Thursday, November 6, 2008

I’m A Small Town Girl

Every morning, I go downstairs and open the blinds in the living room window for Sophie so she can look out at the bird feeder and dream of catching a bird. The other day, I came downstairs and went into the kitchen and got my breakfast ready. I forgot to open the blinds for Sophie. After about 5 minutes I could hear her trying to get in them. I walked in the living room to open them and said to her (yes, I talk to my cats),

“Sophie, I telled you not to get in the blinds before I open them.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. Rolled my eyes. Then tried to correct my grammar. Who am I kidding? I’m a small town girl, and my bad English is my proof.

Some times, I really miss the small town. Sometimes I don’t.

I grew up in a small town of about 2,000 people (most likely less) and that number included the five small surrounding towns. We don’t have a stop light in our town. I had 95 people in my graduating class.

I liked that I knew everyone in my high school by name and who their siblings were. I hated that my mom would know stuff that I had done before I could get home and tell her what I had done. I liked that we had nothing to do so we had to come up with ways to entertain ourselves. I hated that all you could buy at the (one and only) grocery store was Western Family brand. I loved the smell of stinky dirty horses. I hated the smell of branding cattle.

Some times, I miss the small town. Sometimes I don’t.

Whenever I start to miss the small town, my mom can somehow sense it. So she sends me the latest newspaper clippings to cheer me up. These are a few of my favorites.

(All of the following examples were taken from the Millard County Progress. If you like what you read, go here to subscribe to this paper)

Example #1 - This is a real life ad from the Millard County Newspaper.

news1

“None of your dang business” is an actual phrase heard in our small town very very often.

Example #2 – The Holden Happenings (For those of you not in Millard County, Holden is just outside of my town and is included in the population count above. This town gets their own section in the newspaper called the Holden Happenings.) I’m posting this only because they printed it in real life, so I’m guessing it is fair game. Sorry about this images. They were taken from a scan of the newspaper.

news5

news3 news6

I don’t even know where to start. So many things made me laugh in this article. I guess I’ll start with my favorite part. “It seems like people are dying nowadays that never used to die before.” Now there is a sentence you don’t hear everyday. Or perhaps Ever!

And then the author end this by saying “Actually I don’t really mind dying, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Well, Okay. I’m at a loss for words.

Secondly, ”the State Wrestles”. This part, I didn’t get at first. I had to ask my mom what was wrong with it. But in our small town, the wrestling team is called the “Wrasstles”. I guess it is a grammatical error that I was not taught in our small town so I didn’t pick up on it.

The other funny part about this is that the “townspeople who were waiting in their cars at the north end of town around 9:00 pm…and followed {the team bus} up and down Main Street.” This really does happen. I’m serious. Anytime a sporting group or dance team does well at a competition, when they get home the team will ride the fire truck up and down Main Street so everyone knows how well they did. People follow the team down Main Street in their cars honking the horn and hollering. We would stand on our porch and flash the porch light on and off (Yes, we really did. We were showing our school spirit!) But I think this is mostly funny because it was 9:00 pm. The author makes it sound like it was so late at night. If it had been any later people might have gone home and went to bed! And I’m serious!

Example # 3 - Another ad from the paper. I don’t know what “Goose Gazers” are, but they are welcome in our town.

news4

Don’t get me wrong, I love my town. I love all the funny quirks. I love the smallness of it. I love the people. I love the smells (we have a mushroom farm that turns fertilizer like twice a week and it makes the whole town stink. You get used to it). I love the sunsets. I love that seeing a tractor (or fork lift from the lumber yard) drive backwards down Main Street is normal. I love the small town grammar that is part of me.

These newspaper articles make me miss the small town. And then they make me laugh.

I will always be a small town girl at heart!

7 comments:

alpinekleins said...

Cami - I am at work sharing this with all my nurse friends, I am crying, the tears are rolling down my cheeks!! Thank you for making our night!

Mamaw said...

I hope you NEVER outgrow it.

Crafty Christina said...

I'm not from a small town, but I can understand loving and missing the things that are special to where you're from. I think I'd be sad to not live in a place where everyone says "how you doing?" LOL. I absolutely LOVE the article about the woman and the tunnel. Classic!

Sadie said...

A Goose Gazer is the birdwatchers who come to watch the geese, I belive it's at Clear Lake and they are Snow Geese. I'm still the small town girl I just moved it to rural Arizona, I haven't had a horse sinced the Fillmore 4-H days. I love your blog because of all your crafts, I have absolutely no talent for any of it, I wish I did. So, instead, I look at all of your beautiful things.

Pauline said...

oh how I miss the good old high school days of living in fillmore....

Lisa S. said...

I can't tell you how much this meant to me. It was like hearing it from Keith and it made me cry. He loved the small town of Kanosh. He would always tell me about the quirks and it was good to hear about them again. And the part about the fire truck up main is true, Keith has been on the fire truck once or twice for track. I never thought that me, raised in the city would say it but I love small towns. I am trying to get back to that because I miss it so much. I like that you can call on anyone and the whole town knows what you are going through. Thanks for your post I truely treasured it.

Rebekah said...

These are so hilarious! I can't imagine growing up in a small town...they sound so wacky : )

The closest experience I have to this newspaper is reading the campus safety report from my small college newspaper..."a student reported that a cd was stolen from a dorm room. It later showed up in her suitemate's room" and other such randomness