Small town

The other day, I was telling Andy a story about growing up and I found myself going on and on about all sorts of things that had nothing to do with the story but which I couldn't remove from the context of the story in my head, so it all had to come out together.

After voicing some of those things out loud, I realized that there are some fun aspects of my childhood.

1. We had no shower. Just a tub, on feet.


2. When I waited for the bus in the morning, in front of our house, Mr. Bailey would walk by on his way to work at the bank and he always waved and smiled. Some days he carried a folded up umbrella in his hand.


3. When we were sick, we'd walk up the street to the doctor's office, which was in the basement of the doctor's home (which was next door to Mr. Bailey's house.)


4. Ralph Klein's store down on the corner, now a chain of grocery stores run by his sons and probably their sons, was where we walked to for food and hardware plus some clothes and my Dad's Herman Survivors work shoes. They also had a basket of penny candy by the cash register and they handed out a free piece of bologna at the deli counter.


5. One time when our well pump stopped working, we ran a garden hose from our neighbor's farm house into our 2nd floor bathroom so that we could wash up in the tub. Our houses were a few hundred yards apart.


6. We only went to church a few times that I recall. When we did, we cut across the neighbor's lawn in our dress shoes to get there. The church was (and still is) right in front of the elementary school.


7. We could tell when the neighbor's cows got out of their fence overnight by the cow flops in our yard in the morning.


8. Mrs. Vaughn lived 2 houses up and worked at the Post Office, which was in the same building as Klein's, across the street from the bank.


9. On Halloween, Mrs. Monk (who was extremely old and lived alone in a 2-story house) would put animal crackers and lollipops on a cookie sheet for us to pick from. My brother and sister and I were probably the only trick-or-treaters on our street.