As you read this, imagine a slow-spoken rural Kansas drawl in the words that are spoken. A Kansas drawl is not as bad as an Oklahoma drawl, but many of us still say things like “worsh” instead of wash and “git” instead of get, and we can still go “over yonder” or “down the way”.

Dispatch doesn’t change shifts at the same time the deputies do in order to avoid total chaos. One evening (he works the night shift) he was on the porch having a smoke while the deputies were changing shifts. One went off duty; another came on. It’s okay for him to do that as long as he leaves the door open. His dispatch post is just inside and he can still catch the phone by the 2nd ring and reach the radio before a second transmission.

So, as he and the “fresh” deputy chatted a minute, a dog came to visit. It wasn’t just a dog. By all reports it was the biggest yellow lab they’d ever seen, and as gentle as he could be. They each gave the dog a pat and went back inside.

Later, a call came in from the convenience store down the street. The “biggest dang dog” the caller had ever seen was hanging around and this customer afraid to leave the store.

 Okay, so not the kind of call you’d expect a sheriff’s deputy to take, but this is a small community and occassionally they even have to answer to a call about a skunk in the yard.

Keith assured the caller that the dog was very sweet and dispatched the deputy to capture the gentle giant and take it to the pound.

A few minutes later the deputy called on the radio. “I have a prisoner down here but I can’t get him in the car.” 

Keith can’t laugh on the radio. It absolutely woudn’t be professional, and besides that, he did once and everyone in the county laughed with him, because most of them listen to the scanner for entertainment. As he was regaining his composure and trying to decide how to answer the deputy, the radio squaked again.

“The 10-15 is being walked to the Sheriff’s office by a civilian. I will meet up with him there.”  

A 10-15 is a prisoner. In this case, a canine prisoner.

A few minutes later, another call came through about a chocolate lab (this must have been lab day) that was running loose and “foaming at the mouth”.  Hmmm…. a frothy chocolate lab.  

As Keith waited on the porch and watched for someone walking this Goliath lab, a friend of ours, about 5 ft 3 or so, walked up with her German Shepherd on one side, and the lab on the other. The dog didn’t know who she was but apparently thought she was cute enough and came along with no questions asked. About that time the deputy pulled up too.

In a small community, sometimes we have to wear a lot of different hats, and sometimes we have very diverse job duties. This was one of those times.

With the deputy kind of pushing at the dog’s head, and Keith pulling on the dog’s hindquarters, they attempted to get the dog into the patrol car. They pushed and pulled and pushed and pulled but the dog firmly planted his center of gravity and gave them both one of those looks that asked what the heck they were trying to do. No matter what, that dog was not going into that squad car.

With the deputy in the car holding the lab’s leash the lab began to slowly lead the patrol car toward the puppy jail..deputy in the car; dog out.  Keith told the deputy he had a frothy-mouthed chocolate lab for him to chase down when he got done. I’m sure the deputy was thrilled.

About halfway down the street on the way to the pound the deputy noticed they were being followed. A chocolate lab (undoubedtly with a warrant) was following them. Apparently this lab wasn’t foaming at the mouth, but just thirsty. He saw the yellow lab walking the patrol car and thought it might be fun, so he stepped in behind and followed along.

I can imagine that the chocolate lab was curious, and had always wondered what he’d do with a car if he caught one.

 The next radio transmission was the same deputy calling in his location. 

“I’ve got two canine 10-15s at the puppy jail - one voluntarily and one not so voluntarily.”   

Anyone listening to the scanner might have noticed that it took a minute for dispatch to answer.

It’s just not right to laugh on the radio.

It’s been a looooong time since I’ve posted. Figures. Just about the time I find something I really enjoy doing, life just sort of gets in the way!

I went to a housewarming party the other night for some friends of mine who have purchased a new really old house and have turned it into something absolutely wonderful.

