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SALT LAKE CITY — When I walked into my bank last week, I knew all the tellers. We joked about dress-down Friday and how they all should wear dress shirts with their cargo shorts to inspire confidence — at least from the waist up — and leave the flip-flops at home.
I saw my neighbor on the way out. She was depositing the jar of change she adds to periodically with the intent of buying a piano one day.
It’s a small town that I live in. I suppose I have lived in small towns for most of my life.
I’m not talking about a country-song small town where there is a dog and a truck and one nice looking girl who works pulling hay during the week and pouring malts on the weekend at the lone drugstore on a tree-lined main street.
Growing up in a small town
The town where I grew up had a symphony and a hall the seated 1,600 folks. It had a "giganto" mart or two — smaller than today's big-box stores and with different names. There was a mall, a few dozen streets with gas stations and a handful of drug stores, none with a snack counter, however.
The annual parade didn't have big balloons or double-decker floats made from fresh flowers. But, there were six or seven drill teams with girls all dressed alike, who wouldn't look at the 14-year-old boys ... no matter how many times we threw M&M's at them ...
But everywhere we went, my dad always stopped and talked to someone he knew, someone he had worked with or from his church group. Even on short runs to the hardware store for something to make a pen for unplanned puppies or goats, we had to plan on an extra 10 minutes “just to say hello.”
The annual parade didn’t have big balloons or double-decker floats made from fresh flowers. But, there were six or seven drill teams with girls all dressed alike, who wouldn’t look at the 14-year-old boys — which included me — along the entire parade route, no matter how many times we threw M&M’s at them or called out their names.
They would, however, find us after the trophies were awarded at the water fountain in the park and pull our hair out, and we liked it.
Too many politicians rode in old cars. The only one my dad said he ever voted for rode in an orange Vega and threw candy to us kids himself.
Beauty queens squinted in the sun at us, wearing dresses that, according to my mom, they “…should have known better than to wear in the daytime. Didn’t they have mothers?”
The members of the football team that almost placed in state the past year rode by on a flatbed truck. they could have beaten the big city school if their best running back hadn’t flunked most of his classes and been pulled by a coach who the dads now disliked but the mothers wanted to invite to dinner.
Related:
How to make your town cool and relevant
Speaking at the Utah League of Cities and Towns annual conference in the fall of 2011, Dave Ivan, community and economic development specialist at Michigan State University offered answers to the question, "How can small cities be cool and compete in the global economy?"The plumber's wife drove by in a truck pulling a float shaped like a giant shower. Her husband stood inside it wearing way to little, topped off with a shower cap that made him look like a giant pencil and eraser.
Kids pulled wagons stocked with canned soft drinks and melted Popsicles, which they sold for a quarter each. The more organized child entrepreneurs sold windmills or glow-in-the-dark sticks for the fireworks later in the evening at the river. Some of the less sophisticated venders sold little American flags on a stick for waving approval at every passing thing.
Moving on to a small town
The town I live in now is such a small town. The difference is, it is connected to other towns of the same size, whose boundaries start the next street over and similarly go half up the mountain and half out to the lake. Most times there is no differentiation made between neighborhoods except during the fall when kids wear their high school colors to support Vikings, Tigers or Bears, and the occasional Caveman or Knight.
True, it is only a short drive on a crowed freeway to a bigger town with more restaurants and buildings that leave longer shadows than the old gym.
Bigger parades with better floats.
But, who knows if the guys cleaning up after the horses in the big towns get the same rousing response from the crowd that those in my small town receive.
Chances are, the mayors in the big towns don't have to dress in kilts because they lost a bet on the big game with the mayor in the next town over, who also looks ridiculous because he is sporting the shaved head the kids in his town expect for meeting their goal reading books.
And here I sit in the sun, one hand holding an umbrella and the other hand bouncing a baby. Had I thought to lay out a blanket last night before the parade, I could have had a nice cool-ish place under a walnut tree in the shade.
I'll have to remember that for next year. For now, I’ll use the local news paper to shade my view and I'll buy an extra popsicle — if that kid with the wagon puts some speed on.
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Main image: Kenneth Sponsler / Shutterstock.com
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Cheney writes the "Prodigal Dad" family column weekly for ksl.com. He grew up in Idaho Falls. See his other writings at davisoncheneymegadad.blogspot.com and Twitter @DavisonCheney.*
