An Afternoon At The Meusum

I was thinking about “Only In A Small Town”. My list of topics to go under that heading keeps getting longer. There were the kids dropped of at the city pool in a windrower, you know the thing you cut hay with. The tree that blew over, nearly missed the nursing home, was the talk around town, caused a traffic jam (Hay Springs style) of cars driving in to see it and made the front page of the paper. Speaking of the paper my tornado picture also made the front page, not credited to me of course 🙂 (on the right)

Now this:

My hardworking husband stopped for gas on his way home from one of his jobs and ran into these three guys. They were flying to Michigan from somewhere and stopped at the city airport to refuel. Of course there are no tanks there so they drove across the street to the gas station. What fun.

We ran to town today for root beer floats, free from the bank every Friday in July! We were out of pink lemonlaid and The Goblin Child has a strong addiction going, so we parked in the middle between the bank and the grocery store, no point in driving one block. I got her out and sent her up to the sidewalk while I got 8 unbuckled. She found a mouse. The poor thing was pressed as hard as it could get against the brick storefronts running back and forth looking for something. Of course she had chosen her bright red cowboy boot to go with her shorts on this hundred degree day.

Now the mouse was running back and forth against the store fronts with her stomping along behind it like a crazed person. Back and forth they went as I stopped to stare half laughing half horrified that she might succeed. The grocer had carried a bag out to someones car and stopped to see what was going on. He cheered her on then ran to open the door of the bank as she herded the mouse into their doorway once again. Luckily for the bank it was locked. The teller had an errand to run, she had left with a back in five sign taped to the door. (I should mention that we have two banks, we’re big time here, this was not the bank with the root beer floats,)

The mouse ducked, cowering into a little hole in the sidewalk. We could see him there just below sidewalk level but I was able to convince her to let it be and we went shopping. She was also persuaded to forgo her usual complimentary sucker in anticipation of a root beer float. It is the best little grocery store, always willing to special order anything and, hey, free suckers! We try to make a point of spending the little extra for food there.

On the way to the bank we noticed an open sign on the city museum and a lady sitting in there to say that it was true. With 8 we try to avoid things like that but decided to try it anyway. Inside we greeted the former kindergarten teacher of forty some years unfortunately our children will miss having her. She was volunteering to spend her afternoon sitting in the hot airless old museum to keep the doors open for the four, counting us, small groups of people that wandered in on this particularly busy afternoon.

The kids enjoyed it way more than I would have guessed. The Goblin Child ran about finding things to look at and yell for me to come see. I spent the time running after 8 who was also fascinated, trying to keep him from breaking things or holding him as he arched and squirmed trying to get down. Apparently they are open afternoons through the summer, we will have to try to get back again.

At the bank we waited in line for our root beer floats. We knew everyone in the line and friends of the kids came running to greet them with arms thrown wide. The Goblin Child cowered against my leg and refused to return the greeting. After retreving 8 from someones office an older cowboy friend tried to get 8 to sit on the couch with him. 8 refused but The Goblin Child climbed up and cuddled against him. I knew him but don’t believe she had met him before. I told her she shouldn’t cuddle up wit strangers. He said he wasn’t strange only strange looking. She agreed wholeheartedly.  The whole bank laughed. I love this little town.