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...