I’m really just a big-city girl at heart. My husband, who grew up in Camden, NJ might
disagree. Before I first took him to
Oakwood, the town where I grew up, I told him it was a suburb of Atlanta—after
his first visit, he was quick to point out that if Oakwood was a suburb of anything,
than it was a suburb of Gainesville but certainly not Atlanta. I guess after moving to Atlanta and gaining some perspective, I’d have to agree.
Regardless of where I
grew up, I love the activity and hustle-and-bustle of the city. I love live theater and a variety of restaurants. I enjoyed being able to step out my front
door and walk to the library, the community center, the pizza place, and Dairy
Queen. Even so, I remember as a little
girl being enchanted with the quaint lifestyle Laura Ingles Wilder described in
her “Little House” books.
My favorite book in the series was On the Banks of Plumb Creek.
Wilder described the isolation, the outhouses, the unvaried diet, and
the life of a pioneer family with such sweet nostalgia I thought that was the
type of environment for which I was made.
I have since realized that even though I love eating fresh foods straight
from our garden, it’s the variety of diet and energetic, constantly moving atmosphere
of the city that I crave.
I remember days, especially Fridays, that I would sit in my
car in bumper-to-bumper traffic for an hour to travel from the school where I
worked to my home, a mere 15 miles away.
The certainty of traffic is one thing I don’t miss about the city. All these thoughts flashed through my mind when
Sherwood and I were stuck in a rural Kenyan traffic jam.
We were riding on the slick mud of our rural road snugly situated in the deep ruts from which one dare not emerge, even in a
four-wheel-drive vehicle, when the road is in such dire condition.
As we traveled along, we came upon a donkey, sans owner,
charcoal in sacks strapped to its back, making its way down the middle of the
road. We couldn't risk leaving the
safety of our furrow to pass the determined beast, so we traveled behind it for
several minutes. Eventually, the donkey
put on his right directional signal (I kid you not, he rotated his right ear
with great aplomb) and promptly moved over to the right hand side of the road
on the outside of the groove. Once we
passed him, he moved right back to his original path in the middle of the
road.
Even though there’s a lot to miss about city life, I must
admit I’ve never been as amused in Atlanta traffic jams as I was the day we
were stuck behind the donkey.
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