They knocked out walls and expanded rooms, built a wine rack right into the wall, put an open bar where there used to be a wall, exposed some impressive hard wood floors… not that all of this didn’t take a whole lot of work, because it did, but who could be so lucky as to peel up old linoleum and find hardwood floors in such good shape they scream for refinishing? No dents, no holes, no loose boards and no unsightly misfit particle board repairs.

My friend is an artist and she has amazing vision when it comes to color. I’m the person who painted her floors red and her kitchen cabinets orange, so my radar is fine-tuned to good color choices. These colors are really unusual though.

She’s used Terra cotta and kind of an apricot color and yellow, with dark red and tan and it looks absolutely gorgeous. It’s hard to believe. Her  husband said he asked her more than once, are you sure this is what you want? And she would answer in her French accent, “trust me”.  I start to panic when people say that, but he’s much more patient than I and just painted it the colors she told him to use.

The bedrooms look like they came right out of a magazine. No kidding. Everything matches, and everything has that “special touch”. My bedroom … well…. let’s just say it looks like the Before picture.

So, when they got most of the house done (no one is allowed in the basement), they had some people over and I was lucky enough to be one of them.

We had wine and hors d’oeuvres and cocktail party chit chat. It was fun. There were people there I didn’t know, and you would think in a town of 1200 or so I’d have at least seen everyone who lives there but I got a special treat and got to meet a few new people.

Toward the end of the evening I was leaning over the bar-that-used-to-be-a-wall, chatting with our host and sipping my wine when a young woman came to him asking for a tea strainer.

Keep in mind that this particular young woman comes from a large family of very intellectual and intelligent people. She is wise beyond her years, very eloquent, and very green/orange on the personality color wheel.

Our host was a bit taken aback with this request. A tea strainer? No one was drinking tea - only wine.

“Why do you need a tea strainer?” he asked innocently.

She giggled and said, “Well, don’t you have one?” 

He’s amused by all this because she’s giggling and turning pink in the face and holding her glass of wine in front of her as though something might crawl out of it any minute, and he said, “is there something in your wine?”

“Actually,yes…. I think my sister’s eyelashes are in my wine.”

So… how many people do you think it takes to dig eyelashes out of a glass of wine when these eyelashes are real, not fake and hooked all together in a smile-shaped piece of fringe?

I looked at her sister and could have sworn she still had all her eyelashes, then I couldn’t help but wonder how they would just fall out into an unsuspecting glass of wine. Did Sis pull them out or did they simply decide they’d hung around long enough and took a leap into the unknown, landing in the glass of wine,brave but suicidal eyelashes? And, if she pulled them out…. why? 

The answer is two grown men, one giggling young woman and two more, uh, mature women supervising.

We never did find the eyelashes, but we did find some floating fern fronds, which she apparently decided were organic of nature and drank her wine anyway.

Giggling. 

And Sis was happy to know she still had all her eyelashes.

So were we.

With the holiday season most of us immediately think of  secular things like giving gifts, holiday budgets, and the like. Sometimes we’re ready, and sometimes we aren’t.

One thing for folks in small communities such as ours to think about is how to take care of our holiday shopping without driving to the city.

There are a lot of reasons for this, but the most important is that when a community is tiny, the only thing that keeps it alive is the people who live there. (duh) And, people tend to live where they can do things city-folk take for granted like shop for groceries, see a movie, buy a pair of jeans, and eat out once in awhile.

Who keeps the local merchants local? We do. And how do we do that? Buy spending money in their businesses.

I urge everyone who lives in a small town to challenge themselves to doing their holiday spending at home as much as possible. Sure, things are cheaper at Walmart if you want to drive 40 or 50 mles to find one. Then you have to weigh the cost of gas against the savings on the product. Sometimes it isn’t worth it.

So what can I buy in my town?

I could buy jeans, shirts, purses and shoes at the local dress shop.

I could buy cute little antique-y type things and unique gifts at one of the local gift shops. I can buy decorations at another. I can buy all products made in our home state at another.

