor Outlying Islands off the coast of the U.S. We did not move here by accident, we moved here by design. There are so many things here that make it a great fit for us--even the town name. (Sorry, but, even blogggers deserve a little privacy. You either know it, or you don't. If I told you, I'd have to kill you.)

One of the best things about life here is the consistency. There are things, and people, you can count on seeing over and over again--sometimes every week, sometimes daily. Then again, there are some things that are so extraordinary that you'd never see them anywhere else.

I thought about this, this afternoon as I saw the four older people standing out in front of the library. Three men and a women. They have been standing there, every Thursday afternoon, since we first sent soldiers into Iraq after 9/11. They carry signs saying things like "Bring Our Troops Home." and "End War." Five or six years ago, they were a bigger group and when you honked the horn at them or gave them the thumbs up, they would shake their signs from side-to-side and nod vehemently, or shout out a loud "THANK YOU!" as you drove by. These days, I honk and they offer me a slow wave and go back to talking between themselves. But it's another Thursday and they are still there.

I'm part of a small writer's group that meets with an English teacher at the high school. The other night I wrote a piece of prose in which I waxed on about the latest antics of the Mayor of Safeway. When I had finished my reading, I looked around smugly at the other three sitting at the table with me.

"So, can any of you guess who the Mayor of Safeway is?"

"Sure," they said. And in less than a minute, all of them had identified the man I was talking about.

He is a little less then five feet tall with a thick trunk and a beer belly and looks for all the world like a moving quipee doll. His hair is cut in a kind of mohawk, with the top sporting a waved curl--kind of like the old Hawaii-5-0 logo. The Mayor's most identifiable characteristic is his neck--or the lack of it. It's as if his head is directly attached to his shoulders, kind of like Humpty Dumpty or a Kindergarden drawing. A circle on a square.

Regardless of the weather, there are some things the Mayor always does: he always wears shorts, sandals and a tank top, he is always holding his cell phone and he is always talking on it. Our family started calling him the Mayor of Safeway because he can usually be found at one of the round, umbrella tables in front of the supermarket door. Occasionally he takes a break to rapidly stroll the store aisles. He's a man with a mission.

After we discussed the Mayor of Safeway, the group turned their attention to the Three Philosphers who always sit in the chairs outside BJ's Coffee. They rarely drink much coffee--although occasionally I see them dig in their pockets and run in for a cup. Mostly they just sit there, three old men in baseball caps, flannel shirts and jeans, feet crossed and stretched all the way out in front of them. They spend a lot of time arguing in loud voices, but you get the sense they are old friends even as they're disagreeing. The Three Philosophers are there almost every day. When it rains, they just drag their plastic chairs under the awning of the shop and keep talking.

When we don't run into The Mayor at Safeway, we usually run into Bobby. Bobby is a middle-aged bagger who happens to be developmentally disabled. The only evidence of this is that he speaks in a very high voice that, literally, carries across the store. When Bobby he sees you, he is always faithful to greet you with a big smile and a loud, cheerful: "HI!!!" And if for some reason you miss it, he will call out to you until he is sure you've heard him. Bobby is, quite simply, the best. He can make me go from self-centered to happy in a split second, and it seems like he has that effect on most people in the store. Our Safeway makes a great effort to hire a number of disabled baggers. I love it. It's one of the main reasons I patronize them.
More later.