Life in Little Elm, A Survival Guide for Life in a Small Town

This was my first newspaper column, written about twenty years ago.

Living in a small town requires a period of adjustment particularly for those who have spent any time at all in a city.  Currently, I estimate this period of adjustment to be at least eleven years.  This is not certain, however, as I have only lived here ten years and still have not fully adjusted.  Of course, small town life is thought to be less hectic, it's not, it's just that the “hecticism” is of a different nature.  The turmoil of simple existence in a city with its traffic and people and noise is replaced by the hubbub of "involvement" in small town life.

     In the city, it is quite possible to disappear completely, to hide among the masses, never surfacing, and no one notices.  In fact, I heard of one guy in Dallas who died in his apartment and it was several weeks six years later before any of his neighbors missed him enough to investigate.  After discovering the body, they expressed a certain amount of remorse even though they did not know his name.  They described him as a good, quiet neighbor, adding that they dreaded seeing who would move in next. 

     In the small town, this would never happen, for every five minutes a neighbor will arrive at your door seeking help with a community project such as a kids' horseshoe team, church roof restoration, or well you get the idea.  The point is that life in a small town is unique, because whether you want them to or not, people know who you are.  And, if you try to avoid mixing with them, they will come to you.

     Once a neighbor of mine asked me to help him break into the house next door to him, because the individual living there had not been seen in a couple of days.  It seems that my neighbor's wife had heard that the fellow had recently separated from his wife and was concerned that out of anguish he may have chosen to end his life.  With some hesitation my neighbor and I agreed to check out the house.  After locating an unsecured window, well it was almost unsecured, we opened it and climbed inside.  Carefully, so not to scare anybody into shooting us, we made our way through the house, calling the man's name, "Don't shoot Fred, it's just us neighbors checking on you to make sure you haven't killed yourself or anything." 

     Looking back now, I consider it very fortunate that no one was home. Turns out he was out of town on a business trip and his wife had just gone shopping.  But, while we were inside the deserted house, we took careful note of the kind of decor (at the suggestion of our wives).  You can never have too much information.

     Just in moving in you experience the difference between city and small town life.  In the city, neighbors will offer to help you move in so that when you are not looking they can help you unload the stuff and will even store it for you in the local pawn shop.  In the small town as we were backing up the truck six neighborhood women showed up with pies to welcome us to the neighborhood.  Each promptly offered to send us help, next time we needed it.

     In the city, the less involved you are the better.  People would rather think of you as Apartment 32B rather than a person.  Small towns demand involvement.  People who seek isolation are much more inclined to find it in the city than in a small town, but often they move to the latter thinking erroneously that quiet serenity will follow.  Six months later the wife is the president of the PTA, the husband is chairman of the membership committee for the Royal Order of Raccoons, and each child is on at least six sports teams.  Not exactly the tranquility that was expected. 

     The one redeeming factor is that escaped convicts might think they can hide in a small town, but once their pictures are smeared all over the local newspapers planting trees for the local garden club the FBI has little difficulty locating them. 

     The second thing that one must adjust to in a small town is the lack of noise.  People from an urban or city-fied environment, will lay in bed at night straining their ears for the sounds of traffic.  The husband is likely to request that his wife go outside start the car and blow the horn a few times so he can sleep.  At least I thought it would help but my wife would never do it.  It took us two weeks to get where we could sleep in the overpowering quiet.

     It should be noted that after relocating to a small town, everyone is expected to go through a rather extensive classification system.  In this system, the newcomer is interrogated and classified by the community association of meddlesome inquisitors, which after a while includes just about everyone.  You have to be meddlesome if you are going to fit in.  By classified, I mean placed into groups of married or single, bridge player, or golfer, Baptist or Methodist, coffee drinker or boozer, important stuff like that.  Soon everyone in the community can recite a descriptive synopsis of everyone else.  Tests are held every six months.

     Of course, this may present a somewhat negative view of small town life,  truth is there are more positives than negatives.  After three years of living in a city apartment, the only conversation I had with my neighbor in the next apartment consisted of me saying "Turn that music down," and him responding with questions concerning the marital status of my parents.  The first conversation I had with my neighbors in Little Elm consisted of my detailing my entire life history while agreeing to coach two kids' soccer teams and participate in at least a half dozen committees.

