Small town living

Seemed like every child in Bainbridge was packed into the assembly room at the Library to meet some visiting animals. The guest Eagle Owl wasn’t interested in his audience; he had those big eyes glued to the snakes, the stars of the next act. They looked a lot like lunch to him!

I was born and raised in a small city (Amarillo, Texas) and raised my family in a huge one (Houston). Most days I feel that I’m a city girl to the bone and I can’t fathom that I’ve ended up spending a major chunk of my adult life living the small town life. I begin my day with the New York Times—online, we can’t get home delivery. I wince when I hear about the Houston Grand Opera or Atlanta’s Alliance Theater.
Then I have a day like yesterday. I left my house a little past eleven to check out the animal show at the Library. It was the only time all day that I had a problem parking, and I didn’t mind at all. Every one of those cars jamming the parking lot had brought at least one child, probably more to the library not only to see the animals but to head home with two, or three, or four books to read.
I left the library and ran by the Sweet Spot, a just opened boutique and bakery, owned by the Sweet family, to pick up a dozen peanut brittle chocolate cookies (six chocolate, six white chocolate) for my pals at the Post-Searchlight where I have a bi-weekly column. It still wasn’t time for my lunch date, so I dropped in the fabric shop sure I wouldn’t find the cheesecloth I needed for a cooking experiment. (More about that later—if it works.) Janet stopped and thought. From behind several bolts of net, lace and other fancy fabrics—here was the cheesecloth. 89 cent a yard. I took three yards and talked to Janet about my daisies and her upcoming trip to Greece. She’ll close the shop for a week, but that’s fine. All of her customers know about the journey.
I dropped the cookies at the paper and met my lunch date. We walked to Café Perk right across the street from the Courthouse. I had a chef salad and mega iced coffee. My bill added up to under $8. An hour later I waved good-bye to my pal and popped into the Courthouse Annex to vote absentee since we’ll be gone on Election Day. That took about ten minutes. I was the only one there. Two voting clerks made sure things went smoothly. I needed some ingredients for my cooking adventure. I trundled out the mile or so to a supermarket on my way home.
Just before 2:00, I pulled into my driveway ready for a writing afternoon! Image doing all of that in a little over two hours in NYC, Houston or Amarillo!
There’s something to be said for small town life!

If you'd like to see some more scenes of Bainbridge, go to my webpage, http://www.trillap.com and click on Bainbridge. It's a work in progress!
More on small town living in the next few days.