Current location:	home for the holidays
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An Overlooked Life

Currently On Golden Pond (Special Edition) By Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Jane Fonda, Doug McKeon, Dabney Coleman see related

Over the course of this semester, I've gotten to work on a fair number of creative writing pieces:  a couple plays, a fictional story or two, lots of creative non-fiction (CNF) with heavy emphasis on the "creative," and, finally, a series of short stories surrounding a state park near the small town in which I've resided for the last 5 1/2 years.

Among all of my writing, the stories which surround said town are, by far, my favorites.

I think I should do a bit more writing about that quaint place--the particularly noteworthy and unknown spots, sure, but really, the people, the interactions, the memorable quirks that make that odd little location my home away from "home" (at least in the "born and raised" sense).  The fact that the owner of my favorite antique store owner will stop and talk to me for ten minutes, or that the little old ladies at Hallmark will try with all their might (not once but six times) to key in my rewards points, even though they have not the faintest understanding of technology.  The fact that I run into my graduate professors at Hy-Vee late at night and we strike up a great conversation or that strangers in the park will want to talk about absolutely nothing for a half hour, just because you were there.  That even despite locks and regulations, certain little "back ways" are always left open by mistake, letting me savor my favorite places at all hours.

For the longest time, even as little as a year and a half ago, I mocked their motto, "Where People Make the Difference," but now that I've spent as much time there as I have, it stops and makes me smile...for different reasons.  Reasons that make me want to dive in and savor every second...wherever I am.

Living in that town has even helped me come to appreciate various bits of my own hometown--things I'm sure I would have come to appreciate over the years, but it was an appreciation expedited all the more by the influence of that quaint life.  An overlooked life that not everyone chooses to experience.  Some (not all) get in, get their degrees, and leave, really immersing themselves into the town maybe once, twice a year for a festival or two, a visit to the park with an organization for a BBQ...while most think of immersion as making fun of the townies at Wal-Mart now and then, the drunk old farts who hang about the bars and restaurants when we feel stepping into their territory.

And not that I haven't done those things as well...my various affiliations have taught me much about that place, thank goodness.  They've at least opened my eyes now and then (and increasingly more and more) to the different sorts of people who live there by choice or out of abandonment, the sorts of people who feel that they are there because there's no where else to go...or nowhere else worth living.  Such different worlds the people live in who reside there, all within the same place.  Often, depending on their vantage point, they shake their heads because they either feel unnoticed or feel that their home goes unnoticed.  A woman, aged 101 who cries in her nursing home room because her family has left her in that town forgotten, a conservationist who scoffs at the number of people who pollute her watch area, just because they don't take the few extra steps to use the extra trash can she set out.  But either way, if one really opens their eyes, he or she can see a group of people trying their best to make their home a place that's real.  A Chamber of Commerce group trying to enliven the downtown square with concerts, bars which try to cater to the young visiting undergrads, stores which stay open extra hours with a smile for students who don't pay attention or notice the closing signs.

Not that anyone from said place will ever read this, but before I get swept away into my own hometown world, before I get a chance to get swept up in the homework of my return, I want to say thank you--thank you to that little town, and the people in it affecting me in such varying amounts with permanence.  Because I've noticed, noticed a little place and groupings within it that will always be on my heart, well-planted within it.  And though I know I'm meant to move away (to God knows where) one day, I smile at the thought that you still have more to teach me.  More to show me, as my friends move away and the academics hand me more high-order Literature to read, seemingly unattainable goals to reach, and so forth.  But, whether or not I ever say it again, I appreciate you, treasure you...even, love you, deep down.  You may not be the only place to affect me, but you're definitely the first to come to mind as of late. 

Perhaps some of you readers who know the place I'm talking about share different (or opposite sentiments), but do any of you have intriguing stories to share about a people and a place that has impacted you?  Be it about the same little town or someplace halfway across world...