Sunday, May 31, 2009

Our Town, or WWTW Say?

Let me introduce you to our town. We live in the country, but my Dear Professor works at the college in town. It's a grueling 6 minute commute each day. And that's one way, mind you. It's worlds away from his hour and a half bus commute when he was an attorney at a big law firm in the big city in Texas, or even the 45 minute commute to the university of his post grad days in New York.

It's a hard life, I know, but my Dear Professor loves his family enough to make the sacrifice. And the free books. He loves review copies of books.

Where was I? Oh yes, our town. It's your typical two block town. I think Thornton Wilder would find many things here very similar to his fictional Grover's Corners.

The only high rise is the retirement condo on main street. All eight floors.

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The natives, and you have to go back at least seven generations on the same block or farm to claim that distinction, call life here "living in the bubble." Every now and then the bubble bursts, but we don't talk about that.

Let's see, we have everything one could want: a real movie theater with resident bats,

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(I am told by one of the natives that the bat colony probably predates the theatre. They keep the lights low, but you can hear fluttering on rare occasions. The bats add a certain, umm, ambience to horror flicks. And mosquitoes are never a problem.)

a ratio of one hairstyling salon for every two women and one pizza place for every three college students,

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more Gothic Presbyterian churches than a Southern Baptist can shake a stick at,

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one US Post Office (currently under renovation),

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railroad tracks that separate the two blocks of downtown from the "suburbs",

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three banks in a row,

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a local coffee house that serves sandwiches and a caramel macchiatto that can give Starbucks a run for its money,

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an uptown block,

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a downtown block,

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and right smack dab in the middle of Broad Street, wait for it, wait for it,

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a tattoo parlor!

Now I ask you, in all seriousness, what would Thornton Wilder say?