I can buy my Christmas ham and the trimmings. (Haven’t seen a Christmas goose there but you never know)

I could buy movie tickets, or prepay detailing on the car. I can buy gift certifiates at restaurants.

I can buy handcrafted items.

I can buy Pampered Chef, Longaberger Baskets, and Mary Kay cosmetics. 

I can buy a subscription to the local newspaper and provide a little job security for myself!

I can buy Christmas ’spirits’.

And if I don’t know what to buy, I can buy Chamber Bucks that the recipient can use for anything a Chamber of Commerce member has to offer.

I can buy fabric, patterns, and thread. I can buy history books about the county, and I can buy first rate artwork.

I can make my gifts.

Or, I can honor someone by giving to a non-profit in their name, and believe me, there a lot of non-profits in a community this size.

I can give to the local food bank, or give my time at the local nursing home.

I can donate to the historical society, the art center, the public library, the veterans, the cancer support group, the economic development group, or the group who wants to purchase and rennovate the old high school.

I can donate gifts of books, time, or money to the schools.

I can pick an angel from the Angel Tree.

I can pick up the garbage from an elderly neighbor’s yard.

I can donate flower bulbs to the historical society’s 1895 house.

I can offer free babysitting for a single mom.

I can offer to drive the elderly to the doctor or the grocery store or wherever they need to go.

There are so many things I could do locally that the list is unlimited.

The important part is that I do it with the true spirit of Christmas in my heart, and I do as much of it in my town as I can. If I don’t, maybe in ten or twenty years there won’t be a town.

How sad would that be?

When we moved out here there were about half a dozen “barn” cats. That’s not quite an accurate name for them as we have no barn, but they belonged to the place, not to us. The owners asked us to be sure and feed them once a day so they’d stick around and keep the mice away.

We have a long-haired calico cat that divides her time between indoors and out. She sits at the door and waits for someone to let her out to do her “business”, then climbs the screen and looks in to let us know she’s done. She’s very protective of “her” dogs and “her people” and “her” home and “her” yard. She doesn’t stray, and she comes when you call her. She’s an interesting creature.

She doesn’t like other cats. It probably stems from .. well, forget the sordid details. Let’s just say it was not her idea to conceive with her first heat and, though she took care of her offspring in adequate fashion, she was not a particularly good mother.

She is so protective and possessive that when we lived in the city, and a neighbor stopped to chat while walking her deaf and blind 13-yr. old boxer, the cat had the sheer nerve and audacity to attack that poor dog! She was hanging off his side, her claws dug into his hair, her hair looking like she’d just stuck her toe in an electric socket. The poor old dog just stood there.  He couldn’t hear me screaming at the cat, or see me flailing my arms around, and if he felt her claws, he was just too darn tired to do anything about it. I was mortified.  

That said, it’s no wonder the six outdoor cats dwindled down to one.  

The one who stayed was pregnant. Soon another pregnant cat joined her. They had litters just a few days apart. Litters don’t last long in the country. Again, I’ll spare the details.

At any rate, Momma, as we call her, found a way into the garage to give birth. It was warm, kind of cozy in the box she crawled into, and safe from critters bigger than her.

She left when she lost her last baby; the other cat didn’t last that long. We didn’t see her for a month or better, and when she came back she was expecting again. It was then we decided we were running a home for wayward cats.  Again, she found a box, but these kittens were bigger and she moved them into a sleeping bag. I won’t be rolling out that bag any time soon.

I can deal with the mating habits of small animals. If they aren’t spaed, you just have to accept that they’re going to multiply every couple of months. Large animals are a different story.

The other night I had to go out for an intervew and when I turned on my headlights, four beautiful gray (their hair turns gray when the autumn arrives - I looked it up) deer were standing in the backyard. They didn’t run, they just stood there with a dumb look on their faces. I, on the other hand, got so excited I had to run inside and get my husband to see them, and of course they were gone when we got back outside.

