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My family and I live out in the country, we’re not part of a town. The kids go to school in a little town that looks like this.



We worship in another little town that is really in worse shape. Most parts look like this




I love this little town, but it does have a lot of problems. Aside from the public school there are maybe a dozen jobs in town. There is a lot of meth cooking and use, high unemployment, not a lot of highly educated people. Most of the people who live in this town have been there since birth and the families go back for generations. The main highway used to go right through town, but when the new road came in about eight years ago it bypassed the little town. There are three houses that really look like junkyards, but they are not. I wonder how they accumulated all of that stuff? The worst house has junk covering at least three acres and comes right up to the house. There is an old rock house that used to be really pretty. The owners moved to town and rented the house. The last renters were pretty rough. The mom and dad were cooking meth. The oldest daughter dropped out of high school when she got pregnant. The middle daughter stayed in high school when she got pregnant and stopped smoking dope at least for a time, but when the baby came she dropped out, too. I don’t know what came of the youngest daughter but when she was eleven her twenty-one year old boyfriend left hickeys all over her neck, chest, and shoulders. The house has been empty since the police got involved. I suppose the cost of cleaning a meth house is more than the owners can manage. There is a lot of good in the town, too. Neighbors know each other and they help each other. There is a tremendous since of community. Everyone goes to the school’s ball games and volunteers at the fire department. There are community events. It’s like Mayberry plus a little meth and drunks that cause more trouble than the Mayberry drunk that would let himself in to jail.

A few days ago an elderly lady that I don’t know passed away. We worship with her grandson and his family and it’s been a hard time for them. The funeral is tomorrow and so the extended family has come in from all over. I made a couple of lasagnas and took them over tonight. The family is staying at her house which is about a block down from the school. Everyone calls the road School Road, but tonight I noticed the street sign says College Ave. I bet if you said College Ave. no one would know what you were talking about. A young guy let me in and the house was full of strangers, I didn’t know a single person. But it was like walking into the home of an old friend. We visited and discussed different relations, talked about the food that has been brought, and went over the arrangements. We all hugged when I left. There are no real strangers in a small town.

I really love being a part of this community. I don’t want to send my kids to school there, but I wouldn’t mind teaching there.