There was a time when you could find out what was happening in town without opening anything.
You walked into the café.
Somebody was already sitting at the counter with a cup of coffee that had been refilled three times. Somebody else was talking about the game Friday night. A farmer came in wearing a coat that still carried the cold from outside. Before you found a seat, somebody asked about your dad.
That was how information traveled.
You didn't have to create an account to learn that the parade was Saturday. You didn't need a notification to find out somebody's mother was home from the hospital. If you missed the announcement, somebody told you the next time they saw you.
And they were going to see you.
Growing up in Maroa, that was the part of small-town life I didn't understand was special. You saw the same people again and again. At school. At the ballfield. At church, if that was where your family went. At the store. On the sidewalk. Sometimes you saw somebody three times before lunch and still stopped to talk.
There were things about that life that weren't easy. People worked long hours. Families worried about money. Everybody knowing everybody could feel like everybody knew too much. Not every neighbor was kind, and not every memory deserves to be polished until it shines.
But there was a kind of simplicity in being able to look someone in the face.
If you wanted to know whether the gym was open, you called the school or asked somebody who worked there. If you wanted to sign up for something, you found the person with the clipboard. If you had a question about your bill, you went to the counter. If you forgot something, you went back and asked.
You didn't first have to prove to a machine that you were you.
I think about the adults who were always there. The people who opened the doors before everybody arrived and locked them after everybody went home. The ones who helped set up chairs, drove the extra trip, found another uniform, or made sure a kid who needed a ride got one.
Most of them never called what they did volunteering. It was just what needed doing.
And a small town gave those little acts a place to be noticed.
You knew whose truck was parked outside the café. You recognized a voice before you turned around. You could walk into a place and know whether somebody was having a good day just by the way they said hello.
Today, I can contact somebody on the other side of the country in seconds. I can put a story online and have strangers read it before I finish my coffee. I wouldn't give that up. Technology has given me ways to tell stories I could never have told when I was a kid.
But sometimes I wonder whether being connected to everybody has made it easier to lose track of the people standing right in front of us.
The strange thing is that small towns still preserve pieces of the old way. You still run into the same person at the same place. Somebody still asks about your kids. A neighbor still notices when a light hasn't come on. You still have conversations that aren't scheduled and don't require an invitation.
Maybe that's why I keep returning to Maroa in my writing.
I'm not trying to go back to 1985. I know better than that.
I just don't want to forget what we had before every ordinary interaction became something we had to manage.
There were evenings when nobody had a password to remember, nobody needed to scan a code, and nobody had to check whether a message had arrived.
You just went outside.
And there was usually somebody there.
