Tuesday, November 8, 2005

My Trip to the City....

I spent last weekend in the BIG city. I don't mean the little town close to us. I mean a huge, tourist attraction filled, outlet malls, traffic filled city. I had forgotten what it was like.

I think what assailed me first was the noise....traffic, sirens, horns...loudspeakers blaring. It truly felt like an assault. I have become used to the occasional tractor, hay baler, donkey and dog. Daily I hear a variety of birds, the gentle mooing of our cows, the nicker of our horses and twice a week the afternoon train off in the distance. I think in 7 years on this farm I have heard sirens twice.

Next was the traffic - 20 minutes to go 4 blocks!! I kid you not. How do people live like this? Did I really live this life just 7 short years ago? How much of a day is spent waiting on red lights, feeling the frustration mount....how much time over a lifetime?

And finally the rudeness of people, in stores, on elevators, in restaurants....I actually saw a man almost run his truck through the plate glass window of a store in his hurry to get a parking space before the next guy. He was going so fast he jumped the curb narrowly missing shoppers. He just laughed....

And talk about stores...on our way out of the city, we made one stop. There were cars there from dozens of different states. Thousands of people walking from store to store - buying, buying, buying....this was entertainment???.... and judging from the license plates this was most likely their chosen vacation destination! The thought of spending a vacation in this place was baffling to my 12 year old son...."You mean they shop for fun?"....

I entered the "Le Gourmet Kitchen Shoppe"...my mission was to purchase a jar of sweet roasted pepper salsa as quickly as possible and get out. My Mom brought a jar of this along for our weekend of scrapbooking and it was delicious. My job was to take a jar home and try to re-create it. I confess that this is something I love to do...I can be a wee bit obsessive about it!

As I walked through this very crowded store, I was amazed at what I saw for sale - all displayed to advantage...marketed very well....things that made your desire leap initially (the phrase that came to me was "it tickles the eyes").....but when you stopped to think....the desire quickly waned. As I have said before, I am not a big shopper. I am also not a kitchen gadget person - rather than have 20 tools to do 20 jobs in the kitchen, I prefer one tool that does it all or at least most of it. A good set of knives is about all I really need for most jobs - and I do appreciate the mixer that kneads the dough for 4 loaves of bread at once (it also does just about everything else)!

I was amazed at the choices of "food" items that really contained very little food - the list of ingredients on most cans/boxes sounded like the inventory of a chemical factory. I was glad to find the salsa and then an open cash register! As I was leaving, I heard one of the workers bemoaning to anyone who would listen about the dreaded Black Friday....innocently I asked what Black Friday was....his eyes got wide....and he said "Oh, you don't want to be here on Black Friday!!" "What is Black Friday?" I asked again. "The Friday after Thanksgiving" he replied, "it makes today look like a ghost town". I can't even imagine.....

Thank you God for delivering us from city living...thank you for the beauty of Your creation that surrounds us daily....thank you for the thoughtfulness of country neighbors...thank You for the quiet that is filled with gentle whispered sounds...

3 comments:

  1. And thank you for such a nice story. It's nice to have you back home safe & sound.

    Best wishes.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you Herrick...I am so thankful to be back.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have lived in "big cities" (i.e. New York) before and have always wondered what the experience of coming to a big city would be like. Whenever I have visited the small farm towns, sometimes I wasn't able to fall asleep because it's too quiet. Beyond that, the opennes gets kind of scary sometimes. Interesting how this breaks down, huh?

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