small towns

Yesterday I had the rather startling experience of driving into my one stoplight town, only to discover a second stoplight.

Granted it is a temporary stoplight placed randomly in front of the Senior Citizens Center (theoretically because of the construction half a mile down the road), but it's a second stoplight nonetheless.

I was not at all excited about the prospect of my town growing large enough to warrant a second stoplight. (It's bad enough that we have a Dollar General.) Because I like the fact that we trust each other enough to stop at those pretty red octagonal signs. I like the fact that we are polite enough to take turns going through intersections. I like the fact that you can cross the street without having to push a button and watch it countdown how many seconds you have until you get hit by a car. I like my one stoplight town.

I had another "small town moment" last week when I went to the county courthouse and--get this--walked in without having to go through a metal detector. At first I was afraid. Afraid because I didn't have to go through a metal detector and neither did any of the other suspicious looking characters lingering about. But later I decided that not having a metal detector was a good thing. An encouraging thing. A symbol of trust. That is seemingly more present in small towns.

EMBRACE SMALL TOWNS.

Maybe it's not really about how many stoplights or metal detectors you have. But there is something about this small town simplicity that just emanates trust.