In a Small Town

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I live in a small town.  I’ve always lived in a small town; a small town that isn’t really much bigger than when I was growing up. 

I remember an incident years ago when I was still working at the library that exemplified small town culture.  We had, at that time, a UPS delivery man named James.  He was great – he had run this route long enough and was affable enough that he knew just about everyone, where they lived, where they worked and lots of incidental information about them.  One day James came into the library with a package.  “Do you know who this is?” he asked.    We looked at the unfamiliar name and an address that seemed a little strange.  It was a tiny dead-end alley just up the street from the library.

We didn’t know who it might be, but I said, “That’s close to where Betty’s parents lived but I don’t think there’s another house up there,” I said.  “You might stop at the courthouse and ask her if she knows anything about it.”

“I just saw Betty leaving the courthouse to get in her car,” he said.  “I imagine she was going to lunch.”

“Well,” I said, “you might stop on the corner up there and ask Mrs. Baker if she knows who this is.  She’s lived there a long time.”

“I thought about that.  She goes to lunch about this time every day and usually she goes up to Breeces.  I’ll stop by and see if she’s there today.”

James left with the package, and I don’t think I ever knew whether he found out who it was for or where they actually lived.  But we all laughed about the conversation afterwards because the UPS guy knew who everybody was, what time they ate lunch and where they went for lunch.  James would have made a good private investigator. 

Fast forward to the present time.  My cousin Alice lives a couple of blocks off the square on a sleepy, narrow street that dead-ends into a very sharp turn and continues a block down a steep hill to a slightly bigger street called West Swan.  The only time there is much excitement on Perry Street, where Alice and her husband live, is on Halloween, when literally thousands of children descend on that part of town for Trick or Treat.  It is practically mandatory for Perry Street residents to go all out on decorations and treats.  The city blocks some of the streets to traffic and it’s a sight to behold, a Hallmark moment. 

The other day, Alice came home from the grocery store to find an eighteen-wheeler parked right across the street.  Now, there is nowhere an eighteen-wheeler can go on Perry Street, no side street that will allow a turn and even if you made the curve at the end going to West Swan, there is no driver that could possibly make the turn and nowhere to go on that street anyway.  The Centerville streets were built for horses and buggies and when cars came along, they didn’t bother to widen them very much.  And many of them have beautiful rock walls along them, making widening them now not worth the uproar it would cause.  Alice took a load of groceries in, came back out and noticed the driver walking around his truck looking up at the electric lines and up and down the street.  She walked over and said, “May I help you?”

Turns out, he was trying to deliver playground equipment to the city park, two streets over and down another little dead-end street.  “You can’t get there from here,” Alice said.  “You would have to go to the square and go down West End, but you can’t make the turn onto the square in that truck.”  She motioned to him to follow her and walked out to the highway to point up to the square.  “Even if you got on the West End, you couldn’t get on Barnwell, which is where the park is.” 

“I tried calling the city hall,” the driver said, “but no one answered the phone.”

“Hold on a minute,” Alice said, and pulled out her cell phone.  “I’ve got the mayor’s cell number.”  I’m sure the driver felt by then that he was in Mayberry and Goober was going to show up any minute with Barney and Aunt Bee.  Gary answered the phone and Alice told him the situation.  In a few minutes someone from the city arrived, walked around the truck with the driver and agreed that he indeed could not get to the park from here.  Furthermore, he couldn’t pull into the only parking lot that had room for him to turn around because the electric wires hung too low for him to go under.  By now, the driver had talked to his supervisor who agreed that they needed to abort this mission and return the next day in a smaller truck.

Alice decided she couldn’t provide further help and needed to get her groceries inside.  She excused herself, wished them luck and left.  Pretty soon two police cars showed up and they blocked traffic on the highway, directed the driver in backing up across the highway out of Perry Street and heading back the way he came.

I don’t know if the playground equipment ever was delivered to the city park.  If it had been me, I would have just called someone with a smaller truck or trailer to come to Perry Street.  They could have unloaded it right there on the street and driven it over to the park. I can’t believe Alice didn’t suggest that.