Small Towns, Big Cities

My First Small Town

I grew up in a small town, St. Marys, Ohio, population 7-8,000. It was a peaceful place in which to grow up. I went to high school in St. Marys, too. The high school is still there and is still being used as the town's only high school. My father graduated from this same building in 1938. It's an ooooooooooooold building and will be retired in the next few years. I believe a new school is already in the works although I don't know when it will open.

There wasn't a lot to do, but we did have a movie theater where I spent a lot of time in my youth. Time has not been good to the theater, however. It no longer shows movies, but is used for occasional events.

I used to spend time at the local lake with my friends as well, sometimes swimming, sometimes picnicking, sometimes fishing. From what I've heard, there used to be a very popular amusement park on the lake, but that was already in the past by the time I came along. There's still a state park, and it's still a pretty area but, like me, past its prime.

A large parking lot at the lake was the site of my very first driving lesson. This was before drivers ed became widespread. I don't know if it was even offered at my school yet. But everyone I knew back then learned the same way I did -- our parents taught us. My father drove me out to the lakefront parking lot because (a) it was big and (b) since it was late fall, there was no traffic out there. It would have been almost impossible for me to run into anything. And this is a good thing because my driving options were (a) my father's 1959 Buick (aka The Boat) and (b) my mother's 1954 Chevy (aka The Tank).

Small towns are good places for growing up, at least back then. There wasn't a lot of traffic, so not much danger of getting hurt (although two of my high school classmates did die in an automobile accident during our junior year). Not much crime either, except a bit of vandalism from time to time. But as I neared adulthood, I wanted more than peace and safety. So at the age of not-quite-twenty, I moved to the big city.

My One and Only Big City

Although my very first job in Washington, DC, was with the State Department (as a lowly clerk typist), it wasn't long before I found my way to Capitol Hill. I spent a total of about 15 years there, working for a few different Senators. It was a stimulating place to work, at least at times. I was working on the Hill during the Vietnam war era, with protest marches and demonstrations occurring with some regularity.

I was there during the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. We had a 6:30 pm (or thereabouts) curfew for several days, and national guardsmen stationed at half-block intervals throughout the city. And later that year, I was there when Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated in California. That was one of those times when you couldn't always get a dial tone when you picked up the phone because the trunk lines were overloaded.

And I was still working on Capitol Hill during Watergate. It was like being at the center of a soap opera. My office had a variety of betting pools going on -- first one indicted, date of impeachment, and others.

But even though politics form the heart of Washington, it has many other charms. The cherry blossoms around the tidal basin can be quite breathtaking -- at least before the inevitable late frost takes them down. And the sight of the Independence Day fireworks at the Washington Monument is just plain awesome, although perhaps not quite so awesome as the task of trying to get home afterwards. One of the decidedly UNcharming parts about life in Washington is the fact that parking is almost unobtainable. Don't even THINK about finding a space on the street within a block or two of your destination. And many of the popular destinations around the Mall don't have parking garages in the vicinity.

Fast forward a few years (or so), and I had left Capitol Hill, gone through a series of other jobs, some good, some bad, some indifferent, and I began working at the National Academies, a really terrific place to work. I had previously seen the statue of Einstein that is their landmark, but hadn't known it was on the grounds of the National Academies until I began working there.

I probably could have quite happily stayed there for the rest of my working life, except for two things. Well, three, actually. My parents, who had never stopped urging me to move back "home" to Ohio, and who were now getting on in years, and a new husband who hated living in the DC area. To be fair, I have to admit I was getting tired of the traffic myself. The peace of a small town was starting to sound good again. So between the pull from Ohio and the push from DC, I got serious about looking for employment in western Ohio and finally, in the summer of 2002, we made the move.

My Second (and most likely final) Small (Well, not all THAT small) Town

I'm now proud to live in Troy, Ohio, population around 25,000. I've decided that this is an ideal size, and Troy is pretty near ideal all around. It's small enough (about 5 miles from one end to the other) that it's easy to get around. My commute from home at the east end of town to work at the west end of town takes me about 15 minutes from front door to my cubicle. But it's big enough that there are things to do. And Troy does a terrific job of providing activities. I'll be adding some of those activities as well as other highlights of Troy as I go along.