Small Town Travel

One of the pleasures of living in a small town is that I can walk to the grocery store, the bank, Carmen's church, the haircut place, the post office - pretty much anywhere I want to go - in less than a half hour. Just this morning I walked to the downtown supermarket at 6:00 because we were out of coffee ! ! ! Then later I walked to the bank at 9:00 and opened my own checking account.

Walking downtown is, more often than not (and not at 6:00am) a social occasion. I see people I know nearly every trip, and people I don't know are likely to smile and say hello. A far cry from Boston.

I generally walk Chestnut Street, the main drag running east and west from downtown to our house. It goes past a couple of funeral homes, an assisted living place, several churches, the Y, Diamond Park, the Historical Society of Crawford County, the local office supply store, the Academy (live)Theatre, a bunch of restaurants, an ice cream shop and - The Stereoscopic Museum! Someday I have to go in there. It's only open a couple of afternoons a week.

Chestnut Street dead-ends into the Downtown Mall, anchored by a Big Lots. The mall contains a liquor store, a couple of flea market styled miscellaneous crap stores, a haircut place, a snack and sandwich shop, a Dollar General and a few more stores I can't recall. The Greyhound bus stops out front, and tickets can be bought at one of the miscellaneous crap stores. The public transit buses also stop at the big bus shelter out front.

Way out yonder on the other side of the tracks is where the interlopers reside: Home Depot, Walmart, Staples and the Giant Eagle grocery store. It's too far to walk and I wouldn't want to anyway!

It reminds me of Vero Beach, Florida. I lived there for about sixteen of my first thirty-four years. I walked everywhere. When I worked at a grapefruit packing house, I started work at 5:30am about once a week, and I could pretty much expect to be pulled over by a cop in the downtown area each time. I thought about that today as I walked downtown at 5:45. The other difference was: I was wearing a hoodie in August! That NEVER happened in Vero Beach.