LIVING IN THE BOONIES
When I moved to the boonies a several years ago, I never realized what a “culture” shock it would be. After living in cities most of my life, I just wasn’t prepared for teeny, tiny, small town living – and using the word “town” is being generous.
The hardest adapting for me was changing from the fast-driving mindset to the s-l-o-w-e-r one of boonie-driving. In the city, you zoom everywhere you want to go on the interstate. Zip on this exit and zip off another exit. Not so in the boonies. Here you follow a winding road until you eventually come to where you are going.
Living in the boonies gives a whole new meaning to the word “defensive driving.” You just haven’t lived until you zip around a corner and find a cow standing in the road that had gotten out of its pasture. Yep, I believe I left some tread marks back then. Or avoiding someone’s litter of puppies that got out of their fence. Or coming up behind a tractor being driving by an old farmer. Most will pull off the road and let you go around. Not always.
Personalities abound in small towns. When I first visited this area, my parents had been living here awhile. I needed work done on my car so dad sent me to his mechanic. He was an older man called Blue. I don’t know why he was called Blue and never did. I do know that I was wearing a dress and heeled sandals when I took my car in. Blue was chewing tobacco and kept spitting on the floor around where I was standing.
I was raised that manners are important. I had NO idea why he was spitting on the floor where I was standing but I stepped back or to the side, and continued chatting with him about what was wrong with my car. I passed a test. He later told my dad that he’d spit near my shoes because he wanted to see what sort of person I was. Based on the way I looked, he figured I was a rude city slicker and wanted to test that theory.
I wasn’t rude; I was one “freaked-out-what-am-I-doing-in-this-Deliverance-movie-situation” city slicker. But manners prevailed and I stayed polite and respectful. I guess he wouldn’t have fixed my car had I been a snob!
I live near a “Andy Griffith-Mayberry” type store – old fashioned and carrying the bare necessities. Things like hunting and fishing items, cold drinks, sandwiches, milk, bread, coolers, propane, gasoline – and opinions.
You will get opinions at the little store on every topic imaginable. Consider when we bought my former sports car years back. Hubby traded his truck in for it. When he took it to the little store to get gasoline, the woman working behind the counter at that time was shocked, horrified, and just couldn’t understand. What was it she couldn’t understand? Her statement was, “You traded your TRUCK in?” She could not understand someone trading a truck in for a car – no matter how awesome that car was.
That says it all. Pickup Trucks, the be-all, end-all vehicle in small town boonies. Pickup trucks with muffler problems (as in loud on purpose). Pickup trucks so high off the ground you need a ladder to get into them. Pickup trucks covered in mud from 4-wheel driving. Pickup trucks with 10 kids in the back, heading to the swimming hole. Pickup trucks with the ever-present dog hanging out the window barking or standing guard in the truck bed.
The post office has 40 mail boxes. It is small and intimate so you know the workers behind the counter fairly well. One time I walked in and several women were in the small room behind the counter, quilting. Yep, you saw that right – quilting. It can be boring to work in a place that doesn’t get that much business! Or consider the nosiness of small town living – as in, “Hi, I see you got a box from such and such…” which is not a statement so much as a hint awaiting an answer to “What is in the box?”
Yep, boonie living. You gotta love it!
