Category Archives: small town life

Eclipse in a Small Town

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I could see the early parts of the eclipse from my living room window, and so I watched it for a while while I sewed my sweater together (not a Franken-sweater although somehow the two front panels of the cardigan are about an inch longer than the back panel. Luckily, this one calls for a decorative crocheted edge which I’m relying on to hide such things). When it was nearly at full eclipse, I stepped outside to watch.

All up and down my street there were people standing in their yards watching the eclipse. A couple of high school kids came out of a house across the street and went to get in their car, “hey! look at that!” one of them said. “Yeah, it’s an eclipse,” I heard my neighbor Mike, two doors up the street, tell them. “Cool.” We all hung out in our yards, watching the eclipse.

Its why I wanted to move to a small town. I love that we all kind of know one another. We get on one another’s nerves sometimes — I had the fence guy here yesterday because it’s become clear that my next door neighbor and I both need a little more privacy in order to get along. So come spring, Mike will return and build me a privacy fence to match the one on the other side of my lot. Good fences, as they say, make good neighbors (and I’m already dreaming of what I can plant along that sunny fenceline).

There’s a Very Old Man whose house we pass every morning on the way to the dog park. His Sweet Brown Dog always comes to the fence for a little love and so we stop, and pet the dog, and wave at the old man in his living room window. Just after Christmas, the Very Old Man disapeared, and I feared he’d died. One Sunday, walking the dog, I ran into his nice old-hippie next door neighbor who told me that no, he’d had a heart attack, but he was okay and they thought he’d be home in a couple of weeks. The neighbor told me she’d met the sister of the Very Old Man at the nursing home where he was recovering. Our grumpy old man had been raised in a tiny cabin in Mill Creek, in a family of ten kids. His parents died when he was only 16, and he’d stayed in that cabin and raised all those siblings. “I know he wanted to get married and have kids of his own,” the sister said. “But he stayed and raised all of us, so that never happened.” Last week, walking to the park I ran into the neighbor as she was carrying a plate of spaghetti and meatballs next door to the Very Old Man for his lunch and it was clear that she’s taking him a plate for lunch and for dinner every day because he’s very old and someone needs to make sure he eats. She didn’t make any kind of big deal of it, I only figured it out because she said Brown Dog is glad to see her twice a day because she knows she’ll get leftovers.

And that’s why I love living in a small town. Because we all watch the eclipse together. Because everyone watches out for the Very Old People on their blocks. Because the default position is that we’re all in this together, not locked away behind our three car garages in neighborhoods where no one walks, or talks to one another. We walk. We say hello. We pet the dog and wave to the old person in the window and ask the neighbor what happened. We learn one another’s stories.

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I’m Going to Miss the Cows …

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My milk delivery came yesterday. The thing with buying milk from a real cow is that it’s not always the same. This week I pulled nearly a quart of cream off the top of my gallon, and the cream is thicker than it’s been before. Almost like English cream — slightly lumpy. This might be alarming except that I know my cows (well, I know my cow-lady). I took the leftover cream from last week and mixed it in with the creme fraiche I already had going (I bought a tub at the local gourmet store to use for starter). So I’ve got nearly a quart of cream and a pint of creme fraiche … yum.

Since we’re going into a milk-drought for a couple of months, I think I need to make another batch of yogurt. I’ve been making it in pint canning jars, and the seal on the lids means the yogurt keeps really well in the fridge. I’m also starting my annual obsession with green sauce — happens every year about this time — suddenly I want green sauce on everything. And if I can get through the milk-drought on my own yummy yogurt, that might help me get over having to drink commercial milk.

Coincidentally, there’s a piece in the SF Chronicle’s food section about some women who have started a yogurt business in San Francisco. The article emphasizes what Michael Pollan critically names “nutritionism” a little more than I find interesting — eat real yogurt made by a person because it’s delicious, and yeah, it’s good for you, but don’t go getting all hung up on that. I think the obsession with probiotics is as dumb as any other food obsession. And quotes about how eating these ladies’ nice yogurt as a snack makes people feel “virtuous” sort of make me groan — own your eating people. Eat good food, enjoy it, and don’t try to turn it into medicine or make it all about health. Okay. Rant over.

There was also a cool piece in the NY Times food section about eating local in the winter on Martha’s Vineyard. Like all tourist destinations, there’s two cultures — the cash economy and the barter or local’s economy — and this article is a great portrait of how a bunch of people manage to live in the most sustainable way possible by growing and catching their own food and trading with one another. Plus, I want that greenhouse.

