Nov. 11, 2008

Country Gal by Vanita Blundell
One wonderful thing about living in a small community is that we help each other out. I have mentioned numerous times my neighbors have help us out time and time again. But the thing about residing in our area is that everyone is willing to help each other out. Years ago when Skeet Willard died, I remember his wife, Barbara saying that she could go down the phone book and pick a name at random and whoever it was would be willing to help her out. I have thought of that often- How nice it is to know that there is help. Many of us do not ask for assistance but we know that it is there if and when we need it.
What has brought this to mind was when I was thinking about the kindness we felt when Jim’s mom past away. The weather was not good for travelers as it was rainy and the roads were muddy. It takes quite a bit of rain for our sandy roads to be slick and nasty. Our road was washed out in a couple of places. We had family staying at our home and most of them were not used to driving on dirt roads. Some of them would not arrive until late evening. I called the county shop to ask them if they could flag the wash-out, so that no-one would not hit the large rut and damage their car, not to mention jarring their teeth out. It was late in the afternoon when I called- they said they would try to flag the hazard. Much to my surprise they not only flagged it - but they had come out and fixed the wash out. You can not imagine how much that relieved my stress. I am sure that if we had lived in a large community and asked for some assistance they would not have been so nice as to go over and above the call of duty.
Living on dirt roads most of my life is a normal way of living- but to those who have had the luxury of living on pavement- have problems traveling on the bumps, ruts, loose gravel that is just part of the charm of gravel roads. I feel that the roads are better than they were when Mom and Dad were married. They would tell stories of how after a rain they would plow mud up to the running boards of their vehicle. If it had rained a lot there were time that they would not go out any more than they had reason. But now we have ditches for the water to run off and some gravel to hold us up. I remember one time when we went to church and it was really muddy and the roads were bad, so we went to town cutting across pastures. I thought that was really exciting. Mother was not as enthused, but we made it to church on time. I can not think that we did the pastures any good but I can remember only doing that one time. I guess when we went home the roads had dried out some and was not quite so bad.
So we are grateful to the road and bridge crew. If you consider how many miles of road there are in the county, I do not know how they get done what they do accomplish. It is easy to complain about things- but with the price of fuel and other expenses, I am not sure how we afford to do what does get done.