I miss Mayberry...

On Saturday, Brandon and I were in my hometown so he could lay tile on my parent's front porch.  While he was busy doing his thing, my mom and I ran a few errands around town and during that time, I was reminded of some of the good aspects of living in a small town in Kansas:

• We went to local lumber yard/home store (a small town Lowe's, if you will) and the sales person recognized my mom as we walked in the door, instructed another sales person to show her the grout chart and charged my parent's account for the supplies.  She didn't even have to sign anything - we just walked out the door.
• We went to the local garden center to pick up flowers (for our planting project later in the day) and we ran into my old boss from the movie theater, my seventh grade science teacher (who remembered what year he had me in school - 14 years ago!), a high school friend's mom and a few other people.  I chatted with all of them and it was lovely.
• We also went to Wal-Mart where we ran into a former youth group volunteer from our church and my high school assistant principal and his daughter, whom I cheered with in high school.
• After Wal-Mart we had to go to the vet's office to pick up dog food for my parent's dog.  We walked in the door (and my mom left her keys in the ignition of the car and her purse in the front seat) and the sweet girl at the desk knew exactly what kind and what mix of dog food my mom needed and again, we walked out without paying for or signing anything. 

While I grew up in this little town my entire childhood, I never thought about all of the luxuries (and I certainly didn't think of them as luxuries) that came with small town life.  Now, it really does cause me to pause and think about how lucky I really was to have that experience!