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Today is Christmas Eve. I won't bother with a weather report as I'm sure you can guess, or look it up if you are interested. And seriously, there's only two kinds of weather -- "boring" and "disaster."
I will instead talk about the towns around here. I will someday get around to talking about the people, but I'm sure you'll forgive me for waiting. I want to get that part right and I feel the need for more practice before taking on such an important topic.
So, the towns. First off, I live in Radcliffe, population: no one's really sure, but it's below 600 for sure and maybe as low as 450. I would've expected the numbers to fluctuate more given that, having lived in the south, we must've gotten our snowbirds from somewhere. But really, the houses here seem just as full in winter as they do in summer.
The town of Radcliffe is a grid about 5 blocks by 5 blocks. No, I haven't counted them. I could be off by a block in either direction. No matter. The place is small enough that a walk around town is possible on most days. Walking across town barely counts as sufficient daily exercise according to my new doctor. He suggests taking the long way around, then laughs.
The "center" of town is, of course, Main Street. Here one finds first and foremost, the gas station/convenience store. Right next to that is a house. Across the street is the vet's office. Then comes the giant grain co-op complex which includes silos, grain elevators, tanks, and various storage buildings, plus a parking area for trailers of Anhydrous Ammonia -- an important ingredient in farming and the making of meth-amphetamine. Go figure. The state has restricted the sale of Psuedoephedrine (Sudafed) -- the other major ingredient in meth -- because controlling the distribution of all this Anhydrous Ammonia would clearly be too much of a pain for the farmers. If one wanted a small tankful of the stuff, all one would have to do is pull up to just about any farmers' co-op and hitch up the trailer of one's choice.
The Co-op stretches for two blocks. It is the largest employer in town by a healthy margin. It is busy every workday of the year. Trucks come and go all the time. They have a giant truck scale. I tested it and I swear I've lost weight.
Next to the co-op on main street comes the VFW and Legion hall(s), a storage barn of some sort (although I think the townfolk hold meetings in there too) and then there's the bank, the real-estate office, the Cardinal Cafe, and the post office. Opposite that we have the phone company, the library, and a never-occupied news office of some sort.
The next block has the car repair place, the bar, the city clerk's office, and a few other things I don't know what they are. After that is the park on one side and the start of residences (again) on the other side.
A block east of the Co-op is the new Fire/EMS station. A block east of that is the edge of town and that links up to the street where the United Methodist Church is...and Dana's parsonage. A block west of the co-op is where my street is. And that's where the grain elevator is too. Then, there's another block to the edge of town.
East of town is a golf course and airport that were built by the guy who owns the bank -- or so I'm told.
Next to the park is a set of small apartments rented mostly to elderly folks who need a small, efficient space with minimal upkeep.
The post office delivers in a 3 block area that doesn't include my house, or Dana's. Just the little area nearest the P.O. and, I think, those small apartments.
Mixed in through the rest of town are houses of varying vintage and in varying states of repair or decay. The "worst" houses are basically small unpainted wooden structures that have plastic wrap instead of windows. The "best" houses are recently renovated semi-mansions in a style I can't really describe -- maybe it's just "large farmhouse" or something along those lines. I'm sure there's a better term for it. They are nice places, though. (again, I'll leave off the descriptions of the people inside the houses for another time).
Yards are mostly unfenced. There are lots of racoon and bunnies around here. And huge trees!
There's a nature walk that runs along the old railroad bed. They use it at Halloween for the "haunted trail." Boo.
Other towns nearby are precisely similar in every way. There might be a few more brick structures, or a few less. There might be one or two fewer blocks one side or the other of their main street. But basically, every town over a certain size has a gas station/convenience store and a grain co-op.
I heard recently that Iowa's population is growing, but at a lower rate than that for the rest of the country. I think there's still a slow death in these little towns that serve the farming communities. This place is not growing. They've had to unify their school districts and combine so that all the students from surrounding towns go to one of the towns for elementary school and junior high (Radcliffe) and another town for high school (Hubbard). It seems to work out okay, though, for now.
What they'll do when this generation of kids moves away and doesn't return to raise their families, I don't know.
One hope for survival for many of these towns appears to be their proximity to growing metropolitan areas. For example, Ames is 30 miles or so south on I-35. It's possible that towns along I-35 (like Story City and maybe even tiny Ellsworth) could become bedroom communities for folks seeking cheap housing and a relatively easy commute.
Places further off of I-35, like Radcliffe (7 miles east) and Hubbard (14 miles east) are just not as likely to benefit from that commute possibility. Plus, Ames is not in danger of bursting at the seams any time soon, so really, even places like Story City and Ellsworth (especially Ellsworth) aren't all that likely to benefit from growth to the south of them.
Interestingly, the other hope for survival of these small towns appears to be immigrants, especially from Mexico. People who work on the farms and then stay. Of 8 kids in one of the Church's Christmas pageant, 7 were from two (related) families of Mexican immigrants.
To the north, there's not much.
Basically, there are towns every 7 miles in any direction, no matter where you start from.
This is a good day's walk, or a convenient ride on horseback.
I gather that's how the plains were settled. 7 miles apart in any direction is about right for a new town. And that means there'll be a church, a store, a bar and a few other things.
Some towns support a mid-sized grocery store. Some do not. People in Radcliffe have told me about the store they used to have. It's been gone almost 20 years, but they still talk about it.
This installment is a bit long. I just thought you should get the lay of the land. It figures into what the rest of the journal entries will be about. I mean, there's not an inexhaustible supply of places and events to describe, and giving you all the context of where the places are situated and where the events take place will, perhaps, make it more meaningful.
Like the Christmas parade. It started just North of the bar and ran up to the city tree at the corner of the co-op and the co-op on Main Street. Then we hung a left and turned back North when we hit the fire house.
Our float was for Christmas carols.
The fire truck and ambulance were in front of us. The ambulance had a flattened Santa pasted to the back doors. Ooops.
It was an electric light parade. Basically, everyone ran AC converters from their cigarette lighter outlets and put up strings of mini lights on their vehicles and trailers. Our lights burned out a fuse in the guy's truck. We had battery-opeated candles with us, so we had something to keep with the theme.
The town's PA system was playing OTHER Christmas songs while we belted out our hymns (it was a UMC float afterall). I think it made us sound better.
People clapped. We waved.
It was fun.
The next morning, Smokey peed under the town Christmas tree.
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Mine too! Bob, I'm in the process of getting adjusted to small town life as well. I have to admit that I'm jealous of the fact that you have a library in town. Ours is in the next town over about 20 minutes away. Other than that, our towns sound pretty much alike. We do have a teeny tiny grocery store that sells over-priced food, though.
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