OPINION: Small town(s), take 2

May 27-Another dispatch from our small town, and one from a different one Same point.

Big storm a few days back, as you recall, blew down branches and limbs all over. Even uprooted a big old tree next to the Catholic Church.

We got off relatively lucky, but still ended up with a half-dozen of those big yard bags full of stuff we picked up, cut up and hauled off. It was a couple hours' work.

By the time we were done and loaded it all up, it was maybe 10 'til 5, and it takes about 10 to drive out to the dump. So we called on the way, just to see if they'd let us in.

For the uninitiated, the county dump - referred to in bureaucratese as the "transfer station" - is on Hunter's Island, just south of town. That's where all the trash from around here goes, before it's "transferred" (hence the name) to an old quarry near Perry, Kan. So yes, you can claim that we send both our sewage and our trash over to Lawrence, more or less.

Pardon the diversion. Anyway, the woman on the phone said, no guarantees. We're in the process of closing down and everybody's supposed to be out by 5.

Great, I muttered. The government. Insert eye-roll emoji here.

But we were already almost there, and so we pulled up to the gate. Closed. There was a truck on the scale, headed out. So, well, hell. Wasted time. I briefly contemplated heaving the bags out the back in protest, but only for a moment. We turned around, headed back toward the house.

Then the phone rang. Angie answered it; it was the woman from the dump, saying to come on in. We'll open the gate for you.

The lady at the booth couldn't have been nicer, waving us back to the area in back where you can dump yard waste for free. They grind it up and turn it into mulch, which you can also get there for free. I added our truckload to the huge mound; we drove back to the front gate, where the friendly woman waved to us and smiled.

Would that have happened in a bigger city? Oh, maybe. There's a chance. Good people everywhere, you know. But I doubt it.

Small town in Minnesota where we have a family cabin, same story, a few days later. One of our kids headed up there for the holiday weekend and went to the boat shop where they service and store ours for the winter. They left it at their dock for him, keys in it. He didn't around to actually getting the boat until a couple days later, on Memorial Day. Shop was closed for the holiday, of course. Boat was still sitting there at the dock, keys in it.

Hard to imagine that in, say, LA or Houston.

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This story was originally published May 27, 2026 at 12:05 PM.