Gone Country

I don't know what it is about listening to country music that takes me back. Back to memories of childhood, mostly the 80s. Maybe it is the soulfulness of it brings back sentimental mental images. I think mostly the 80s because the town where I grew up is a small town on the prairie. I thank God I am a country boy. What a lot of the songs sing about; small towns, pickup trucks, fields, the end of flat top, pretty country girls, and cowboy lifestyle. A simple spiritual life feeling all right and having a good time. Not to mention there is really good country music, especially the rockin country. The 80s brings back good memories of a lost time but also simpler probably a product of childhood. Either way they are memories I cherish. I have vague memories of warfare and troubles on the news but barely.
This was an age where we got three TV stations which were sometimes fuzzy, and only get am radio until I was around 11. I still remember when I got a small portable radio cassette player and sitting on our back deck picking up the newly available fm stations we listened to when we went into the city. There was no Internet available and decent video game systems weren't around until I was seven or eight. Computers were also just coming out at that age but you really couldn't do much of anything on them. Our parents didn't even really have to monitor what we were watching or listening to on the radio. Parents had to be more concerned with what we were up to outside for hours on our own. Not that it wasn't safe for us to be out on our own. Back then it isn't an exaggeration that everybody knew everybody in town The kids didn't really have far to go or much to get into. Usually we could hear being called home or lunch or supper wherever we were. We were either going to the store, at neighbors, the playground, or the school, biking or just hanging out on the street. Our town was so small that the only traffic was usually our parents coming home, mostly dads. Our mothers mostly at home providing a childhood different than most experience today. Otherwise it was usually dead quiet the rest of the time, amazingly peaceful. Except for us kids a lot of the time. We all seemed to get along most of the time probably because selection was limited to like six or seven households. Usually all the siblings regardless of age. Everything was so close that a lot of times taking a bike seemed to take too long. It was easier to just cut across the empty lots or even yards. Nobody was very particular about us kids doing that although we all knew who didn't like it. Everybody in town walked to school and home after school that is if we weren't distracted and just dropped our bags to spend time at the playground. Those who had a real swimming pool were popular and we were lucky enough to be them for awhile. Our house was lucky enough to be the first with a Nintendo video game system when they first came out.

Speaking of school it was a very small almost intimate school of grades K through 6. It was a neat little school for elementary where recess was spent in the playground or playing marbles and games in a fenced in front yard of the school. The town kids all went home for lunch daily except for on the favorite hot dog days. In town all there was besides houses was the school, Catholic church, bank, general store and post office, gas station/garage and convenience store, as well as a grain elevator. In the town's past there was also a water tower, livery, convent as well as another store and garage. The town was only around 300 people for the longest time, so small that there were still lots of empty lots and even farm fields just beyond our house. All of the streets in town were gravel except for main street which was the highway going through town. Eventually the 2nd Ave., the primary avenue, was paved as well. There were only around 7 streets and 2 1/2 avenues in total. There is a set of train tracks along a street dividing the town. To the north of the town is a river whose name is the towns namesake that we crossed to get into town. Back then we used to regularly get a truck to deliver water to our cistern. There was no town water or sewer system. Crossing the bridge into town was like entering a different place, quiet, peaceful, calm and slow paced. In the summer you could hear the birds and insects, kids playing, sprinklers going, sometimes a radio or dog barking, and smell the barbecues cooking mixed with the abundantly fresh air.

For the longest time, like my first 10 years, this is how it stayed but after around 87/88 changes began to happen more frequent and faster. A new hall was built and the old town hall which was much loved by everybody was burnt down (intentionally). It was a big and sad event for the town. The gravel provincial highway through town was moved south of the town. A town water system and basic sewer system were eventually installed. As the population grew the school had to add temporary huts and when I was in grade 6 a new school was built and the old one torn down. The general store lost prominence and almost reached a state of closing down. A small seniors home was built. Everything almost the same for the next while, a mechanic shop and a small restaurant opening in the store, and some small home businesses. In the last roughly 10 years the bank was rebuilt, a inn with restaurant, lumber hardware store, grocery store, and recently second gas station were built. Many new residential developments have been built and there are very few empty lots, the town is very little like it used to be. Since the early 90s there is no way to go back to town I remember growing up. Today there are so many people it is impossible to know everybody anymore. The now paved streets with covered ditches are busy and the town is no longer quiet. You tend to hear traffic instead of children. Speaking of streets there are now over 20 streets (including avenues). The highway to town is no longer ever desolate.

I still have good memories of during summer vacation in late August. Coming home late in the afternoon after six from going shopping. The sun already having a more orange color like in the fall. Still fairly high in the sky but in the eyes driving. Cruising down the smaller not very busy single lane highway to town with the windows down and the radio playing either country or classic rock. The breeze coming in very refreshing on an otherwise very warm and nice day. The coolness and noise of the air dying away as soon as slowing down approaching town. The quiet except for the barely audible hum of the tires and insects almost amazing. You could almost feel yourself decompressing as entering town.