Small Town Living

As I've mentioned several times before, we live in a town of about 6,500 people.  It's near a lake so the population has grown by a couple thousand in the last five or six years.  Most of the town though grew up here just like their parents and grandparents. 

My husband was born and raised in this town and he's calls himself a "lifer". When we go to the high school for events, he likes to show me the pictures of all of the graduating classes that have graduated in our town.  You see, he's lucky enough that he can show me his Great-Grandparents, Grandparent and his Parents in those senior pictures. His parents were high school sweethearts.  That is a fact that simply amazes me.  I love it and wish I could have a place where everyone in my family for generations went to the same school. 

Mr. H's Mom, Stepdad, Dad, Sister and her Daughter and Brother and his son and daughter all live within 3 miles of us almost on a square.  In other words, we have family at every corner of a big square around us. 

We built and moved into our house three years ago.  Our neighbors to the east of us had never been really friendly to us and that was fine.  Everyone else in the neighborhood was so friendly and helpful that I never thought a thing about it.  I mean, the unfriendly neighbors would sometimes wave at us, but that was it.  They actually caused the closing of our house to be held back three days because they complained about our fence placement.  Luckily, I was the Marketing Director for a survey company at the time and my surveyors ran out to our new house and surveyed our property lines, finding out that the unfriendly neighbor had actually put his fence 10" over in our yard. HA!  Nothing like a disagreement with your new neighbor!  I think that started the tone of our relationship with those neighbors.

The first Thanksgiving at our new house, everyone in Mr. H's family and my Mom came over to our house to celebrate.  When Mr. H's sister came in, she said, "Hey, is that the Cor*** family next door?"
My hubby said that he thought it was.  She then replied, "You know that's our cousin, right?!"
Mr. H had the craziest look on his face.  He was stunned. 
Apparently, Mr. H's Stepdad is first cousins with the "unfriendly" neighbor, making us second cousins.  We never even had a clue!

Another story happened the other day when it had snowed so heavily.  I looked out our front door at the neighbor's house across the street.  Our neighbor is a single mom so I was looking to see if anyone had come to her aid and shoveled the snow out of her driveway.  Well, I noticed a man with a truck was shoveling for her.  When I told Mr. H to look, that Alane the neighbor had someone helping her, he said, "Yep, that's Chris, he's my stepdad's cousin." 
I said, "What?'
He simply stated, "I guess that makes him my cousin too."
I thought, "What???"

Living in a small town is so funny sometimes.  It's just commonplace that you would live in a neighborhood of 60 houses and two of the houses have people related to you. 

When I grew up in Tulsa, I would never have imagined that.  I barely knew any of the people that lived around me. 

Talk about having to watch what you do....everyone's either related to you or knows your husband.  It defintely makes it interesting going out to eat.  You have to stop five times to talk to people you know when you go to the pizza place.

In other words, I love it.  It makes it feel so comfortable to know that you will always know someone every place you go in town.  Every teacher in town has either gone to school with your husband or one of his relatives or they live near you.  Maybe that's why we're lucky enough to get our teachers home phone number every year.  I guess they have to be that available because you're probably gonna run into them at Wal-mart at least once every few weeks. HA!