[eskielover]

How can a person from a huge city like Los Angeles move to a town of 8000 & find more there than they ever could find in LA? It seems strange to me how in just this one year (& I am not completely moved in yet either) I have found more true friends & enjoy more community activities & have been able to get more involved than if 54 years of living a normal life in a huge city.

I rememer as a child, I would get a chance during the summers to visit my grandparents for 3 months in Topeka Kansas when I was a child. I always loved the people there & they seemed to be so real & kind & caring. But that was through a childs eyes & not having the whole picture either. I would get a chance to visit my Dad's cousin on their Nebraksa farms & they would give us the receipe book from the extention group.......so what in the world is an extension whatever????

As an adult, I would vacation to Jackson Hole Wyo for 2 weeks every winter. Since we owned a time share....it was like owning a piece of the town & going every year, we would meet people who lived there & got to participate in the town activities during that limited 2 week time period......a quaint little western town with so many actiities. How could such a small town have so much to offer.....how could such a huge city have so much to offer but have it so well hidden with so many things going on......maybe that was the problem?

So I was looking for a place to settle that I could get involved in the community. Where I could meet the people & not just be an invisible part of the world around me. Why would I want to do that.....being invisible had always been my thing all my life. I loved to be really good (or one of the best) at everything I did. Having the top grades in my classes, playing my flute in chamber groups, directing choir & music at my church, on my job.....being a good engineer that could put together a great product & have it work.....I mean....to find out that the program I wrote that they flew jets with & the jet didn't crash when they were running my program......warm tummy feeling, riding my horse in a dressge show & placing....or even just preforming the test without making a mistake that would disqualify myself, showing my american eskimo doggies in dog shows & even getting his champion title.....I was so excited when I found out I did that.....I was floating for days.....the judge threatened laughingly to take it away just to get me back down to earth. After so many tries, we finally passed the obedience trial & he got his obedience title.....we kept working on that one because he would find something different each time that he didn't want to do, so we would fail each time no matter how hard we practiced....all of a sudden, he wanted to do it right & we got a super high score....almost perfect....lol.

But opening my mouth to discuss anything or have anyone know my thoughts or to be involved in any volunteer capacity.....I just didn't feel free enough to be able to do. I always admired people who could be part of a discussion group & have valuable thoughts to offer. Me, I would have a hard time even remembering what I read when I was reading a sentence in a book. I got through college with a B+ grade average, so it wasn't that my IQ was low.....I just had a hard time retaining & putting together thoughts when it came to formulating discussions. I would always sit there I think what I should have said long after the discussion was over. I wouldn't openly talk with people about much of anything except for things that I knew & that was never part of anyone's conversation.

My marriage was anything less that wonderful. I had gone into it wanting a wonderful partnership where we would keep our individual abilities & personalities & yet come together to form a beautiful partnership where we worked together & shared everything knowing each others thoughts & ideas & putting them together to form a great relationship & business partnership also since we were both engineers. As for parenting.....I wasn't good with kids (especially young children, so I wasn't realy interested in having a family.....but if it happened.....it would work out with the same sharing or responsibilities. I always believed that the ideal was possible. I always believed that if I sat my standards exremely high....even if I didn't get there, what I would accomplish would my much greater that if I sat my standards low & acheived them at that level. (in other words, I would rather aim for the A & get the B, rather than just being satisfies with the C or D) I lived my life by those standards which got me the brand of a type A personality or the perfectionist...but I was also satisfied with whateven I was able to do & accomplish without bashing myself for not doing good enough.....so I didn't quite fit the label.

So now I get to Kentucky.....my new home here.....alone by choosing. I start poking my nose out into the community. Just going out shopping at WalMart.....what an experience.....what was a simple task in California would turn into a 4 + hour shopping trip. Why? Every isle I would go down, there would be someone that wanted to talk or say something or some conversation would come up & it would be insight into the community or their life in the community. It was actually a very enjoyable thing even though it would be a bit exhausting after awhile......but how wonderful to meet people & then when you would meet someone in one place, there was always someone else who would know someone else that you met in another place & it would be tying the threads together.....who knows who from where????? & keeping it straight in ones head as to who said what about what or whom????? It would become a puzzle everytime I would go out of my house.....I was always meeting someone new with some relationship to something that would be valuable for me to know.....& that was just shopping trips.

