It's All In One's Perspective

In the past four days I have spent a night in communities of 200, one million, twelve thousand and back home in Columbus, Ohio with it's 1.5 million. Depending on where I land I think and react differently. In Hackensack, Minnesota, population 200 I'll go into town to the general store. I leave the car windows open and have the doors unlocked. The town doesn't have a police officer anymore. He was giving too many speeding tickets to vacationers and the merchants got rid of him. In Boone, Iowa, my hometown has a population of 12,000. If I go to Walgreen's I'll have my car windows up but leave the car unlocked. In Dublin we bolt the house up tighter than Ft. Knox even when we go to church. The most criminal act perpetrated in this town in the past decade is when some one's yard doesn't get mowed for two weeks.
Hackensack doesn't have a stop light. Boone has some; maybe three or four uptown (or downtown if you live on the north side) and a couple on Mamie Eisenhower Avenue. They take ten seconds, tops, to go from red to green. In Dublin we have them every two blocks and I can eat three Big Mac's in the time just one takes to change colors.
I was talking to a person in Boone last year about seeing a certain movie. He said, "Why, I'd have to drive all the way to Ames to see it". Folks, it takes twelve minutes to drive from the Boone city limits to Ames.
Yesterday I was driving to buy my new computer, a twenty minute drive(half the time it takes to go from Boone to Des Moines). In Boone, if people drive to Des Moines they take overnight luggage. The first thing I noticed about being back in the big city and driving the freeways was my anxiety level and impatience began to show. It's like I could hardly wait to flip someone off. But that's just me being me----and loving it.