Little Town on the Prairie

When I was a little girl, I loved all things “Little House on the Prairie.”  My oldest sister and I shared a love for the books, and we couldn’t get enough of the TV show.  Michael Landon brought Pa to life—he was a pioneer hero, struggling to make a living on his homestead with his wife and girls.  Tornados, scarlet fever, prairie fires—through all of it, Pa and Ma and their girls prevailed.  When catastrophe struck, they had a strong community to support them; their church, their hardworking neighbors, and the townspeople all came together and pitched in to rebuild barns, nurse each other through sickness, and help harvest when necessary.  To my sister and me, this sounded like the perfect life.  I even liked the idea of quarantine—scarlet fever aside, that seemed to be a wonderful way of being forced to stay at home and read—like a long string of snow days.

Fast forward about thirty years, and my dad and my brother, Adam, started an internet-based business in a town of about 900 people, located on the prairie.  A little over four years ago, they recruited Monty to work with them as their software developer.  Monty and I aren’t risk-takers.  We aren’t the type of people who say, “You know what would be fun?  Let’s do something OUTSIDE our comfort zone!”  But we prayed about this move and decided to do it.  So the two of us, lifetime city residents, packed up our cat Ricky and everything we owned and moved here.  I remember that first night, on the air mattress, listening to the quiet.  All we could hear was cicadas and some sort of hair dryer.  (I found out later that this was, in fact, not a hair dryer but the grain elevators.)  At seven a.m., the quiet was shattered by the town whistle.  And again at noon.  And one.  And six.  The second night we were here, we went to the gas station around eight p.m. to get some pop, but it was closed.  I texted Adam and asked him where to get pop, and he said the only option was a Quick Stop twenty minutes away.  Nothing in town was open after eight.

We were definitely in culture shock for a while.  But slowly, we both began to fall in love with this little town and its traditions.  Here, Halloween is a huge event.  Porches are decorated with jack-o’-lanterns and ghosts.  Kids compete in a costume contest at the fire hall before trick-or-treating.  At Christmas, our main street is decked out in lights and greenery, and Santa makes a special visit here on a night where everyone wanders around downtown, listening to carolers and our church choir.  We have fireworks on the Fourth of July, where people come in pickup trucks and park next to a cornfield to watch.  When the athletic teams leave for important “away” games, they’re escorted by fire trucks and police cars sounding their sirens so that people can come out of their houses and cheer the teams on.  We have Old Fashioned Saturday Night—a night in the summer, where, among other festivities, there’s a burnout contest:  without moving the car forward, the driver hits the gas, making their tires spin, which creates crowd-pleasing noise and smoke.  And we have that gas station I mentioned earlier, where you can get fast, great, made-to-order food.  While there, you can fill up your tank and see about five people you know.  In the background of all of this, there’s the whistle—at seven, noon, one, and six every day except Sunday.

And then there’s the prairie.  Living about 30 seconds from the open prairies has been, for me, a whole love affair in itself.  During the day, the skies are endless stretches of the truest blue, the perfect backdrop for the golden fields of corn and wheat.  I think the prairie at night is at its most beautiful.  Monty and I have gone out near “the barn,” right outside of town, countless times to watch the stars and see meteor showers.  In the absolute dark stillness of a summer night, broken only by the occasional moo of a distant cow, the stars are spread out so clearly that you can easily see constellations and the faded silvery smudge of the Milky Way.

Woven through all of this is the pulse of the people who call this place home.  Through choir and family and church, Monty and I got to know these people and started to feel like a part of this community—a community of church, school, businesses, farmers and ranchers.  Just like in “Little House on the Prairie,” the community comes together in times of joy and crisis.  Last March, a wildfire burned over thirty thousand acres nearby and destroyed livestock and homes.  Our volunteer fire department joined with several others to put the fire out.  Our community raised money and gathered clothes and other donations for the people who had been affected by the fire.  That’s what we do here. That’s who we are.

Two summers ago, Monty and I took a road trip to Mt. Rushmore.  Adam made us a playlist, as he always does, and when we were about five miles from town on our way back, the song, “This is Home,” started playing.  We watched the water tower come into view, then the grain elevators.  We turned down our street just as these words were playing:
“And now after all my searching
After all my questions
I’m gonna call it home
I got a brand new mindset
I can finally see the sunset
I’m gonna call it home
Home, this is home
Now I’m finally where I belong.”
We drove past my parents’ house, saw Adam’s house, and pulled into our driveway.  Our cat Mackin was sitting in our bay window, silhouetted against the lamps like the most welcoming homing beacon.  We came inside, greeted the boys, and I texted Mom, just one word:  “Home.”  And for the first time, it truly felt like it.  We were home, where we belong.

This is home.  This is our town on the prairie.  We have a cheery, dependable whistle, and I like its never-failing promptness.  I recently heard someone who was visiting from the city complain about the whistle, and I felt so defensive of it, as if it were a friend that someone was disparaging.  The whistle is ours—it belongs to our little town on the prairie as surely as we do.  And we now have a Dollar General, which is open until ten!—sometimes Monty and I go there at 9:30 just because we can.  Our little town is now complete.  Our life here, with our family and friends and our boys, is so full and fulfilled.  This is home.  And I never want to live anywhere else.