The Looney Bin
Country Girl
Country living is the best. Well, it was awesome to me, anyways. From the time I was 9 until I was thirteen, my Dad pastored a small, baptist church in Cave City, Arkansas, population 630.
Cave City is a metropolis. They have one paved road, one bank, one gas station, one small grocery store and one restaurant, The Sugar Shack, where you could buy anything deep fried. That’s it. Everything else is houses, churches, dirt roads and cows. Lots of cows. Everywhere. Oh, I forgot to mention chicken houses.
Growing up in a small, Mayberry type of town is awesome when you are a little kid. Not so much fun if you are an adult. I remember Mom lamenting that the closest Wal-mart, not to mention the closest anything, was 30 minutes away. Growing up in sleepy town like Cave City required a kid to have a love of the outdoors and a shocking imagination.
We lived in a double wide trailer (aka the parsonage) right next to the church. The only way to get anywhere was by dirt road. My brother and I spent many, many hours riding our bikes up and down those dirt roads. Our favorite game was when we pretended our bikes were horses and we were riders for the Pony Express. (Does anybody remember the show Young Riders?) We would try to lasso each other on our bikes but our Dad put a stop to that when it looked like our game might turn into a hanging.
I forgot to mention that even though Cave City had one of some things and none of everything else, we did have two things. Two TV channels. We got PBS and ABC. That wouldn’t have been so bad if we had a way to play movies. When the VCR phenomenon erupted, there were two schools of thought...you could either buy a VHS or a BETA. Daddy spent many hours researching each model and finally arrived at the conclusion that the BETA was the superior machine. The general population didn’t agree with him. Soon BETAs were phased out. Whenever we would go rent a movie, we had two BETA compatible choices: The Apple Dumpling Gang or Flubber. So, we spent most of our time outside.