Hooray for Small Town Values

When we moved here over twenty years ago this was a small town, and though it has grown over the years still maintains the feel of a small town where neighbors are always ready to help one another.

This week we were hit by a heavy thunderstorm with driving rain and strong winds, and a very large Chinaberry tree in our front yard lost a number of branches as a result. Most just fell in the yard, but one fell on our cooler and against the window that holds it. The moment the rain stopped a neighbor was over and pulled all the branches away from the house. We found the window unbroken and the cooler undamaged. So far, so good, but we were resigned to having to pay several hundred dollars to have someone clean up the mess, when another neighbor showed up and said he would be over the following day to cut up the wood and haul it away. True to his word he spent the greater part of the following day cutting the wood and stacking it.

Everyone in our neighborhood has a green barrel for garden waste . This was far more than our barrel could hold so a trip to the dump seemed inevitable. Then neighbors started showing up with their empty green barrels for us to use. Before long all the fallen branches were stuffed in seven barrels to be put out at the curb next week, saving us the fee the dump charges. So in the end our yard was cleared of the debris by neighbors, some of which we barely know.

These are the kind of people that keep an eye on your house and feed your dog when you are on vacation, that share the fruit on their trees and the vegetables in their gardens, that pick up your mail when you are out of town and are the first to volunteer when a problem arises. In a world that is full of violence, greed and crime I find it gives me hope to know such people still exist.