Then church......the same named group here was doing wonderful things in the community....not just sitting around talking about doing things....what a wonderful group to get involved with & then the invitation to the Bible class that changed everything for me was completely amazing. I knew that this was something that I needed in my life....it was obvious because God was continually putting things in my life that were needed for the changes that I am having to make (in the divorce situation). I went to the first meeting & was inspired. At that moment, I promised myself & God that I would get everything that I possibly could out of what was being presented & wouldn't let one class go unprepaired. Now in my entire life, that never happened before, so why would I think now, with everything I needed to do in my new house, would I make time to do that now??? Well I did......then when we would get together in the small discussion groups, all of a sudden, I heard myself expressing thoughts & things that I had gotten out of the study. Me??? I never open my mouth to discuss anything.....I don't want to sound stupid or that my thoughts are so far off that I don't ever want anyone to know that.....I don't want to embarass myself the way my parents embarassed me when I was a child by saying things that were so far off base, it made them sound stupid (at least in my mind).....I didn't want to do the same thing to myself ever.....so where in the world did that voice come from.....& why were the things I was saying being agreed with & were inspiring even more discussions & getting others to start talking????? I noticed when I didn't say anything....no one else would say anything either....& of course, I couldn't not ask questions of things that I didn't understand or didn't make sense to me....I never allowed that to happen ever in my life before. But as I got involved, people started to know me better & all of a sudden I was feeling accepted. That wasn't a feeling I was used to at all....where in the world did that come from????

The local library is also a place of culture here. I never heard of a library being the center for activities......I never was even into reading....except when I was a child in Kanasa during the summer when there wasn't anything else to do & even then, I don't remember much of what I ever read......so why would I even go to the library here? I had to send off & receive several Fax's & the library is right in town across from the post office....you can receive fax's free & you can send to 800 #'s free & its really inexpensive for all the other fax's......& I was doing a lot of fax'ing...so they got to know me well at the desk. While waiting, I would read the flyers & decided to get a library card & check out some of the local history books to find out more about the history of this old town that started in 1774....a lot of history happened in my back yard....& to me, history is only interesting when it comes alive. The first activity that caught my interest was a poetry reading by the Kentucky poet laureat. It was a wonderful presentation on the poetry she has written & quite a bit about her growing up in Kentucky. There was one other poet that presented, an older teacher from the local school with more poetry about growing up in KY. After the reading....we had a wonderful discussion group. Again, I was the first one to comment & express myself....again....where in the world did that voice come from. I am invisible....I am not seen or heard.....that is just not me...so where in the world is this me coming from? But it was a beautiful presentation & I got so much from what it that I couldn't let it go unsaid.....which initiated more discussions & comments. It was a wonderful afternoon & I met & got to know & exchange information with some very wonderful people in the community.

Kentucky is having the Abraham Lincoln bicentennial this year & the libraryr was having a tea on Sunday afternoon.....I signed up for that at the very beginning....turned out there was a huge waiting list. The presentation was awsome. I had invited my friend to come along.....we are both new to Kentucky & enjoying getting to know more about it & enjoying the activities. When I arrived at the tea, we sat down & got settled. I looked up & there were 2 other ladies that I had met at the womens horse group that I had been invited to.....so we invited them to sit at our table & had a wonderful afternoon of chatting & enjoying the company & getting to know each other better. The dialogue presentation between Mary Todd Lincoln & her friend.....was a beautiful reactment of the history of Mrs Lincoln's life. The tea & the food was awsome.....all was free on top of it.....flowers & candles & a very warm cozy environment they created for the tea. They had a couple of gifts & I was lucky to win the special gift.....an invitation for 2 at Aspen Hall Manor, the historical tea house that provided everything for the tea there. What a wonderful chance to meet people of the community. The lady that owns the tea house is actually from California & came here to start up that business 3 years ago......a great chance to share our experiences.....& one of the ladies that did the presentation for the tea was from one of the prominent families of the area. She stopped by our table to chat & welcome us to the town (all 4 of us at the table are single women new to the community from out of state.....Virginia, California, Washington, & Alaska).

The library also has a lunch book group that meets once a month to discuss a book & I decided to try that.....I have started to really enjoy reading & all of a sudden, I have a clear mind that seems capable of comprehending & retaining things that for so long I wasn't able to successfully do. They also have a wonderful travel presentation from around the world once a month. I was planning of going to that, but missed the starting time by 1 hour. Another activity that several of us thought would be great to go to is their movie night....it's a family night activity, but there are many singles that go also......the movies they present are ones that are very current & just onto DVD.

