There’s a great little saying about small towns “If you don’t know what you are doing, someone else surely will.” I’ve lived in small towns my whole life and have found that the town stories are basically the bolts that hold the town together. Phrases like “He’s probably slept with the whole damn church!” or “That nut sure didn’t fall far from that tree, did it!” Whether or not you want to, eventually you are going to create some buzz.

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For example, when you go out with someone in a small town, its like a James Bond movie for the first couple of weeks. Starting out clever with stealth, you have to Anne Frank your time together. Just one curious wondering eye ball spies the two of you out together and the carrier pigeons are shitting your personal life into the mouths of town gossip. Of course, you wouldn’t see someone if you had not fully researched their story from some reliable source.

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“Who’s that? Where’s he from, what’s his story?”

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In big cities finding someone to go out with is as simple as a phone app, a website, or a large number of bars, gyms etc. People are everywhere, options abound and no one knows what you are doing or who you are. Going out with a person in big cities is a half assed effort. Big city people take comfort in the number of options they have and can go into a date as if it were a cruise liner, sailing by, it makes an impression, but once it is over the horizon you’ll probably never see that boat again, unless you want to. In big cities, people are just wang dang doodlin’ with no second thoughts, no aftermath.

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In small towns you’ve got one bar, one grocery store, their exes, their friends, their life completely intertwined with yours. Making the decision to ‘see’ someone is like getting a dog. You are committed to this, you have no idea if this dog is brilliant and loyal, or a lazy shit head that doesn’t listen to you, or is one of the nip at your heels LOOK AT ME AND FEED ME kind of dogs. You are in for the long haul of that decision– no matter how it ends up, it’s going to affect your ‘town story’.

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I prefer living in small, off the beaten path towns because I like the community, even for its faults, it is a much better place to live than the artificiality of a big city. Small towns feel safe and it is easy to build relationships with people and the services are courteous. The big flood happened soon after I moved to Wimberley and was a great reminder just how incredibly small town communities can come together to help each other out.

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In big cities, people are taken for granted and more easily dismissed. But in a small town, every one has their ‘town story’. A short rundown of their history and from that story, decisions are made to like a person, hate a person, hire a person, help a person, or ignore a person. In big cities, anonymity is almost your best friend. Sure you may have friends from school, church, work or family, but there’s always a place where you are unknown. When I lived in a little town in Wyoming, I was traveling to big cities all over the nation for work every once in a while. This gave me an opportunity to leave behind my ‘town story’, which I’m thinking sounds like this; “She’s like, really Texan and rides horses, been here for a couple of years… she’s pretty funny and has a nice butt”.

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I loved that I could go all over the country and play different parts. Sometimes I would introduce myself as Lynn, wear fake wedding bands and make up stories to people on planes and at bars. The anonymity was fun, until I was ready to come home to my little Wyoming home. It was always a tit for tat situation. I got to go out and see what was going on in the world, shop, see movies and eat Indian food. But then I’d remember that other girls wear makeup and don’t consider a base ball hat an essential accessory, and missed the home that learned to not be offended by my sense of humor and general appearance.