Community Gatherings

I CHOSE TO LIVE in a tiny town near a much latger university town becuase I wanted to be close to a hustlling bustling metropolis, wile enojoying th relatively bucolic, quite envornment of small town America. I wanted to best of both worlds, and, after more than twenty years of trial, have decided that I achieved my goal twenty one years, ago, and have indeed been blessed with the best of two disticnely different universes; a small town, insular, seemingly unchanging, dormant, juxtaposed againt a frenecic college town of aobut one hundred thousands permanent residents, and more than thirty thousand university students. After all these years, I am still not sure whether, when the population figure of about one hundred thousand is given for the town-city, it does or does not include the tens of thosusands of collee college students. I believe, if I am not mistaken that it does not, that the one hundred thousand city population doe not include collged students wo come from other towns and states, and are living here only temporarily, only because they are going to school here. During my forty five years here, it has grown from a small college small town to a big university big town, there has been, in essence, a forty year economic and growth boom, which is still ongoing, making me wonder if and when it will ever end. It will have to, at some point, correct? Ther is only so much land here, just like everywhere else. A going up everywhere on a daily basis.S more people move here, construction, both residential and business, continues to keep pace, with new housing subdivisions. Its been that way for decades, one new subdivision after another, as thousand of people, thirty to forty people every day, decide to move into Northwest Arkansas. This week is "Autuman Fest"in my town of just over two thousand people, and its quite a shin dig, so to wpeak. The senior sells an amazing, unbelievable breakfast for eight dollars, up from seven dollars a year ago,in our age of inflation, but still, worth every penny and then some.I got mine for free, because I volunteered to work at teh event, my official duty being garbage. My jos is to take the big black plastics sacks full of gargabe out of the garbage cans, and out to the dumpster at the back of teh parking lot. An important job, one of those somebody's gotta do it jobs,and I accept it, with relish. The breakfast served by the Senior Center includes alt he basics, eggs, bacon, biscuit 'n gravy, sausage, a big paper plate loaded with carbs and calories, recommended for anybody and everybody. My recenly sprained ankle slowed me dow a bit, but it didn't stop me. I managed to walk the three blocks to the senior center, to avoid adding my car to the traffic jam, was offered a free breakfast as I knew I would be, acceped it as I knew I could, and devoured it with relish, as I knew I would. My plan a Saturday college football tok center stage was to repeat the process tomorrow, to walk back over to the snior center for their finale the Sunday morning eight dollar breakfast. Usually they ake close to two thousand a year with this wonderul, fun activity-event. Its good and healthy for me to participate in community activities, to break up the monotony of my alone time, which I love, in limited amounts. Even loners are social animals, and most people claim to be loners. When Autuman Fest is over on Sunday evening, Monday morning, the town quickly returns to normal, quiet and slow. And I appreciate it more than ever, because of the big party being over, my life again quiet and slow.