Sometimes Small Towns Are Just Small

I have really been relishing small-town life for the past two years. Having moved around from place to place since, well, birth, I have always longed for a place to call home. I didn’t arrive here by choice, but by circumstance. However, I had always felt at home here. Papa and Baba have had a house here on the lake since I was three and I have always come here for summers and holidays. Many of the people here now are the still the same and I have grown up with their children and now our children play together. I don’t have any other place that I would call my hometown. The longest I lived anywhere was for six years in another small town in Oklahoma (near Tulsa), but I had no idea what small really meant then.

According to the little green sign you pass when you enter Radiator Springs(obviously not the real name, but seriously what Squib calls it...for realz) we have now topped out at 693 people. Where are all those people? I surely don’t know. It doesn’t even take five minutes to drive to the next “town” and I’m not so sure that Radiator Springs and the surrounding “towns” aren’t counting some of the same people twice….

The nice thing about living here is that everything is just flat easier. We’re the county seat, so you can imagine how many people must be in other counties. Taxes are much lower. General living expenses are remarkably lower than anywhere else I’ve ever lived. There’s no pace you have to keep up with. Our grocery store is about the size of a Chili’s restaurant, which does cut down on the creativity of our menu, but we get around that by shopping a little when we’re in the greater Houston area. Library, post office, burger joint, diner, café, little shops on the square that sell resale and trinket odds-n-ends, hardware store, two feed stores, two dollar stores, more churches than we could possibly fill up (some of those folks are going to have to adjusting their belief structure a tad), fair grounds, schools (consolidated with another nearby town), two banks, some realtors, one CPA, a bail bondsman, and that’s about it….well, of course the fledgling Scat Family Trio’s Oil and Gas prospecting business.

 

Medical care is in the “next town over” to quote the natives which is about 25 minutes away and there’s a Wal-mart there which looks like Mecca to me now that I haven’t set foot in a mall since 2007.

 

I misspoke a little about traffic. We do occasionally have traffic-jams, but only during the monthly trail ride and early in the mornings when some of the ranchers are moving their cattle.

Every holiday is celebrated by the entire community and taken very seriously and, yes, everyone does know everything there is to know about everyone else.

 

Except me. I am a bit of an unknown quantity. I have a gift…I can keep my mouth shut.

 

Today, though, I really felt like I was in the middle of the middle of nowhere. Normal day. It was Saturday, but when you live and work as I do, all days are work days when the boys are not around. And with that humongous, looming, taunting, frantic, and inescapable deadline hanging over my head…I just needed a fix.

All I wanted was a pizza.

That’s all.

One pizza.

One little bitty pizza.

Mimi and I were here alone, so I had to stay with her. Therefore, the need for a pizza escalated into the need for a pizza delivery in addition to just a pizza. Simple, right?

NO!

Our little town not only does not have a pizza joint, but is so far away from one that pizza places in adjacent towns will neither deliver nor prepare one for take-out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

My first thought was about our youth minister…I mean, really! How do you have a youth ministry alive and kicking without pizza!!! It’s the culinary language of kids and teens alike!

 

Then, I started contemplating how very badly I wanted pizza and just exactly how much I might be willing to pay extra for one pizza to be delivered here. I don’t have to tell you that the amount was rather exorbitant. I was desperate!

 

Fortunately, Attrition made plans to stay over tonight so he could play drums for us tomorrow…first instruction I gave was BRING PIZZA!!!! I WILL PAY!!!!

 

There are many, many things I love about Radiator Springs. I really don’t want to have to leave here permanently. But sometimes…..

Sometimes small towns are just a little too small.

Today, if it hadn’t been for internet access and Attrition, I’d have cracked open like a piñata!

Still in one piece,

Scat

P.S. Happy Birthday to my youngest, Squash Blossom!!!! 4 whole years old today!