Small Town End of Summer
The Little Things that Make Us Love Rural America
They say every writer can’t help but add pieces of herself to the works she creates. I suppose it’s true. Especially in this short I wrote for a class several years ago about the land of my heart. And I think we all need a reminder now and again of the reasons we love our small towns.
Enjoy.
She pulls her car into the drive behind the school where she’s spent the majority of her time during the last two decades. The annual community festival has left her sunburned, exhausted, starving, and completely content as she makes her way to the final event of the day. Too exhausted to move, she simply exists for a few moments, slowly taking in the sights and sounds of the softball field and concessions stand.
It’s one of those almost-fall evenings—cool enough to pull out a hoodie, clear enough to reach out and pluck a star from the sky—and she can smell the barbecue from a block away.
The conversation floating across the field is filled with teasing, flirting, neighborly advice, and the gossip that comes as naturally as breathing to small-town busy-bodies. They come in handy sometimes, and are a staple of small-town. “Did you bring that cake of yours? Oh, thank goodness. I thought we weren’t gonna have a decent thing to eat tonight. Who let those firemen be in charge of the grill anyway?”
She laughs along with the crowd as jokes are tossed back and forth between friends. Smiling, she is reminded again of how precious life is, here on the plains. Here, there are no strangers, at least, not tonight.
This is home, where men and women drop their work and play to spend days on end protecting the houses of friends and neighbors from raging prairie fires. A place where all feuds are put aside until the crisis passes.
It’s an old-fashioned place where ranchers baby-sit by taking their little granddaughters to feed cows, fix fence, and tag calves. A place die-hard city slickers who’ve passed through on their way to Somewhere retire to, because they fall in love with something about it they can’t quite name.
A smile crosses her face as she remembers. This is the place where one-hundred and fifty down-home country folks housed and fed one-hundred and fifty stranded travelers like kings for five days during a blizzard. A place where the local newscast begins at the 5:00 a.m. breakfast table in the only café in town, known affectionately as “The Office”. This is a place where most shots fired are three-pointers in a game of pick-up basketball, and occasionally at the pesky skunk in the backyard.
Her thoughts are interrupted by a small voice coming from about waist-high.
“Miss Ellie? I’m thirsty.”
“There’s a water fountain inside, sweetheart.”
The little girl’s face melts into an adorable pout. “I don’t want to go in by myself.” She holds out her hand. “Will you go with me?”
It’s only twenty feet to the water fountain, but, Ellie’s a pushover, so she accepts the smaller hand and they walk inside, older girl listening to the chatter of her six-year-old counterpart.
They return to the softball field and rejoin the crowd, most of whom are too busy catching up to watch the game play out. Days like this bring everyone out, from the oldest bachelor to the youngest baby, and the sense of contentment is almost palpable. The firemen congregate by the grills, debating who fries the best French fries. The grandfathers sit on the bleachers, discussing the game, the economy, the crops, and the ever-popular politics. The grandmothers gather around the newest baby, ooh-ing and aah-ing, and bragging about their own. The parents who aren’t getting their workout on the softball field are getting a better one by keeping an eye on the children—and they are everywhere. Chasing this lizard, that bug, each other, and in general enjoying the freedom of growing up in a town that exemplifies the saying “it takes a village to raise a child.”
The evening winds down on a silent note, with the soft conversations of good friends, interrupted by the occasional cheer for those persevering in the ninth-inning. As she slowly makes her way back to her vehicle, she pauses to stare at the clear sky, trying to absorb everything before it fades away into a memory that begins, “back in the good ol’ days…”
She smiles.
This is my home.
