Town

The construction in town has finally ended and it only took 4 straight months. First , I should say that it is not my town - it is the next town from me and has what mine doesn't (ie the Post Office, gas station, handful of restaurants, etc.) Also my town and the next one share a Zip Code. With that said: people call it "my town" regardless. Now back to the work. The towns' website admitted earlier in the month what anyone who drove through the center of town already knew - that there were many mistakes made by both the town and the contractors. Apparently, the town was paying the contractor "by the hour" which isn't the smartest or cheapest way since it doesn't give any incentive to the contractor to work hard or fast. The town also didn't have a final plan on how it wanted the downtown area to look when it was finished. They tried several dumb projects that they eventually admitted they messed up on and got rid of. Well, the construction is finally done and yet the town's square doesn't look any better. At least it got done before the kids went back to school - today - or the town's Old Home Day this Saturday (Old Home Day is when each town has a mini-celebration to welcome back residents who moved away, etc.) I went to our town's Old Home Day once years ago and it very boring.

The people - at least the ones I have personally dealt with -  in my state (especially the local area) do not seem to be all that intelligent. They are very simple-minded and not very friendly (not even in the "country/rural" sort of way.) When people talk about how bad America's Education System is they should come here since the majority of people can't read, write and don't understand numbers. They put up signs that say "Work to Start on August 26th" and then it starts on August 22nd. They put up "One Lane Road" signs when they mean to put up "Road Closed." It would be one thing if they were hard-working and just not that smart, but people here only seem to like to complain about not having enough money and yet when you want to pay them to do the job they advertise they do everything in their power not to do the work and just "disappear." I guess they think it is better to get Food Stamps then do an honest day's work.

This is not what I expected when we first moved here years ago. I expected to live in the mountains where people are at first skeptical of "out-siders" but in the end would warm-up to you. That there would be a sense of community and hard-working people who only want to make a better life for themselves and their children. I was wrong. I knew it wouldn't be easy - especially for me (as I'm not a country person) -  our mailbox is 1 mile down our mountain (which gets ice, snow and mud), we get an average of 1-1/2 feet of snow at a time,  the Post Office is 23 minutes away, the hospitals are 45-50 minutes away (along with the main supermarkets) and there are no real jobs in the area. There are times when you can't even get down our mountain to even get to the mailbox because the town hasn't plowed or put dirt on the ice or because of all the mud during Mud Season (I had never heard of Mud Season until we moved here - it's not surprising that mud is a big problem because 86% of the state's roads are dirt.)

I guess I should give these people more slack because they aren't that intelligent (and by that I don't mean book smarts vs street smarts) they don't seem to have basic common sense. I worked with the mentally and physically disabled at an overnight summer camp for 4 summers when I was in college and found more of them to have more common sense then anyone I have met here. With that said there are a handful people who have been consistently friendly, helpful and do a professional job. One of the 3 woman at the Post Office (who retired a few months ago), the co-owners of the local diner and the owner of the dog kennel  - which is only 2 miles from my house. I wish there were more, friendly, helpful people here, but I haven't found them yet. Some people may say that I must be the reason the locals aren't nice and friendly, but even when my sister, dad or mom deal with the locals - and not me - they are treated the same way.

While this town is not the stereotypical Norman Rockwell small, mountain town I still like it here (mostly because of our house and the view.) I can live with the locals because of the first two things.