38

Thirty-eight.  A nice round number.  Not an extraordinary number, but of sufficient importance in our life to make note of this month of May.  Why?  Because 38 years ago we drove our red pickup into this small Missouri town,unpacked our worldly goods and set up housekeeping.  Andy,  Me.  And little Nina.

We bought the Grandma Harlin house, up on the hill, from Harve and Cora Blisard.  While we were remodeling  we lived across the street, in the old Jim Hale house.  Skeeter and Faye were our neighbors to the west.  Pete and Virginia Klineline lived down from us to the east.  All in all, a nice place to put down roots.

Erna Johnson came down the hill that day and introduced herself.  Said she had heard that a new family with a little girl had moved into town.  Just wanted to say hi and invite us to come and see her sometime.  And we did...many times.  Loved visiting and talking to Erna.  Arles and Ivy Walker lived across the street and up one house.  Arles came over, welcomed us to town, and said that his grandson's family attended church at Center Point, out in the country and he would be sure and tell Sandy, Gerald's wife, that there was a new family needing an invitation to church.  And invite us she did.  We loved that little church, on that windy country road, and all the people who went there.

One warm morning we hiked down to Skeeters for breakfast.  And there sat Pattie Strong in a booster chair, eating pancakes.  Nina and Pattie hit it off right away.  And they are still friends.  Nina was a shy child.  She stayed attached to my knee for at least the first two years we lived in Gainesville.  Try as they might, grownups couldn't get her to talk to them.  But, kids, now that was a different matter.  She would watch them playing for awhile and then walk up and start in with whatever was going on.  For part of the time before she went to school she attended Mother Goose Daycare and made many lifelong friends there.

My first order of business was finding a teaching job.  We had been camping and I didn't have anything close to good interview clothes that were clean or ironed.  Clad in jeans and a  T-shirt, I went to ask Benton Breeding if he might have a job for me.  Sure he did.  And he needed me right away since Joe Cissna was moving up to teach high school special education, taking Mr. Beach's place after his retirement that spring.  Signed a contract that day.

And bingo.  Everyone in town knew us.  But, as usual, we didn't have idea one who they were.  People would come up to me in the the grocery store and introduce themselves.  They were anxious to make us feel at home.

I guess it took.  Here we are 38 years later.  Of course, we no longer live IN Gainesville.  But it is still our town.  Wouldn't change it for the world.