I had a
black lab once, her name was Ebony. (I know, clever.) This was back in my poor
college student days, and we could hardly afford to feed ourselves, we had no
business owning a dog. Labradors are big dogs with big appetites, especially
when they aren’t eating their fill every meal. (I know, this is going to make
my pet friends sad to hear this, but we were young, and broke, and that’s all
I’ve got to offer as far as an excuse.) Ebony would meet us at the car and look
to see if we had a sack of dog food. If we didn’t she would sulk a bit. I got
where I hated to make eye-contact with the pooch.
One day,
I met a neighbor that lived a few doors down. She asked me if I had any idea
that they had been feeding my dog. I was confused; I looked over in the dog’s
pen and back at the neighbor and asked for clarification. She went on to
explain that when our cars left the driveway, Ebony would leap the fence and
call on the neighbors. I guess it was a bit like trick or treating, because
they came up with treats and Ebony caught on quick to this trick. If that wasn’t
humiliating enough, neighbor said, “Oh, it gets better! This week she came to
our door with her dog dish in her mouth. Dropped it right there on the porch
and barked for us to come out.”
Eek.
I had
neglected something and it had gone elsewhere.
I was
reminded of this story this week as I played hometown tourist and took in some
local attractions. I went to Har-Ber Village for the lights on Main Street. I
was surprised there weren’t many people when I was there. There weren’t as many
decorations as I remember from the past couple of years. I learned that this
would be the last year for this event.
I stood on the side of the street to cheer on
the local Christmas Parade. There’s nothing like a hometown, small town parade
with all the kids piled on the flat bed trailers! This year’s parade was well
represented by churches and fire trucks. Nothing wrong with that, but it seemed
that there were business floats missing from the regular lineup , organizations that were that absent, and we were a half a dozen
marching bands short. Maybe it was the wintery, Christmas-like temperatures
that kept some folks from participating in these local hometown activities. It
could be that there were too many celebrations going on for people to support
everything. It might even be that locals don’t support hometown
attractions. And I’ve learned from
experience, if you don’t take care of what is in your backyard, there may be a
day when we discovered our pet has taken its dish to the neighbor to get fed.
We don’t
want to lose these small town opportunities! We can’t starve them out and
expect them to be there when WE want them to be available. Our little community
has seen attractions and events come and go through the years, the “going”
often times can be blamed on poor attendance, lack of participation, and
perhaps just plain ol’ apathy on the part of us locals. If we don’t “feed”
these things, then we can’t be mad or sad when they jump the fence and go
somewhere else.
