Small Towns

I find myself driving a lot here in Salt Lake City, not necessarily to go anywhere.  Just to drive.  I miss driving away.  Away from the people and the traffic and the buildings.  I know I'm probably romanticizing living in the country like the way you do with an old relationship.  You remember the person as funnier, cuter, and a better kisser than he really was.  You forget the dragon breath that came with his love of Gardetto's, the annoying way he ate his cereal and how he once cried when you broke his treasured Star Wars Ewok Village replica.  Three words.  Buck up, Skywalker.

There are a lot of things I miss about the small town I grew up in.  The way the night sky looks like someone poked a thousands holes in the Light Bright paper, how everyone waves when they pass one another, how quiet it is.  It's so quiet, you can hear the wind rushing over the open fields.  It fills your ears up like the surf being driven upon a beach.

There's also a lot of things I never thought I'd miss.  Like the isolation from civilization.  Here you can get anything you need 24 hours a day.  It sounds good in theory, but when I'm craving Stacy's pita chips and hummus dip and I know it's a two minute drive to the nearest grocery store I'm more than likely to give into temptation.  And that bag says it's three servings but I'm pretty sure it's one.  See what I mean?  No bueno.  Three servings?  Pshaw.  Maybe for Polly Pocket. 

I recall one fateful morning in middle school.  I woke up, washed my hair and went to plaster my frizz fighting hair gel to my many strands of unruliness.  Oh no!  We forgot to buy hair gel when we were last in Logan.  I remember being pretty upset with Mom.  How could she do this to me?  Did she want me to be a social pariah?  Had she forgotten I resembled Sideshow Bob when my hair remained au natural?  My poor mother.  She instantly put on her chemist hat and started cooking me up some hair gel in the kitchen.  How hard could it be, right?  I don't know all the things she put in the mixture...gelatin, cornstarch, honey...maybe?  Who knows.  But I attempted to slather it on my head and I swear if you threw a couple of mini marshmallows and some mandarin oranges and cottage cheese in the mix, you could have ate some tasty jello salad ala Debbie.  I caused such a ruckus that she told me to stay home from school.  I would have loved to listen in to her call to the school.  "Yes, I am Denise Cooper's mother.  She won't be to school today because I am serving one of the courses to my lady's luncheon off the top of her head."  Country folks are nothing, if not inventive.

There are times I enjoy the anonymity of living in a place with so many others.  Like when I run to the grocery store, sans makeup.  When we lived in Logan, it was more than likely that you'd have to stop four or five times to visit with the people you knew from high school and church and family reunions.  Aren't we related?  Yeah I've been asked that before.  When I worked at Lowe's.  When I said no, he asked me out on a date.  Bu-dum-bum.

But I also miss knowing people.  At least when you live in a small town you know who all the weirdos are.  In the city there is no definitive way of knowing.  You know, unless you actually...talk to them.  I've lived on the same street for nearly two years and I still don't know who lives in a quarter of the houses.  Maybe I just happen to live on Hermit street.  Maybe I'm one of them.  I simply can't shake this sense of "otherness".

I look at these city folk and I think...I'm not like you.  One summer day as a kid I got invited up to my neighbors house to swim.  What did we swim in?  Their brand new watering trough for their Holsteins.  We had so much fun.  It truly was a hillbilly swimming pool and none of us even cared or knew it at the time.  Hey, better to swim in it pre-cow saliva, than post.  And that's what I think when I'm introduced to another fashionable city dweller.  Have you ever swam in a cow trough?  Did your mother ever resort to her vast knowledge of jello saladia to save your white girl afro?  Have you ever had to wait until the next big grocery shopping trip into "town" to pick up your latest craving?  No?  I didn't think so.  It's country snobbery.  I admit it.  I must be the only person in the world to think less of you if you've never waded in manure infested water.  Maybe if I touted the benefits of City Creek (Creek rhymes with tick for those not in the know) Clarkston would become the mecca of organic spa getaways.  I can see it now...the cow trough hot tubs, the cow patty facials, and my mom's mandarin orange jello salad hair mask.