OK, you should be singing the theme song from "Cheers" in your head now, at least the chorus.That was the great thing about Sam Malone's Boston bar. You weren't a nameless, faceless entity at Cheers. No matter how aggravating the individual, no one was a disposable extra. No one was a Star Trek red-shirt crew member. (In the early series, crew members in red shirts were always the first ones to be eaten by aliens, or sucked into a quicksand vortex on the strange planet.)




And so it is in a small town. Everyone knows your name. Or at least they think they do. That's a huge blessing sometimes. Like when you forget your checkbook at the convenience store, but since you know the manager, they let you run home without paying and get it. Or when you overhear the lady at the video store asking so-and-so's kids if their parents would approve of them renting that particular video game.


Other times, it's not so enjoyable having everyone know your name, depending on what they've heard and assume to be true about you. Then it's a lot like what happens when your older brother or sister was rotten in school and your teachers figure out you're related. And then, sometimes, you just want to disappear...

"News travels fast." "A little bird told me." "I heard it through the grapevine." 


Gossip and rumors are certainly not exclusive to small towns. An entire facet of the international entertainment industry is devoted to gossip, rumors, and speculation about the rich and famous. But in small communities, the rumor mills and prayer chains (which are all too often one and the same thing) have mastered the art of broadcasting information without benefit of media outlets, stiff-haired news anchors, or roving reporters. 


It kind of has to be that way in a place without a daily paper, local radio or television, I suppose. As someone here has said, if you die on a Wednesday afternoon, you won't be officially declared dead until the following Thursday, when the paper comes out. 




For example, a friend's husband had lunch with a mutual college buddy in a neighboring town. Before the husband could make the hour-long return trip home, his wife had received multiple messages that her husband was canoodling with another woman. The messages progressed from "do you know where your husband is?" to "I'm so sorry. When will the divorce be final?" 


Mark Twain, aka Samuel Clemens (who also had lots of opinions about small towns) experienced a bit of this himself, when someone got his name and his cousin's name confused. The cousin, who had taken ill during a trip to London, eventually recovered, but for Twain, his mistakenly reported illness resulted in his death, prompting him to send the following letter to the New York Times back in 1897.


At the paper, we have to be careful when we post obituaries to note if the deceased is the elder member of a family disposed to confer the same names on successive generations. Failure to do so has resulted in teary telephone calls and panicked friends of the not-dead (Undead? no, that's not right, either.) relation.




www.twainquotes.com

Sunday marked our 12th anniversary in this small town. 
Lest you think, "Oh, I'm from a small town," I want to you realize, this town is SMALL. In today's demographics, a small town is thought of as having a populace of less than 20,000 people. I'm not talking about that kind of small town. I'm talking about REALLY SMALL.

One blinking yellow four-way light kind of small. One itty-bitty grocery store size small. Where the only places to buy clothes are the feed store and the hardware stores.

Lately, every book I've picked up has been set in a small town. My own WIP is set in a small town. (Hey, "write what you know," isn't that one of the cardinal rules?) And so, in the interest of continuing research, this week I'll be posting my likes and dislikes about small-town living.

Feel free to add your own! I'm interested to know if small towns really are the same everywhere, or if it's different in your part of the country, or your part of the world.

1. Everybody waves.
Honestly, this is a pro and a con. In small towns, people wave for three reasons.

A. They think they know you. Unfortunately, sometimes that means folks wave simply because there are three other people in town who drive the same vehicle, so you never know if they're waving at you, or waving at someone else.

B. They feel obliged to wave. They don't want to offend you, in case you happen to be related to someone important. News travels fast in these little towns, and if you don't wave, your oversight might just be the topic of conversation at the next coffee klatch.

C. They've lived there so long they just wave at everybody. This method is generally recognized by the two- or three-finger wave in which one's fingers are merely lifted from the steering wheel as two vehicles pass each other. This, of course, is the antithesis of the so-called "California wave" which consists of only one finger lifted high in the air.

How is "the wave" done where you live?



Downtown Meeker