We do some of that around here — I tend to pay for things with money, because I don’t hunt enough, raise enough of anything to trade — but the Mighty Hunter does a lot of trading — especially with the Famous Chef — the MH sends him game, the FC sends back wine, or olive oil, or cheese. It works great … it’s not as local perhaps as the Martha’s Vineyard system, but it engenders community nonetheless.

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Perfect Vacation — at Home

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Inspired by this article in the Times of London, I holed up and took a lovely, restorative vacation at home after Christmas. Christmas was lovely — we all had a great time. There was lots of food and wine and by ten that night we had six kids under five doing the Toddler Disco in the middle of the living room floor. Perfect.

I woke up on the 26th a tiny bit hung over, and decided the tree was coming down. It was a pretty tree and we had fun decorating it — the big girls came over to help me. But I was done with Christmas. I’d done so much cooking and wrapping and festivity in the run up to the big day that by the 26th, I was over it. Plus, I kind of like taking down the tree — it’s quiet, and sort of meditative. Packing everything up again for another year.

And then I started my lovely lovely vacation at home. A dog walk in the mornings. Chores — a little cleaning, some food shopping, a quick stop at Nina’s to see what the kids are doing. Then home by noon or one, and a whole quiet afternoon stretches ahead of me and it’s down into my basement office to work in peace on my new book. It’s been a great vacation — nearly 4000 words and I’ve still got today and tomorrow before I have to go back to work. Then a few quiet evenings in a row to read or watch Netflix movies that have been piling up — after the string of parties before Christmas, parties that were fun but left me feeling all talked out and with that jittery energy that too much socializing instills in me — four whole days to settle back into my book was the best holiday I could have imagined.

Tonights festivities are going to be very low key — dinner with Nina and the kids who are leaving to go back to LA on Friday. We’ll cook some food and then watch the ball drop in New York at 10, and then home. I’m superstitious about the New Year — I hate welcoming a new year hung over. I like to greet New Year’s day bright eyed and well rested — I’ll do a little housecleaning — take the recycling out — and we’re off into 2008. Happy Happy everyone ….

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“Only Connect”

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There was a terrific little piece on Zen Habits last week, Faith in Humanity: How to Bring People Closer, and Restore Kindness. I read it right after I’d come back from paying my local utilities bill — there never seems any point to paying that bill by mail since the office is just down on the other side of town. So, once a month, I drive down, hand my check through the drive up window, chat with the lady who always puts dog cookies in with my receipt, and drive off with a little smile and with two dogs happily munching away.

It’s a little thing, but it’s typical of the way we treat one another around here. People are friendly. We say “hello” when we pass on the street, and usually wave a little if we’re driving out on one of the country roads and someone with a Park County license plate comes toward us in the opposite lane. We stop and chat on the trail, or at the dog park. Nothing major – just pleasant conversation. You can tell the urban tourists in the summer because they don’t say “Hi” — and they look hostile or apalled that you’re saying “Nice day, isn’t it?”

It’s important, this layer of friendliness. Sure — it’s a different beast than real freindship — there are people in town that I don’t particularly like but with whom I’ll still exchange a casual hello, will ask about their holiday, what the kids are up to. It’s a small town. It keeps the social fabric together.

And it’s so easy to lose. A few fancy subdivisions, a couple of big box stores, the encroachment of wide streets with strip malls on each side where people are frightened or frustrated by the time they park and it starts to erode. Once that toxic miasma of being “in a hurry” creeps in (and I am completely guilty of this, especially while travelling. Nothing makes me crankier than someone meandering in an airport, someone who isn’t with the program, someone who doesn’t know we’re all supposed to be purposeful and in a hurry).

As someone who works at home, the social fabric provided by the general friendliness in town is crucial in my life. There may be days where the only actual human contact I have is with that lady at the Utilities office, or the checker at my grocery store, or with the guy at the coffee shop. One of the reasons I moved to a small town was so I could live someplace where I’m not a stranger — where I’m known. Where I can go out for coffee, or a drink, or dinner and run into people I know.

And so, I’m going to try to shop locally for Christmas. I know there are a couple of things I need to buy online, and I’ll probably still have to drive over to Bozeman, but I’m going to start close to home, and see what I can find — we are a town of artists and crafters after all. Plus, I’d rather go shopping here, where I know people, where shopping is a series of pleasant encounters with people I know, than go to a mall, or to Target, or even over to Main Street in Bozeman, which is great, but which isn’t my town.

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