     In my life I have lived in a number of small towns, some of very small size like Hale Center, Hamlin, and Little Elm, and I have lived in a number of cities such as Dallas and Denver.  In spite of everything, I like the small towns better, but you must be aware of some minor details if you are to survive small town life.  My story here is a survival guide - in the weeks to come...

Life in the Upper Deck

            Welcome to a new beginning, and a new way to celebrate our virtual community in our little corner of the universe, this also begins my new blog. I had started blogs a dozen times before, but not under the right conditions. But, this one represents the right time.  I will reflect in my column, and I will also have some things that I have written in the past, humor and serious material, you can read what suits you.  I write to help me think and focus and remember. If you disagree with me, good for you, we are all different, and I am as different as they come, but if I give you a light chuckle or something to think about, that is my mission. As we whirl about on this orb, maybe just maybe we can learn a bit from each other.

            As I begin to pen this blog, in the truly virtual sense, as I can never actually find a pen, and the monitor I have does not allow you to write on it like the modern ones do, something I learned the hard way. I’m not a journalist nor am I an enemy of the American people, but I am the scourge of telemarketers and politicians. Before you try to label my particular political point of view, understand, I favor the political party of George Washington, and I am a radical in every sense of the word, because all of the greats, all the people who advocated change were radical thinkers, whether Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Gandhi, Jesus, Buddha, and Chuck Norris.  No matter where you stand politically, I am different from you, I just want to talk about things in a common-sense way.  As to religion, I consider myself a scientist, but I also consider myself a Christ follower, and I walk the path of those who advocate peace and love and joy in life.  I am not a great writer, nor am I a great thinker, but to paraphrase Descartes, I think therefor I write.  I value my family, and I believe in the words of the Elvis song, we are all cousins. We are all family. Speaking of family:

            It has always puzzled me how many families have a story that has been passed down through generations of lost royalty or squandered wealth. You know the stories, “Our great-great-grandfather had a hundred billion dollars but he got mad at his children over an incident when he was served thin spaghetti instead of linguini, and he left all his money in a shoebox down at the local department store.”

Logic would never prevail. It does not matter that there were no department stores in 1749 (as everyone know they were invented in 1833 by Mr. Joseph Department), that they did not have shoeboxes back then (sort of like modern Arkansas), or that none of our relatives were Italian.  Family members would explain away any challenges with, “The story is true, Uncle Bernie swore to it just before he died, and if we could just find the right shoe box.” And, off we go on another trip to the department store.

            Of course, we all heard the wonderful story of the girl who grew up believing that she was the long lost daughter of a Russian King and was therefore entitled to get in all animated movies associated with a certain mouse’s company for half price. The stories were very sad, how the girl grew up never achieving her dream of a return to being the totalitarian leader of a Russian empire. As I recall, on her deathbed her final words were, “It’s the chads – count all the votes, a fair and accurate count, I know I won.”

            Anyway, I was reminiscing about my grandparents a few days ago when, it suddenly occurred to me how these family myths occur. I remember visiting my grandfather's farm just outside of the bustling metropolis of Longworth, Texas, population 16, counting Scooter, the local church pastor's hound dog.  On the occasion of my visit, my grandfather and a couple of his neighbors were in the back yard building a new structure. When I inquired as to what the structure was to be, my grandfather told me that he was building himself a new throne. As I was only four, the answer satisfied me, and I remember dreams of knights and royalty, sitting on the throne, dealing with knaves and oafs and such. Fighting damsels rescuing dragons in distress (as I said I was only four, I did not like girls - like my sister - but I had nothing against dragons). I knew there was royalty in the family. I had blue blood. I was the descendent of kings. I sat for many hours amazed in my own importance, sort of like real journalists.

            Somehow, over the years, I had forgotten the origin of my belief, only somehow remembering my royal lineage, until I observed a similar royal structure, in the backyard of a

farmhouse. This one was a two-holer. Suddenly, it occurred to me that perhaps my blood was

not quite as blue as I initially thought.