Front Porch Views

Okay, so I was sort of worried that moving to a small town would be incredibly boring. It's not just that we moved to a small town, but one that has one stoplight and roughly 1000 people (they say 2000, but Jeremy and I are both pretty sure they're including the local prison population), it has a Piglet--no, not a Piggly Wiggly, but the store is actually called Piglet, as it is nowhere near big enough to be a full sized Piggly Wiggly--and is, at minimum, 20 miles from the nearest bigger town. On the plus side, we can head north, east, west, and south and hit one of these towns within 30 minutes. On the downside, that also means the major shopping venue in any of these directions is Wal-Mart (and you know how much I love Wal-Mart).

However, I have to say, life has been far from dull since moving to this town. I will now detail just a few of the things witnessed from our front porch. First, there are the cruising rednecks. These are the guys who have extremely large and loud trucks. I am not sure what they are doing or where they are going, but apparently, it's a huge sign of status to be seen endlessly driving around the town in a truck (frequently camouflage in color) that could easily run over most cars and that can be heard for several miles in any direction. A further status booster, apparently, is when they see a woman and rev their engines even louder. I'm fairly certain half the cruising was trying to scope out the women's rehab center across the street from us. Especially on hot summer days when they get into bikinis and hop into a kiddie pool (or at least they used to--more on that later). I'm also fairly certain that half the men who drive by the center think that it might be some sort of brothel or bordello or something, the way they all slow down and stare, often turning around to repeat (and oh does this ever add to the redneck charm). I'm pretty sure, though, that the women delighted in this misconception, since, much to the annoyance of the older and vastly more religious members in the community, they hung a bright red blanket in the front window as a curtain.

Now, you may think that dogs could never be entertaining. However, there are a large number of incredibly entertaining dogs roaming around the town. The first is the dog I watched spend most of an afternoon sprinting up and down the sidewalk in front of our house. I was completely baffled. First he'd go sprinting by in one direction, only to return again in 5 or 10 minutes. He repeated this process for almost 2 hours. Finally, Jeremy came out, and I asked him what the heck the dog was doing. According to Jeremy, the dog races after his owner's truck--anywhere the owner goes, the dog runs after. Of course, the first thing that popped into my head was why didn't the owner just put the dog in the truck to begin with? The next thing was what in the world is the owner doing driving up and down the street nonstop? My only conclusion was he was checking out the women at the rehab center.

Then there is Penny. Jeremy calls Penny Jack's (our 12 year-old lab rottweiler mix) girlfriend. Penny is pretty old and basically doesn't bend her back legs when she walks. So, she's very easy to identify, even at blocks away, when she's walking at night. And, everytime she walks by the house, Jack's ears perk up, and he often makes a little whiny noise. We have no clue what Penny's purpose is either, but every night, she slowly (and I mean slowly) ambles down the street (she doesn't usually bother with the sidewalks, and she'll make it across the road whenever she finally feels like it, which often means if there is no traffic, she just meanders down the middle of the road). Basically, I think she goes to the convenience store right down the road, then just ends up turning around and heading back home in the same, slow, stiff-legged walk.

Then, there's Scruffs, the dog the rehab center across the street adopted. Scruffs likes a lot of attention and does not like many other dogs in his territory (pretty much anywhere within a certain radius of the center). So, at night, when all have gone to bed, Scruffs barks, and barks some more. And when another dog encroaches on her territory, Scruffs barks and barks. This has tamed down since the "untimely" departure of the man who ran the center, but I think that's mostly because they never got Scruffs fixed and Scruffs went out and got herself "fixed." So, she's incredibly large and not so much into barking at the moment.

It's not just dogs trotting along the sidewalks though. I still find this incredibly bizarre, but at least once a week, a father and his two sons come trotting down the sidewalk on their horses. All you hear for blocks is the clip clop sound of the hooves, then, one by one, they all ride by--the father in front, then the oldest son, then the younger son on his little pony. On one particular night, Jeremy and I watched them trot past, making the usual comments about just how odd that still seemed. Roughly 5 minutes later, we hear a horse making a fuss. Suddenly, riderless, the pony comes galloping down the sidewalk, followed by the father who had quickly scooped up his youngest son and then the older son. We never did learn what had happened, but we had to chuckle a bit (though it probably wasn't the family selling it) when in the next shopper an ad appeared for a pony for sale (oh, and the Tuesday night shopper has been a source of pure delight! Soon, I will post a blog for this month's best ads so you also can marvel and delight in the variety of things for sale in our area).

Then, there was the morning we woke up to a parking lot full of flashing police lights at the center across the street. We soon found out that the co-owner and the man who ran the women's portion of the center (the men's was in another town) had gotten a wee bit upset when his new wife (a recovering alcoholic) got drunk and pulled over for a DUI. Now this particular man is also a recovering alcoholic, so his rational response, as sole authoritarian at a women's rehabilitation center? To go on a bender of his own and, supposedly, strip all his clothes off. So now, the women's center has much stricter rules (no more kiddie tub) and is much quieter than it used to be. And, the co-owner is back in rehab himself.

Probably the most annoying thing, though, is the rooster. Jeremy and I have no idea where in town the rooster is actually located, but we can only surmise that he is both blind and deaf. It doesn't matter what time of day it is, the rooster is crowing. At dawn, he crows. In the middle of the afternoon, he crows. 9 at night, he crows. I even woke up one night around 3 am, and yes, the damn thing was crowing. I'm thinking it's about time to have some chicken for supper.