My sister related an experience she had the other day that made me very glad for where I live. She lives in California, up in the mountains near San Bernadino. She and her husband are in the finishing stages of building their home. Friday they drove to Commerce (LA area) to pick up the carpet. On the way home, they decided to pull into a Jack-in-the-Box to get a bite to eat. Because of the way the carpet was situated, they couldn't go through the drive thru, so she parked and ran in to order the food to go. Inside she discovered that the entire front counter was covered in bullet proof glass as thick as her index finger was long! She had to speak through a little hole to place her order, pay through a little metal tray under the glass, and received her order through a glass box big enough to fit the tray with a bag standing on it. She couldn't open the door of the box on her side of the counter until the girl on the other side had closed her door. Needless to say, she scooted out of there as quickly as she could and got them back on their way to their happy little home in the mountains.
Some of you may be thinking, so what - nothing happened. However, just the thought of having to live in a place where the fast food businesses have to have bullet proof glass around them to give their employees a safe working environment makes me glad to live in a out-of-the-way place that some people in our own county haven't even heard of. I like living in an area where my biggest complaint is the smell of the hog farm down the road and around the corner (and that's only when the wind is just right!)
So, here's to the places of the world where you can leave your doors and windows open when you want to, where you can actually see the stars at night, and let noise of nature put you to sleep. A place where you can send the kids out to play and you watch to make sure they aren't playing in the creek. Here's to slowing down and getting over for the farm machinery on the road, to the sound of tree frogs, cicadas, and coyotes yipping through the night. Here's to letting the deer and the skunks have the right-of-way. Here's to back roads to nowhere and everywhere. Here's to living in Middle of No-where, No Body's-Heard-of-It, USA.
