Small Town Values

                                                                                                                                                                                                           
This only happened once when I was growing up.  It was a Saturday morning after my dad's payday. The only reason that I knew that was my mother was crying and told me that.   My dad hadn't come home the night before.  My mom wasn't worried that he was with another woman.  She already knew that he had been at a poker game.  This had never happened before, but my mom knew already.  I grew up in a small town.  People knew more about each other than we knew about ourselves.

My mom knew some other truths as well.  The men that my dad was playing poker with were Ukrainians and they knew how to drink.  My dad was English and largely a teetotaler.  My mother didn't know anything about poker, but she knew that Ukrainians had a genetic predisposition to cards. All my mom could hope would be that my dad didn't lose his entire paycheck and that she hoped there would be something left over to buy some groceries.  

My dad came home.  I had never seen my dad like that.  He was scruffy and unshaven.  I smelled booze on him.  My mother only had one question, "how much did you lose?"   My father told her it was none of her business and went into his den.  The fight went on between my parents for a long period of time, however, they both kept repeating the same things.  

My mother wasn't really mad at my dad for losing his money; she was really mad because she didn't know how she was going to walk the streets of Dauphin while carrying the shame of being married to a man who gambled away his pay check.  

After a short period of time, my mom decided that she didn't want to share air with my father and she did have a number of errands to run, and she would have to face her public eventually, so she went uptown (or was it downtown?).  We went to the first stop, the Post Office, where the Post Master asked my mom what were her plans to spend my dad's winnings?  It turned out my father hadn't lost and he actually had doubled his pay check.  My mother carried me home because it was quicker than me walking.  

My father was waiting for us.  Freshly shaved and wearing clean clothes and with his coat on.  His told my mother, "I can't believe it took you so long to find out."  We got into our car, drove to Brandon and stayed overnight in a hotel.  Treats for all of us !!

When I was in high school, I got a flat tire on my lunch break.  I didn't know what to do and I was a little scared because I was somewhere on my lunch break that I shouldn't have been.  I parked my car in our school lot and continued the afternoon hoping I would figure out what to do or how to tell my dad.  When I came out after school, I had bigger problems.  My car was gone.  Again, I didn't know what to do.  I started the walk of shame going home, when I remembered that I lived in Dauphin.  I turned around and walked to the garage that my dad used.  My car was parked there with a new tire. Someone told my dad about the flat tire.  My dad knew I wouldn't know what to do, but he didn't want me to drive on a flat and cause more problems.  He had the car towed and replaced the tire.  

Long before Hillary Clinton told us that it takes a village to raise a child, small towns were putting this into practice.  When you live in a small town, everyone that knows you takes it upon themselves to be responsible for you.  If you are out after dark, someone will yell at you that you should have been home by now.  It is rarely your parent.  

When I got my first speeding ticket, I spent some time driving around figuring out how to face my parents.  It didn't even cross my mind that I wouldn't tell them, since I knew they already had found out about it.

I never bothered lying to my parent's about where I was going, because they were going to find out anyway.  It saved us all a lot of time.

I had one teenager drinking party and that was because my parents actually only went away one night.  I was just so excited about this opportunity that I didn't think things through.  Only once did people start to arrive did I start thinking that perhaps there could be some problems.  What if people I didn't know or trust started arriving.  What if they damaged my house?  What if I can't get them out? What if they make such a mess that I can't clean things up?  Just as I was starting to panic, I received two phone calls from two different neighbours.  They knew I was having a party and they were there to help if needed.  If anything happened that I couldn't handle, I was to call them and they would come over.  I also got a visit from a friendly RCMP Officer.  He saw me outside so that I wouldn't be embarassed and he told me every person who was at my party and that they were all good kids and everything would be fine.  He wasn't going to tell my parents under the condition that I called him directly if there were any problems.  My successful epic party ended at about 3:00 am and I started cleaning up.  I was finished at about 8;00 am.  My only issue was that I had lots of lots of empty beer bottles and didn't really know what to do with them.  As I was pondering this last loose end, I saw Henry Edwards drive up into our driveway.  There were two Henry Edwards, young Henry and old Henry.  Edwards and Edwards construction.  Young Henry had really taken over the business but old Henry was mostly retired but still did some jobs to keep himself busy.  He had remodeled our basement a couple of years ago.  He still dropped in occasionally to check on things.  Read:  have coffee with my dad.  What would be the odds that he would chose to come to our home now?   I quickly threw a towel over the beer bottles and let him in.  Henry went downstairs with his tool box to check on something.  He came up and confirmed that everything was alright.  We made awkward small talk and then he asked if I wanted him to take the empty beer bottles under the towel to the vendor?

How does everyone know everything?   It is a small town.

It annoyed the heck out of me when I was living it, but, now I miss it.  The greatest thing about growing up in a small town is that you don't learn how to keep a secret.  Everyone already knows everything.   It is freeing.  You don't have to worry about keeping family secrets.  It takes less energy. You can concentrate on living your life and making amends for your mistakes.  You don't have to hold on to secrets for years which takes away time from your true life's work.

I moved to the city and I started hiding things from my mom who was depending o me to take care of her.  One night, I didn't come home all night.  I came home smelling like booze.  My mom feared the worst.  I wouldn't have money to buy her prescriptions.  I embraced my small town roots and told my mom, "it's ok, I was playing poker, treats for everyone !!"