Last night, I spoke with a few folks who recently moved to the city I now call home. I still live in rural America. The town I call home now has a much larger population than West Plains, but it is by no means a city. There isn’t much metropolitan about the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
Although these folks moved to our community intentionally, they bemoaned how different things are done here than they are used to. They wondered if, by introducing some of their more metropolitan ways, they might improve our community.
I smiled to myself and thought they were missing the whole point of rural life.
It isn’t about changing the community. It’s about changing yourself.
Growing up in West Plains, I never dreamed I would travel the way I have been fortunate enough to do. I’ve been to some really big cities: New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., Seattle, Los Angeles, Miami, and plenty of others. But I never stopped being a wide-eyed country mouse in the vastness of the skyscrapers, the throngs of people and the noise. Oh, the noise.
Even when I spent a week or more every month in Washington for a job, I never quite assimilated. And I didn’t want to.
The fact is that I am a country mouse.
That doesn’t mean I don’t know which fork to use when the table is set with more than one. Always start from the outside and work your way in. It will rarely fail you.
It means I find value in having a slower-paced place to call home. It means West Plains never really left my soul.
I like knowing my town. I like being familiar with the neighborhoods, the schools, and the churches. I like feeling safe in my home. For years, I never locked my car or my house. We lived outside of town, and I never saw the need to hand out keys to my kids. I just left the door unlocked.
That, to me, is worth not having an IKEA down the street.
When I packed up my little Honda Civic two weeks after graduating from West Plains High School, I thought for sure I would never look back. I was certain a small town couldn’t hold me or keep me happy.
I was wrong.
I quickly learned that I never wanted to live in a big city, despite my fascination with them. I learned all the life skills I needed on the back roads of the Ozarks.
Sometimes I wonder if I am not better equipped to find peace and happiness because I came from the kind of place where both seemed to grow naturally and unrefined, on hillsides and in meadows left undisturbed and wild.
This is my last love letter to my dear hometown.
I hope you have enjoyed reading these letters as much as I have enjoyed writing them. Although “Dear West Plains” has run its course, I’m not quite done with you, WP.
I plan on popping up on the pages of The Quill from time to time with my column, “The Gen X Files.” Although those columns won’t be written directly to you, you’ll find your imprint all over my stories because you were the genesis of so many of my Gen X tales.
So, until next time, and as always,
Laura
Laura (Wright) Jones is a former West Plains resident and a writer now living in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley with her husband Jeff and their two Morkies Jonesy and Mookie. Her column, “Dear West Plains,” has been a series of love letters to her hometown and the stories that shaped her. Watch future issues of the Quill for her new column, “Gen X Files.” Her email address is laura.jones062869@gmail.com
