When it really matters

Living in a small town means that it is nearly impossible to go to the Fareway grocery store without running into at least one person you could have a conversation with. Even if it is a total stranger. Small-town folks are like that.

One of the downsides is that it is nearly impossible to go to the grocery store and not see someone you know. There's no anonymity in a small-town. If you get picked up for running a red light, your name will be published in the police blotter in the newspaper. People know your business in ways that it isn't true in larger communities. To those who aren't used to that, it's like living in a fishbowl.

This is exactly the kind of thing that makes small towns like a soap opera. Everyone knows everyone else's details of their lives. But when a tragedy happens, that's when our fishbowl-life is a good life to have.

This week, members of the community have rallied around the family that reports, edits, and publishes our town's twice-weekly newspaper. It is an independent, family-run business and Mom and Dad in their mid-to-upper 80's are at work everyday. Two of their adult children manage the day-to-day business operation of this twice-weekly paper.

Late Wednesday afternoon, everyone was working toward the Thursday 9 a.m. deadline for the paper when Larry fell to the floor in the grip of a seizure. The ambulance was called and from our hospital, he was taken by air ambulance to a Des Moines hospital. He was gone within four hours of that initial 911 call at the age of 50.

When the news of Larry's death began making its way from one stunned friend to another the next morning, many realized that it was now Thursday and what did his family want to do about the paper? The family did what they do every Thursday morning, get the paper ready to go out that afternoon.

Friends of the family from across the community jumped in to help. One friend had worked for a daily newspaper in her career and she stepped in to edit and another other covered a community event. Larry covered the local sports beat and another friend drove more than 100 miles to follow the high school football team, just as Larry would have been doing on a Friday night.

I've lived in communities where I knew no one every time I went to the grocery store and I did not know the names of the people who lived around me. They didn't care if I lived there or not. And I guess I didn't either or I may have reached out to know them. You build your network and "neighborhood" in those communities, even if your "neighbors" live a mile away.

In a small-town, there's just too much we share in common to be anonymous.
And sometimes that's a curse, and sometimes, that's a blessing.