Small town life

I grew up in the sort of small town that people write novels and plays about. The sort of place where the high school English teacher and the junior high shop teacher grew up together and the high school vice principal and the junior high nurse are married. The kind of place where everyone in town turns out for the big football game against the cross-town rival and where the fire department dog runs free through the streets.

After seven years living in big cities and disappearing into the crowd, I'm back in a small town. Okay, actually, we live about fifty yards outside of town, but I'm counting it. My dear husband, on the other hand, is a city boy. He spent his entire life in and around Louisville, Kentucky. It's not a big city, but it is a city. There are no small neighborhood events, no local kooks that everybody knows, no small town charm.

Now that the weather is nice, there are finally opportunities to show him what I love about small town life. It started Saturday night when we walked into town for ice cream and stumbled upon the calendar of summer events. It read a lot like the list of events scheduled for the small town where my parents still live: concerts, parades, car shows.

This morning, we joined the entire town for the Memorial Day parade. It was just like back home: the American Legion, the Girl Scouts, the high school marching bands, it was my childhood all over again. The husband marveled at an entire town gathered around the small veterans memorial as men in uniforms read speeches and high school kids in wool band uniformed played patriotic songs. And then everyone walked back to their homes. And for me, it was home.