You know you live in a small town when . . .
The death of Robert Allen Marshall in his home on the Newton/Jasper County line, has left many in the community shocked and concerned. While there has been no one arrested in this case, Indiana State Police Detective Rick Bonesteel said, "This appears to be an isolated incident where that particular home or family was targeted. The community need not be in a panic or feel unsafe."
. . . the murder of one man creates the need to reassure people they're not all in danger of being slaughtered. I don't mean to seem amused by their fright, and I hope it doesn't come off that way. Being realtively safe is one of the good things about a small town.
Comments
There are 3 places in our small town where you are apt to always run into someone you know because everyone will, eventually, have to hit the bank, the grocery store, or the hardware store. (believe it or not, our hardware store has a large awning on the front side of the store with several park benches under it by their front door. And, yes, you often find someone you know sitting on one of the benches waiting for someone in the store.) I revel in the fact that when I walk into the bank, they know us by name, not because we have a ton of money there, they know everyone by name. And, if you go through the bank's drive-thru with a dog in the car (more likely than not here) you get your transaction handled and your dog gets a biscuit, ... love small towns.
One of the nice things about going home, after having been gone more than 20 years, is that I kept meeting people who recognize me, and greet me as if I'd never been gone.
The guy at the card room silently brought me a bowl of tater soup, a hot ham and cheese, and a Pepsi - just what I used to order, years ago. The barber didn't ask me how to cut my hair, he just recognized that I'm still wearing it the same way, and cut it.
Lots of people on the sidewalks and in stores expressed sympathy about my wife who'd died several years earlier, even though they'd never met her, and I had never mentioned her to them.
A couple of years ago, there was a UPS delivery addressed to me at a business that I had owned thirty years ago; it failed, and the building it was in was bulldozed shortly thereafter. My sister had never worked for the business, but the driver left the parcel at my sister's residence, somehow knowing that we had the same last name before 1957.
You can't go home again? If it's a small town, you can't escape it.
It's a sign of the hysterical times we live in. Whatever's in the news, people seem to generalize it to themselves.
Post-9/11, the News-Sentinel actually published what I consider to be one of its goofiest pieces of all time. People working in downtown Fort Wayne high-rises were interviewed about whether they felt safe from Muslims in hijacked commercial airliners. Apparently there was no shortage of people who were sure Fort Wayne would be next.