What You Will Do Here – A Guide

While out for my morning walk, some guy driving a newer model European car flagged me over. I eyed him suspiciously because I knew he wasn’t from around here. Still, he seemed nice enough so we struck up a conversation.

As it turns out he’s checking out my little town because he’s thinking of moving here and as is typical of city people, he began firing questions at me a mile a minute.

“Where’s the real estate office? Are there homes in the country? What do people do here?”

The first two were easy. There’s never been a realtor in this town and there are lots of homes in the country.  The third question is a little harder.

Mostly what people do here is sit around drinking coffee and talking. There’s a ton of stuff to talk about so it takes all day long. If they get tired of sitting, they walk around until they find another person they can talk some more to.

In the evenings, people get their pickups out and drive around. There are only eleven paved roads in town, but they drive slowly. That way they can see everything that’s going on. For example, who has their garage doors open and what they have in there.

Whatever they see in the evenings, they bring up for discussion at morning coffee. The details are analyzed and carefully noted for more conversations that will arise throughout the day.

It may sound dull, but it isn’t. For example, if it’s seen that Frank is missing the extension ladder in his garage but ToniJo now has one in her garage, there are conclusions that can be drawn.

One is that Frank is secretly seeing ToniJo and letting her use his extension ladder. Within a few days Frank and ToniJo are engaged to be married. He’s moving into her house where he’s been keeping his extension ladder. They’re planning to honeymoon at Lake Tahoe.

Then, ToniJo hears and is mad at everybody because she can’t stand Frank, who lent his ladder to his cousin, and her nephew gave her the ladder that’s in her garage. She forgot to tell all of us that so we’re mad at ToniJo for keeping secrets from us.

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