The joys and sometime struggles of living in a very small, still safe little town.

My delectable summertime hibernation continues!

In the heat of the days I am reading endlessly, napping prodigiously and dreamily drifting on my shaggy rug under my wonderful ceiling fan, in my hammock or on my swing (each under their separate trees). By night, I wander to nearby creeks and watch the Perseid meteor showers. This week, I am inundated by a flood of luscious yellow cling peaches, delicious white nectarines, ripening black mission figs, rosy gala apples and fabulous white concord grapes.  

Picking trips into the family orchard are part of my daily morning-before-it’s-an-inferno-outside chores. Some days, even the mere contemplation of this embarrassment of riches leaves me exhausted, so I play hooky. More for the birds, bees, ants and the composting piles under each tree!

Everywhere I go (masseuses, acupuncturist, chiropractor, hair stylist) I bring packages of fruit. All my friends and clients not similarly blessed with orchards get packages as well. I even send some small boxes of not-yet-ripe fruit to a precious friend in Northern California. There, she reports, even the organic produce at the farmers’ market doesn’t reach the extraordinary perfection of what grows in my little rented Eden!  I feel enormously blessed (if also somewhat overwhelmed) by all the abundance that surrounds me.

I feel equally blessed that, in 2001, I live in a town where I can, despite the worries stirred by the “trailhead burglars,” leave my house unlocked all of the time. I can leave my car, in my driveway, unlocked and the keys inside of it. I can safely sleep in a tent in my own backyard. I can roam the roads of this semi-rural end of town alone at any hour of the night. (Occasionally a patrolling police cruiser will stop to make sure I’m okay and walking by choice!) When I’m walking to or from downtown (a 4-mile trip each way), I can trust that neighbors I know (or don’t know) will stop to find out whether I want or need a lift or am walking for the exercise.

In a small town like Ojai, everything about living is still on a human-sized, humane scale. Although I usually think of myself as somewhat reclusive, I thoroughly enjoy the funny, uncomplicated and easy connections I can have with the real, present and personable people with whom I “do business.” My soul and spirit are nourished by the sense of being part of a web of community. 

I can have warm, personal, sometimes silly connections with the delightful women at the post office counter. A few weeks ago, they were all waiting for me to come in to retrieve a clear plastic soda bottle that someone had mailed to me.  The bottle was filled with all kinds of loving notes and goodies and had a button that, when pushed, played “It’s a Small, Small World.” The whole gang of them came out to laugh with me and to tell me it was the best piece of mail they’d ever seen and how much they envied me for getting it! 

The women at the post office and those at the bank counters, despite occasional lines of waiting customers, take care never to rush or be abrupt with anyone, even our slowest elder villagers. The zany, wise and helpful staff women at our “maverick-in-the-county-system” library actually treat library patrons as if they’re there for and genuinely committed to responding to our needs. They bend and disregard the arbitrarily rigid rules about “procedure” whenever doing so seems to them to better serve the library users.

The dear women who clerk at the drug store and at our homespun department/general store always take the time to relate to any and all comers with warmth, good-humor and caring. They are even amazingly gracious with the occasional very rude and imperious Los Angeles transplants and big-city (un)mannered tourists. 

The auto repair shop I use has been a small family business in the valley for two generations. The owner tells me that honesty, dependability and the reliable quality of service are what make or break a small town business. Each customer really matters to him; there isn’t an endless supply of us as there might be in a big city. We are none of us here anonymous, or part of a faceless horde.  We are all still accountable to each other.

And yet, the craziness of the larger surrounding world is noticeably encroaching.  In three separate encounters this past month I could feel that happening. All three were upsetting and saddening in similar ways. 

Some difficulties arose around my car being repaired, my firewood being delivered and a bank deposit being handled. In two of these situations there was an at least 10 year history of easy working together. In the third, it was an almost 19 year relationship of easy understanding. Yet, in each tight spot, I watched as the person with whom I was working developed a tense, ready-to-defend, on-guard edginess. Though I wasn’t at all angry, challenging or even the least bit impatient, each of them immediately had their energetic “dukes” up. And, as they were girding to prepare to deal with what they’d obviously come to expect as a reaction from their customers, they couldn’t even see that I wasn’t in such a place! 

In each case, it happened in the space of an eye-blink.  In each case I felt up against a wall–unseen, unheard, unrecognized as the me that I am.  It felt profoundly wounding in a very old, early and familiar way.  I hadn’t expected these kinds of interactions in this gentle little village. My feelings were hurt in the same way they had been when my car was broken into in June. I felt weepy and disoriented for days. Lost somehow. 

On one of my endless trips to leave my car there, I stopped to have a talk with the man who owns the auto repair shop. He talked about how hard and stressful customer relations have become in recent years. About his growing expectation to be treated with anger, mistrust and impatience for things over which he has no control. He recognized how uneasy and untrusting he’d been at first with my patience and understanding.

As the ridiculous pile-up of errors and foul-ups reached shaggy-dog story proportions, we could begin to laugh at it all together. My easy, good-humored response was, in the end (and after we had talked), particularly compelling to him since it all involved my car’s air-conditioning system and we were in the midst of 100+ temperatures. (Of course, since I spend most of those days on the floor under my fan, the air-conditioner in my car was of no particular consequence to me!)

It felt important to talk “real” with him, to see and be seen in our hurts and tender nesses. It felt sad but also somewhat healing to be able to commiserate about our shared upset over the way the increasing stress and craziness of this ever crazier world is changing the feel of our once more gentle town.

Originally published August 2001