I mentioned this to the woman I was interviewing and she said, oh, it’s rutting season so they just act a little stupid. I nodded and smiled, like I knew what she was talking about. Rutting season? Hmmmm….

This evening when we got home it was dark again. (it happens about once a day) We pulled into the drive and before I could turn off the headlights we saw a deer on her knees and a buck behind her.

I ran inside, logged on, and looked up “rutting”. As it turns out, deer don’t go into a heat, they rut.

Oh my! We had just caught them in the act!

I don’t think our garage could handle it if this doe found a way into it and tried to have her baby in a box. I don’t think I have a box big enough. I seriously doubt I have a sleeping bag big enough. And I’m not sure, but I doubt she’d eat cat food.

For a city girl like me, there is something “new” everyday to marvel at when you live in the country.

At least we’re not stuck in a rut.

2008-11-13

For example, when we first moved here we lived in a tiny little house in town. It was a fix-me-up, and while my husband worked, I attempted to fix it up. Key word: attempt

I’m not afraid to try most anything, but I got mysef in a lot deeper than I thought.

The hardwood floor was a big mess. Some boards had been replaced with particle board so sanding and staining was out of the question. So… creatively daring person that I am, I painted it. In fact, I lacquered it. Red. Dark, but bright red.

It wasn’t long before every time I met someone new and told them where we lived the common response was something like, “OH! I heard you painted your floor red!”

Who told them? I had visions of a haunting, with the spirits so aghast at the red floors they ran to the ghosts next door to complain. 

The next project was the kitchen. I had a thing for the hues of Tuscany…. dark orange, dark red, olive….  and I painted the cabinets orange.

When I went to the local building supply to buy the paint the owner looked at me like I was radioactive and then asked, “Didn’t you just paint your floor red?”

I’ll admit it sounds slightly hideous but it was really quite attractive once it was all said and done, pictures on the wall, curtains at the windows, and all that.

Perfect strangers would approach me and ask if I was planning an open house when the house was done so they could see what I’d “done” to the inside.

Behind their smiles and seemingly kind expressions I could hear my mother say, “ANN! What have you done!”

“Oh, boy, girlie, you’ve done it now.”

“You did WHAT?”

“Hmmmm… what an, uh, interesting color choice.” 

Another time we apparently didn’t run into the right people at the right place and the right time for a day or two because what seemed like all of a sudden a couple of dozen people thought we’d moved.

Not only did they think we moved, they were sure of it.  And not just moved… split. Left town. Took down the barn. Skidaddled. Vamoosed. They were so sure of it people were surprised to see us.

We hadn’t even been anywhere. No where at all. Not even to the Post Office. 

“Well, I thought you folks had packed up and moved on!”

“So-and-so said you’d packed up your truck and took off!”

“Gosh, where’ve you been? We’ve missed you!”

I must have missed me too because I had no idea that I’d been anywhere at all.

Next time people think I went someplace I’ll make sure to ask if I had a good time.

Someone is sure to know.

I will admit it.. this is my first blog.  Okay, so I’m a late bloomer.  At least I haven’t died on the vine.

Life is just a hoot, don’t you think? Besides the usual irony each of us deals with on a daily basis there is a degree of comedic value in most interactions.

I am a reporter in a small community. Everyone knows everyone, and counting out-laws and in-laws, most are related in one way or another. For a long time I was convinced that the local doctor had never prescribed birth control because it seemed as though everyone I knew had 20 cousins and everyone was literally related to everyone. It took awhile before I realized they always counted the in-laws, the in-laws in-laws, and and all the in-laws in between.

For the first year I lived here, I was always the one person in a group no one knew.  In fact, that’s how I described myself.

Rrrrriiinnngggg…. “Hello, this is Ann from the newspaper. Could I speak to….”

“OH! Ann! I’ve heard so much about you, but we’ve never met!”

“Well Mrs (insert a name - preferably German, Bavarian or Danish), actually we talked last night at the VFW. I was the one no one knew.”

“Oh that was YOU?”

