The transition of moving from a major metropolitan city to a small southern town has been quite the culture shock. Our town is small and things are done much differently here than I have ever seen before. When I was living in San Francisco, I had to walk about a mile to City Hall several times to pull permits and take care of some office business. I loved City Hall. The building is impressive, inside and out. The rotunda in one of the largest in the world. The are grand official looking stairs. The looks old, and official and important.
Our city hall and police station is housed in a building the size of two trailers put together, in fact until today when I actually went in, I thought it was a trailer. We have 5,000 residents all of whom live in single family dwellings (I am pretty sure). We only have eight police officers. Our officers make it their official duty to make sure the old man in town who had a stroke recently has eaten today, because we have almost no crime to keep them busy. We have to contract out with a neighboring city for Animal Control. Our fire department, as well as other neighboring departments, is volunteer. Our judge only hears cases on Wednesday evening, because he has a full time job to do during the day.
Like I said, culture shock. But, it is cute and quaint and suits us pretty well for now.
Sounds very much like where I grew up. The SF city hall really is a beautiful building. I wish I’d been able to tour it while we were still living there.
Small town living has its advantages. I LOVE the big city, but a small town is a wonderful place to live when you are married and raising a family.
Oh it sounds wonderful! Where we went to school was a tiny little town back east! One of the things I miss most is that we knew all of the police officers (Tom did anyway because of his job) and they were so good to let us off the hook most of the time because they knew who we were. One of them told tom that he was about to pull me over but saw that I was Tom’s wife and decided to let me go! Enjoy every minute of it!