Small Town Girl

I lived in Atlanta, Georgia, for a while and I still like to go visit my friends there. City life has its advantages. There are lots more places to eat and plenty of things to do, but if you have to drive across town for anything, you also have to be willing to navigate through five or six lanes of traffic. The last time I visited I let my friend do the driving. I strapped myself in, closed my eyes, and didn’t open them again until we got to where we were going.

I like living in a town so small that the only place we have three lanes of traffic is at the caution light where there is a turning lane.

In small towns like mine, when something happens, good or bad, most of us know about it within 24 hours. Last Thursday night we had a terrible storm and early Friday morning the telephone rang. It was a friend calling with an unusual request. It seems that lightning had struck a neighbor’s home and it burned to the ground. The family barely had time to escape and didn’t even have time to grab their shoes.

My friend was on a mission. “The family whose house burned has a son that needs size 15 shoes. I told everyone at work we’d never find shoes that big, but the school bus driver said he thought the Kindred twins had really big feet and they might have some shoes that would fit. Do you?”

The boys have graduated to size 16 shoes. We did some searching and, sure enough, we found a pair that would work. I told her we’d bring them by and the boys dropped them off on their way to school. Later in the day, my friend called back to say thank you. “I still can’t believe we found a pair of shoes to fit that boy,” she said. “Thank goodness for big feet!”

I know I have said it before and I’ll say it again: I love living in a small town where not only does everyone know your name, they also know your shoe size.