And so it went.

I have to admit, I got a little giddy when my husband’s nephew married a girl whose parents (aunts, uncles, and grandparents) were from this county. How it all came about was rather interesting though.

Our publisher owns not one, but two, small weekly newspapers in communities about 80 miles apart. Our publisher also takes a hiatus for a couple of months through the summer to produce a magazine, which this year left three of us in the office here, and one or two in the other office, to produce both newspapers. We don’t subscribe to a news service; we write and research every article except for local press releases, some obituaries (most we write), and wedding announcements.

As I was proofreading the newspaper one week before going to press I was surprised to see my nephew’s, or rather, my husband’s nephew’s, engagement announcement.

One of my co-workers has lived here all her life, knows absolutely everyone in the county, and knows almost everything about them, so I asked her if she knew these people.

“No… it must have come in by e-mail.”

Hmmmm….. I knew it was my nephew. I also knew that he lived in Kansas City and his parents lived in Wichita and I couldn’t think of a single reason why he’d be announcing his engagement in our little town. It must have been intended for the other newspaper I surmised. His bride-to-be must have had some connection to the other community.

The pages were laid out and I had nothing with which to fill this space if we’d pulled the announcement, so we left it in, and sent it to the other newspaper to print the following week.

Two months later, I met his future bride (a beautiful girl, I might add) and her parents, who, to my surprise, grew up in this town! I was really glad we’d left it in the paper at that point, even though they hadn’t lived here most of their adult lives and I was still convinced that it belonged in the other newspaper.

Then comes the wedding. As a wedding gift, my husband (the groom’s uncle) and I (the groom’s aunt) provided the DJ entertainment for the reception.

Everything was beautiful, as were they, and the wine flowed freely, so I excused myself after a bit and ran outside to grab a quick smoke. I realize this is not a socially acceptable thing to do but I’d been drinking wine so I really didn’t care at that point.

An older man approached me and said, don’t you write for the county newspaper? Now wait a minute…. I was more than 200 miles away from home, my home being a pindot on a map where a lot of people still didn’t know who I was, and someone here knows me because I write for the newspaper?

I hope I hid my surprise as I smiled and said yes I do.

It was the bride’s grandfather. Apparently the bride’s grandparents still live in the county. At this point I’m really, really happy I left that engagement announcement in the paper!

A bit later, on my way back from refilling my wine glass I was approached again, with the same question. By then I thought this was really weird, but I smiled and said, yes, that’s me! Another county resident who has known the bride’s family forever.

Time goes on, tunes are played, kids are dancing, and I’m approached again. This time it is the bride’s aunt, who, coincidentally is married to the brother of the boyfriend of one of my husband’s employees who are both also at the weddng. Not only that, she still had two sisters in my town, both of whom I knew! And they actually knew me!

By the time the dance was over, I counted about ten people who approached me (that makes me something of a local celebrity I think except I was 200 miles from home).

On the way home the next day I realized that if Amy (the aunt) is Greta and Heidi’s sister (the two I knew and who know me), then I am related, albeit by marriage, to someone in the county! That makes me almost-a-local! My status in the community immediately raised 10 points.

But wait… what exactly does this mean? Will I be expected to attend family reunions? Will I have a baby shower to go to every month? Multiple graduation ceremonies? Will I be asked to babysit? What will that do to my Christmas list??????????

Actually, as it turned out, that one marriage didn’t make me a local because…. I still don’t know everyone, their history, their parents’ histories, their blood types or their dogs names. When that happens, I can become a naturalized citizen of this county.

In the meantime, I’m still just a city girl, adjusting to small town America, living on 10 acres that feels like a ranch to me but more like a big lot to the local farmers, trying to grow tomatoes and watermelons, and minding my own business as much as a reporter can.

Oh, and the engagement announcement didn’t belong in the other newspaper so 80 miles away there were about 1200 people wondering who these kids belonged to.

Life is kind of a hoot, don’t you think?