Middle Town USA

We’ve lived and worked in major metropolitan areas, large cities, middle size cities, middle size towns and small towns. For the time being we are living in what I consider to somewhere in between small and medium (population of around 60K) with a fairly large city just to our west (about 425K). Once you establish yourself in one or the other over time you seem to forget the positive and negative things about the others and sometimes even what is positive about the present.

Then a reminder comes along. Something out of the ordinary happens, a complete surprise.

While we don’t really know many people here (we are loners remember), every once in a while we see someone we know in the grocery store or at a restaurant and we will stop and chat with all of the how are you’s and have you seen so and so. Oh, and in the grocery stores here it is important to understand that what many would consider common items elsewhere appear in the gourmet food section here. Both of the above are reminders that we don’t live in a big city.

Or maybe someone you least expect will do something unexpected, maybe someone you don’t even know. This reminds us that we are not only living in the mid-west but in a not so large city, not to mention that it only takes about 10 minutes to go just about anywhere within the place.

Yesterday, another reminder came in the mail. When we moved into our house, I had to give the local Water Company a deposit of $40.00 to get the water turned on, had to drive down an unpaved gravel road in what I thought was the middle of nowhere to give them their fee. I figured that eventually it would come back to us so I pretty much forgot about it. Yet, in the mail, there it was, a check from them, a deposit refund it said. On the stub were the dates the deposit was made, 5/2/1997 and the date they no longer felt that it would be necessary for them to believe we might run out on them and not pay our bill, 10/12/2007.

So for ten years, five months an ten days, they held on to our deposit. It might be someone’s job at the Water Company to watch the calendar each day and check their receipt book to see who has satisfied their ten-year hitch. Maybe it is someone with a green eyeshade and garter belts around each sleeve. Someone with thick glasses combing through multiple sets of books all day, every day to track down those now deemed trustworthy and then they send out a check. But not for $40.00 mind you. Not in middle town USA. Here you get interest and that was a surprise.