The womens horse group is another activity that has become a wonderful part of my life. I had met a family last year at the Fort Harrods Beef Festival (a BBQ competition) that had just come here from California. The Mother just opened a tack store in downtown Harrodsburg & I stopped in to see how it was going & to say hi. That was when she invited me to go to the lunch group that was just starting up....meeting once a month & offering support in whatever way we can for each other.....how very exciting. I actually met a neighbor down the street from me there the other lady's that attended the Tea at the library. In a small town people show up all the time. By chatting at the first lunch I went to, I met a lady who sounds like a wonderful horse trainer who does dressage also. She invited me to a clinic with another group of horse riders & I went to that....it was a wonderful clinic with a presenter. This group is outside of the Kentucky Dressage Association which I have also been involved with & volunteered at their show last year at the KY Horse Park.. This goups of horse women get together & do group riding out of state in Tennessee. How wonderful that they invited me to go along in the future when I finally get my horses here. Everyone is so warm, open & kind here.

I also have become involved with the new horse group that is forming & working together with the government to put together the back country trails.....who would ever think there would be a ground floor of anything in this old of a town......the there is...another wonderful group that meets at the new extension office building. One of the ladies that owns a farm with a beautiful existing trail system invited me to help with the 4-H groups at her farm & also invited me to go out trail riding with her to help map out the trails using the GPS systems the government has available.

The extension office had a community meeting last week to provide a presentation about all the activities that are sponsered by the extension office.....I had no idea how involved they are in the community. I knew they helped provide information on planting ones pastures, but it goes way beyone that. They provide support for the elderly & informational presentations. I talked to one of the ladies that works with the elderly & expressed about the ID theft & abuse situation that I had gone through with my Mother & asked if there was something I could do to help in anyway with any presentations to get information like that out there......& she is putting together a presentation & would love to have me be part of the presentation. The 4-H activities have need for people to help the leaders. I am not leader material, but helping with the horse information & dog training groups.....I am by no means an expert on anything, but having knowledge to share with the community feels like a wonderful opportunity to get involved.

I am surprised at how open everyone is to letting new people become involved. I wasn't sure, but sometimes old towns have their established groups & outsiders aren't always welcome to join in.....but it sure isn't that way here. I wouldn't have thought that they would be open to outsider ideas. Not only that, but everyone is so willing to share their information to help me be successful with the challenge I have of pulling together a the farm from soil testing for the planting of grass in my pasure to soil conservation issues with my wet weather springs & my runoff stream. Most everyone is so helpful.....there are still the ones who take advantage when they think they can get away with it....but they are few.

I feel like a new person. I am no longer invisible. I have a voice. My thoughts & words are heard, listened to & understood. have some worthwhile meaning to them & are actually heard & understood I had just had a glimpse of this me in the past but that didn't last long when my Mother was dying of cancer.....I went back to being invisible & feeling that way when no one would listen to me or tell me what was going on. My husband was probably the worst in this area. All our married life, I would ask him a question & was answered in complete silence as if I hadn't said anything......& his normal way of not telling me anything that was going on as with the IRS & the back taxes that were owed as if I wasn't even exist

This move to Kentucky has been a wonderful changing place in my life...I have found a community that I fit into I have found a place that has so much to offer me. I have found a place where I am able to give back to the community & not just feel like I am taking. I have found a community that accepts me & I feel respected for who I really am. It's not exactly a new me but it's the ME that has been inside longing to come out most of my life.

I never would have dreamed even a year ago that anything like this would have been in my future waiting for me to call home. It was just about 1 year ago when I flew here to check out farm possibilities & now what was only a dream is my reality. Even with all the rough spots that keep happening, God is blessing me far beyond anything that my dreams ever imagined. I now have a place that I can really call my home a place where I really feel like I belong.

Debbie

[chalmette70043]

I'm glad you found a place thats so welcoming and supporting. That's what every Home Sweet Home should be like.

chalmette

[gimmeice]

Your town sounds like a wonderful place, I'm glad you found it and can be a part of it.

[bebop]

that is why I love small towns. I love mine as well. I am so happy for you hon that you have found some peace in your life! woo hoo!

[AAAAA]

My husband and I have lived all over the US and in Asia. We both grew up in little bitty towns 30 miles apart. As a teen I couldn't wait to get out. Once I saw the world I realized that a little piece of heaven still exits in these little towns all over the world and there is no place better to raise your children. Sometimes it can be frustrating that we had to travel for entertainment and that your neighbors know everything about you, but the trade off is worth it.

When there is a death in the family for example, the entire community pulls together and is a wonderful source of support. When my father died, the we didnt have to cook or shop for over a month.

