It Takes A Village

                                 My hometown is actually considered a village. It is very small and everyone knew everyone - still do in fact. You couldn't get away with a whole lot because there was always someone who knew your parents. I can remember one morning my father asked me what my car was doing sitting in the parking lot of one the local bars at three o'clock in the morning. For just a moment I thought "How the heck does he know?" but then I remembered that he knows all the cops and of course they know who I am. I was in college at the time, but still lived at home - technically an adult, but Dad still wasn't happy.
                                   There were less than 100 kids in my graduating class and it was one of the biggest classes before or since. Nowadays the classes are about half the size. The school system is small so there weren't some of the opportunities the big schools offer, but we got a good education and we didn't have some of the problems that the big city schools had.
                                 It was the type of town that as kids you couldn't wait to leave, but when you start a family of your own you want to move back to raise your kids. A lot of people I know have done this and not too long ago there was a waiting list to find a home for sale as many people who left wanted to return.
                                   Our parents didn't drive us to our friends houses or drop us off at practice, we walked or rode our bikes. The only way you got a ride to school is if it was raining cats and dogs. It only took about twenty minutes to walk from one end of town to the other. We would spend hours walking around, stopping to talk to someone at the ice cream place or watch the guys play basketball on the courts by the park. 
                                   In the winter we would go sledding on the hills in the park or go ice skating in the outdoor rink in the center of town. During the summer months we would head to the park for movie night. When we were little we would sit on blankets, eat popcorn and watch the movie with our friends and parents. As teenagers we would hang out on the edges to see and be seen, sometimes sneaking a smoke thinking we were so cool.
                                    Every year there was a festival over the fourth of July that still goes on today. It would be kicked off by a parade that the entire village turned out for. We would ride the rides-all six of them over and over, eat fair food and win gold fish that died the next day. We ran freely over the "fair grounds" thinking were so lucky to not have our parents watching over us. It wasn't till we were older that we realized that if our own parents weren't watching us everybody else's was and all our parents had to do was ask a passerby where we were or poke their head out of the booth they were working too see us. 
                                      It's still a nice place to live. My parents and a number of my friends are still there. I don't live far and visit often. My kids go to the festival every year and they both have friends that they go to visit frequently. I sometimes think about moving back, but I like my neighborhood and even though I have a lot of great memories, I wonder if reality can hold a candle to those memories.