A Cup of Conversation – by Michael Kell, GoodBean Coffee

I think we are all designed to live in a small pond and if not a small pond then much smaller parts of bigger ponds. The point is we are predisposed to the familiar, the safe and the connected. There will always be exceptions, the wanderers, lone rangers and rolling stones but for the greater we thrive when our life is swaddled in surroundings predictable and reasonably secure. This is why living in Jacksonville sells to the human-condition at such a premium.

Because life is a largely a duality there is always a downside to small town living along with an upside to big city anonymity. In a small town you can leave keys in the ignition and it’s a shocker if the car’s gone the next morning. The shocker in the big city is the car still in the driveway. But tell your neighbor something personal in a small town and the next week you can be the butt of conversation at the local bar, coffee klatch or prayer circle. In the big city not only will no one be talking about you, no one cares. In a small town the neighbors grow up with our kids and we get an extra couple dozen pairs of eyes on the whereabouts of our teenagers. In the big city neighbors never knew you had kids.

Twenty years ago my wife and I worked the store seven days a week just to make ends meet. One of us would open the shop at 5:30 am and the other would join later after the last school bus rolled away. We served coffee to everyone in town and what they didn’t tell us about themselves the person next in line did whether we wanted to hear or not. My lovely wife was the unofficial mayor of Jacksonville and townies would flock into the coffee house just to chat with the woman who accepted everybody. Small town gossip was like a virus and we were ground zero. We realized early on to survive the small town merchant experience would require keeping confidences, intended or unintended. I know we did a pretty good job because of all the marriages still intact, friendships and business alliances still forged. Norman Rockwell painted the classic image of the small town dynamic with thirty individual profiles of locals sharing away at the rumor mill unabashed and fully engaged. I’m sure I recognize one or two.

Times have changed now that we don’t spend much time anymore at ground zero but as the years roll on we still remember and smile in grateful reflection of a privileged life in the very heart of small town America. Even amongst the inescapable reality of fishbowl living where everyone has mezzanine seating to the drama of a neighbor’s life, I just can’t imagine raising children or making a living anywhere else.

Be Good not bitter.

Posted September 7, 2013