My brother lives in a small town. I’ve noticed that there are a couple different types of small towns out there. There is the small town that’s right next to three or four other small towns and one of those towns is right next to a bigger town and on the other side of the bigger town is a small city. The town is still small enough to retain the feel of a “small town” but it comes with the convenience of bigger town amenities, or at least proximity to them. This is not my brother’s small town. Those small towns are small in both population and area. My brother’s has the small population, but it’s spread out over a big area. As are the towns around his. That’s what happens when the small town you’re in is a farm town. Lots of space, little to do. I lived here for a while, and I can tell you that’s true. Nine times out of ten you want to do something, you’re getting in your car and you’re driving. For a while. (On a side note, it makes me wonder who designed the counties in Pennsylvania. His town is in Chester county, but it is nowhere near all of the people I know who live in Chester county. It’s a whole other world out here. We’re closer to Lancaster than we are to Philly. But I digress.)
Yesterday was no different. For some reason I wanted to watch the Cowboys game, and since it wasn’t being shown on network television, I needed to find a bar that had the NFL package. Challenge one of that was to actually find a bar. There are only three or four bars here in town. I’ve been to most of them. None of them have more than two tv’s, and I don’t think all of them were even open yesterday afternoon. (Another side note. Apparently the wealthiest and most prominent businessman in the area does not believe in the consumption of alcohol, so the rumor is that anytime a liquor license comes up for sale, he buys it and just sits on it. Again I digress.) With some investigative work, a couple of phone calls and one dead end, I finally found a place called the Brass Eagle, about forty five minutes away. Off I went.
By the time I got there, it was already the second quarter and the Cowboys were losing 10-7. By the time I left it was the start of the fourth quarter and they were losing 20-7. I knew they still had fifteen minutes to play, but I couldn’t watch anymore. Not only because they were stinking the game up like last week’s fish, but also because of the endless political rantings of some of the bars more vocal regulars. I was disgusted by the game and annoyed by the endless rhetoric so I paid my tab-beers were only $2.25!-and left, trying hard not to think about either thing that was pissing me off.
I don’t know much about farming, and so I don’t really know much about how corn is harvested, but what I gathered on the drive home was that first they drove one machine through the corn fields that magically sucked the corn from the stalks and then later they went through the fields with some other machine that…well, I don’t know what, because I won’t be here to see it. But as I drove down route 10 from Parkesburg to Oxford I passed thousands of acres of corn stalks, still standing in their tight endless rows, now browning and forlorn, but still somehow artistic and engaging. The fields rolled away from the road and as I sneaked glances out the window as I was driving I was struck by how beautiful it was. Just as infinite as the corn seemed were the clouds and sky above them, stretching away towards the setting sun in one direction and reaching for the approaching night in the other. I’ve found myself a couple of times while visiting up here stopping and looking skyward during the sunsets and just being blown away by how stunning they can be here. You’d think I’d be used to sunsets by now, as celebrated as they are in Key West, but I think that’s exactly what made these more beautiful.
It is easy to not pay attention. It is easy to take things for granted. It is easy to focus on what we hope to be special and ignore the very same things that we see around us every day. We accept the routine in our lives so convincingly they we dismiss it as being mundane, not taking the time to see that there is so much more to it than just what we expect of it.
If I had to make that drive every day, would I be as aware? I like to think so. I certainly hope I would. I at least know now that, the next time I am visiting here and I make that drive, I will be once again taking in as much of the sights as possible, because I will remember how the last time I drove it, it let me forget about what was truly the mundane and reminded me about what is truly special.
PopcornJackTerry 