Recently a new family moved into town. The husband was injured at work (works in the woods) without the benefit of workman's comp and the town supported them until they were back on their feet.

This type of support isn't charity, it's sticking together to get through the hard times, everyone has hard times from time to time.

We spend the summers in my home town. When the kids were small they always thought that they were getting away with something because they were allowed to go to the park and play ground without supervision... or so they thought. They never did figure out that these places were within sight of my grandmother and they were being watched every second.

We currently live in a slightly larger community, but still small enough that when a very expensive computer was delivered to the house and we weren't home they delivered it to the neighbor. I had a note on the door when I got home. Could that happen in the city?

[Fuzzybear]

(((((((((((( Debbie )))))))))))))

[TaintedGoth1]

8000 people???? OMG! That's huge!!!! lol

You're actually in a bigger area than I'm in! We might have 1000 people here...if that!

I say....wahoo to all the small towners here!!!!

[splitimage]

I'm really glad that you've found such a welcoming community to be a parrt of.

--splitimage

[eskielover]

Thank you all for your comments & love of small towns......

.AAAAA.....I appreciate your adding experiences to the thread.....they are most welcome as sharing these experiences is most enjoyable to read. It is amazing how sometimes we have something that we don't appreciate at the time, but later on, we look back & find that we really appreciated it & want to go back to the closeness that is missing in the other places.

Your computer example brought to mind when I was looking at purchasing the used Dodge truck I was wanting. I had been brousing the used car lot (I had been renting a car & it was so expensive). I found the truck that was just right.....but I didn't want to spend the cash & was thinking I would look into financing through my credit union. The salesman gave me the keys to the truck & said take if & drive it for the weekend....we will look into financing also. I just couldn't imagine taking a truck I didn't own & had no idea if I could even qualify for a loan or not all by myself......I refused but he kept insisting......so I decided I would drive it to the farm & park it there.....lol cause I was too afraid to drive it. Besides, I had just dinged the door of the rental car while backing out of the garage, so I wasn't feeling very good about my driving skills in the first place.

I drove the truck back to my farm & parked it.....couldn't get financing through the credit union by Saturday morning, so I called to take the truck back immediately......they said they thought they had something lined up for financing so keep the truck until Monday....they wouldn't take NO for an answer......so the truck continued to sit in my driveway.

The county fair was going on in town & I was wanting to check it out.....so I got a bit brave & figured I could drive the truck & park it far away from everyone. When I got there that was exactly what I did. I walked around the fair for awhile & saw everything of interest to me......went back to go home & my truck was packed tight with cars all around it. How I was going to get out without hitting something was beyond me. The truck was huge compaired to anything I had ever driven & it would have been hard manuvering a small car in that situation. It took me over 30 back & forwards with tiny turns to finally get out without touching another car & a sigh of relief when I got the truck safely back into my driveway.

The concept of being allowed to just drive home for the weekend, a car you are interested in buying was so foreign to me, it was tough to accept. In California, they don't even let you drive the car off the lot yourself & never let you take the out for a test drive without an armed guard in the back seat....lol.

The trust & kindness & above all, the support in a small town is definitely wonderful.

I know, TaintedGoth, 8000 must seem huge compared to 1000.....lol....but 8000 is so tiny after living in a county of millions (Los Angeles).....& the small town that I lived in ihad over 150,000. One just gets lost there in the crowd.

I finally feel like a real person who isn't invisable.
Debbie

[inpain]

Eskielover- that sounds soooo nice, i am happy for you. Maybe one day i will find that, too.
By the way, are you close to Crofton? I had a friend there, she loved it also.

[eskielover]

Inpain,

I was curious about where Crofton is in relation to Harrodsburg.....I am almost in the center of the state....just south of Lexington....Crofton is very much South West from where I am....it's in the south west tip of Kentucky. Looks like a very cute little town also....probably much smaller than Harrodsburg also. I have been to many states that are gorgeous, but Kentcky has a gentle elegance about it....versus the rocky mountains in Wyoming & Canada or the Sierra's of California, or the flat plains of Kansas with the grain fields that go forever. There is a different beauty everywhere.....but it's wonderful when you can find beautiful people also.

Debbie

[inpain]

Debbie,

i sooo agree. Yes, i think that crofton is a lot smaller even . Too bad i lost contact with her.

[sarahlilianne]

Debbie, It warms my heart to see that you have found your place in the sun and that you are so happy (((((((((Debbie)))))))))
Lily