Little Town life.

Life in a little town can be somewhat different.  I live on a narrow little street that used to be somebody's driveway ... it becomes a one-way street twice a day when parents deliver and pick up their children from the elementary school ... 3 buildings left of where I live.  Our house is so big it would probably fit inside our neighbor's swimming pool.  Just south of our shed/workshop they inserted the Family Healthcare Center ... where a P.A. and 2 nurses show up twice a week to see patients.  The other building between the medical building and the school is the old historical Baptist Bible College (Oates-Reynolds building).  In back of all of this are cow pastures and a couple of cell-phone towers.

The town is basically "Y" shaped.  One main road that runs through from NE to SE ... with a road that branches off and runs East from the Liberty gas station/convenience store in the middle of "old" downtown.

The town library is located in the former Bible college ... having moved from the old city hall building in "old" downtown.  Then, due to the space available and the historical building funds the mayor decided to move city hall into the old Bible college building ... leaving the police department and the court in the former city hall ... next door to the former city bank (which Wachovia bought and then closed).  Our bank is now a branch of another little town bank (Hartford) and is a trailer located directly in front of the medical center.  The ambulance service moved out of "old" downtown and into a former convenience store building just north of the bank trailer ... the gas station located just north of the ambulance service is now a church.

Old downtown is now mostly empty buildings ... leaving just our one lawyer and the laundromat across from the police department.  The Masonic lodge bailed out of the only two-story building in "old" downtown and moved back of the ambulance service.  So, downtown has effectively moved 2 blocks SE of "old" downtown.  Our only restaurant (Andy's) and the Used car business on College St, have both moved 6 miles down the road to the next little town (Pinkard).  Even the Post Office left "old" downtown and moved just south of the elementary school.

Old downtown still has a gas station convenience store where you can buy really good breakfast biscuits in the morning.  The senior citizens center is located 2 buildings east of the convenience store on King St ... Just down the street from the Methodist and Baptist churches (they are located within a block of each other on the same street) ... the Assembly of God church is a street east and a block south of the Baptists.  Once you get past all the churches you come to the gunshop & hair salon buildings ... keeps the women looking good and the men well supplied for deer hunting season.

If you go to the far NE stretches of the claimed town limits ... you will find the only traffic light, a massage parlor, a strip joint, and a truck stop ... in between here and there are a whole lot of cotton and peanut fields, woods, and some cow pastures.  

The biggest annual excitement is the tiny civil war re-enactment down the hill in the postage-stamp sized park by the river.  The town is built on the hill because periodically the river floods half a mile wide and wipes out all the mobile homes and other structures down in the valley.  But it doesn't go more than 6-8 feet deep, so the Village Inn down at the crossroads keeps being re-built.  

Several other gas stations have come and gone ... along with a couple of hardware stores.  Last year some one set up business at the old Ard Hardware store/gas station parking lot to sell their fresh truck garden produce.  We even have a Napa auto parts store/car mechanic.

And that is about all the excitement from our little neck of the woods.