Monday, March 21, 2005

Bisbee

Small town living – you gotta love it!

Bisbee is a town of about 6000 people more or less with a core group of about 1000 active players. There is a strong set of pluses and minuses to small town living.

You’ll see everyone you like within 24 hours of rolling into town. But, you’ll see everyone you don’t like with in 24 hours, with special emphasis on ex-lovers and former friends.
You know everyone standing in line at the post office. It takes forever to get anywhere because you keep stopping to chat. The postal clerk will get your mail out of your box if you forget your key. You have the post office box because they will not deliver mail to your house!
You forget that the little market up the street does not take credit cards. However they do
accept IOU’s written on a little scrap of paper with no ID. This applies if you are a little short until payday too.
The speed limit through town is 25 mph which seems excruciatingly slow at times. But when you go whizzing by at 40 the local cop knows your car and just wags his finger in mild reproach.
Time has no meaning unless you want to eat! The local restaurants close at 8:30 pm are closed every Monday & Tuesday, and whenever else they damn well feel like it.
But when they are open you know 2/3 of the people in the café when you go for breakfast and end up lingering until almost lunch over coffee & conversation.
Shopping can be an adventure. The butcher at the big chain grocery store knows exactly what you like and comes bustling out from the cubicle to tell you when it is on sale. The downside to this is that buying anything of a personal nature gets you a nod and a wink from the cashier or a request for a date. There are no secrets here.

Sometimes you have to go away for a while to appreciate how nice it is to be where people are happy to see your face. During our exile in the Eastern Wastelands as David likes to call it we are realizing just how lucky we are to have found our little niche here in Bisbee. Being away helps us overlook the more annoying quirks and embrace the pleasures. Maybe we romanticize it a little but we really love this town, and it seems to love us. We’ve had two weeks respite from the anonymous world and the worst part about living here is leaving. But, we know when we come back we’ll have a spot waiting for us at the table (unless it's Monday or Tuesday!) and some new tales to tell. We’ll catch up on all the news and it will feel like we never left.

1 Comments:

Blogger Rik said...

Hello Diane,
Rik Rodgers here; also a member of the Bisbee Club.I got a copy of your last posting and went to your blog to have a look.
I really enjoy yur photographs - very good work. And I want to encourage you to keep blogging.
I lived in Bisbee for 5-years (95-99), rented houses, bought a mortorhome and moved into the Shady Dell, sang, played guitar locally and outlying areas, made and sold digital art; the typical Bisbo.
I'm living/retired in the Philippines now -quite a difference in humidity levels - for the past four years.
I have my own blog with lots of photo's if you're interested:
http://expatriate-life.blogspot.
com/
I miss Bisbee, and the desert life, although you're right about the good and bad about people there. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but it is necessary to get away from it now and again.
I hope you continue to enjoy the canyon life... and keep taking pictures.
Rik

6:29 PM  

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