Townie Time

A big clue you might be a townie: Birthday greetings wished to you on the bowling alley's sign.

When you belong in a community, the big things to you are not the things that make the big news. Oh sure, there’s a new strip mall going up and the mayor is running for re-election, but for a lot of people in my town the big deal this month is that a woman named Joan is retiring from the post office.

The friendly faces you see every day are part of what makes a community, no matter what the size of a place. But being bummed the woman at the post office is retiring just drove home one more time the truth that is impossible to ignore: I am a townie.

In many ways, this is no surprise, it’s just been tough to admit. As one who lived in cities my whole adult life until moving back to my hometown 29 years after I left here for college, as one who can wander the streets of London and New York and not get lost, admitting the townie thing can make me a bit sheepish.

Yet it’s been there, since almost the beginning. Like everything else, the first step is acknowledging it. And there have been so many steps along the way, it really should have been obvious. Because you know you are a townie when:

● You still call people “Mr.” and “Mrs.,” usually former teachers and parents of people you went to school with once upon a time.

● You spend way more time than you ever thought you would at the funeral home.

● Someone calls the local coffee shop looking for you.

● You ask an acquaintance if you can come over sometime and look at her house because she lives in a house you spent a lot of time in as a kid and are curious what it looks like now.

● You ask the young cashier at the grocery store what she’s majoring in, and when she says elementary education,  your first thought is, “Oh good, she's such a nice girl.”

● You splurge for a landline and keep a listing in the local phone book because you’re involved in so many things that people of all ages, some who might not be tech-savvy, really do need to be able to find you.

● While out for a walk and wondering what time it is, you look up to see what the bank clock says even though the clock has been gone for 20 years.

● You are introduced to someone and you say, “Oh, I used to babysit you.”

● You are introduced to someone and they say, “Oh, you used to babysit me.”

● You recognize, from a block away, that the woman walking down the street was your third-grade teacher because she is wearing the same style cardigan and scarf as she did when she was your teacher in 1969.

● You have practically memorized the phone number of the strictest teacher you had in grade school because you call her up so often for various community events you are both part of.

● You still miss the A&W.

● You tell a real estate agent, “If the street wasn’t there when I was in high school, I don’t want to live on it.”

● You tell someone “OK” when they suggest a lunch spot that hasn’t had that particular name for about 40 years.

● As soon as the weather turns cold, you start asking the folks at the local meat market when their winter sale is happening.

● You are quite accustomed to people jumping out of their cars and taking pictures of that meat market, because it is called Dick’s Quality Meats.

This list wouldn’t be exclusive to a small town; no doubt people have strong connections in their neighborhoods in cities, too. Indeed, when the grocery store my friends shop at in Des Moines rebuilt elsewhere on its site and rearranged its parking lot, you would have thought their world was turned upside down. Because it kind of was.

As a small-town townie, sure, there are things people you barely know end up knowing about you. It’s weird and it’s wonderful and it’s not for everyone. But the prize is a sense of belonging, the feeling that you’re all kind of in this together.

Well, that and a big meat sale.

This grocery store sold T-shirts last year. They sold out.