Yes... Amish park at Walmart...
The sign for the Hippie Farm
For you city people, let me break it down.
Growing up in a small town is... special. I wouldn't trade how I was raised for the world. I was taught morals and values by example. I'll never forget thinking, gosh my Dad knows everyone cause he waves at almost every car on the road... no, it's just small town protocol and nothing out of the ordinary. I skinned my knees when I wrecked on our unpaved street, I walked down the bluff behind the house to play in the creek when I wanted to, and every house in the subdivision had kids to hang out with.. without supervision, and probably without telling my parents. Softball leagues were taken serious, and parents came to every game. Friday night football games were social events, and holidays meant mini family reunions and were the best playtime ever.
Highschool is when I learned an important lesson. Cops really aren't necessary in a small town. A few examples.
Grandmas:
-One random day, myself and 3 girlfriends had 45 minutes to kill before some riveting event i'm sure. So what do we decide to do? Break into 2 teams to see which team could steal the most street signs. I know what you're thinking... that's horrible. No worries, we never took a Stop or children playing sign. Strictly way back in the boonies signs only. If you've never tried before, there is a true art to stealing street signs. Unless you're 6'2 200 lbs+, its best to do it with 2 people. Treat it as a seesaw with both team members alternating pulling up and down until, Bloop, it pops right off. Obviously you want to work as quick as possible to avoid facing the fact that, it is in fact illegal to steal signs. It took time to come up with the most efficient way to do it. The first time, we actually pulled the sign right out of the ground and had to put it in the back seat of a car with 2 feet of the end out the back window. But, back to the story-
45 minutes later, 4 girls had accumulated 19 street signs. Well we were all proud and happy and put them all in one friends trunk and went about our business. She got home, her dad needed something out of her trunk the next morning, and found 19 street signs. He came back in, told her mother, and they ripped her a new one about what a horrible thing we had done. And what if an ambulance had been called and they couldn't find a street because of us, and how could she go to church knowing what she's done. After this, we realized what we had done was in fact, a really bad thing. 19 times. No cops needed. They had hid the signs in the back of the basement (after threatening to make all of us take them to the police station). Then they moved. It was my friends grandparents house, and she then inherited the signs. To this day, they are in the garage at her house, covered with a blanket because she's horrified she's going to be arrested for having them. I dont know that i'll ever steal another sign again knowing how much stress I have caused poor Memaw.
Fathers:
I'm sure there are many examples for this one, but the one that I'm currently remembering is when some girls from my grade decided they wanted to roll my yard. They park the car a bit down the road from my house and got started. Well, they obviously didn't know how to properly roll a yard, and woke up my dad. Did he go outside with the shotgun? No. Did he call the cops? Nope. He snuck out the back door, through the woods, to their car.... where the keys were in the engine. He turned on the lights and started slowly cruising up the street. He said the looks on there faces was way better than not having the pick up toilet paper. They never rolled my yard (prolly any yard) after that. No cops needed.
The Whole Town:
I had a close group of friends by senior year. 4 girls, and about 8-9 guys. We were a good group of kids, honestly. Yes... We got into our mischief, but us girls had never drank & we didn't do anything else either. So, after the men's district championship bball game, there were plans to have a party at one of our guys houses. His parents were out of town. We all arrange stories to tell our parents and head over when we got in town from the game. We arrive after people had been there for a while, and immediately shots were handed to us. Our very first shots, tequila.... PARTY IS ON!!! So we are just having a blast, one of the guys had a video camera going around interviewing people and documenting the good time, I kissed a couple of guys, my girlfriend (also first time drinking) puked her guts up for like 2 hours, there was lots of living room dancing, and more and more people stopped by the party. After everyone was pretty drunk and things were dying down late late night, we got a sober driver to take us back to a friends house (whose parents weren't home either). My mother had been trying to call me the whole night. Call it mothers intuition I guess, but she thought something was wrong. When I never answered my phone, and neither did my friends, she drove to the house I was supposed to be at. No one was home. I dunno how many missed calls i had from her that I ignored, but i wiggled my way out of it by saying we ended up staying somewhere else. We never thought another thing about the party...
After the first round of our region tournament, I will never forget getting a text on the way back to Lawrenceburg. The party was starting to get out, and the youth minister at a big church in town had heard. You're probably thinking ok, no big deal... but watch how things work in a small town. The next day, my coach called me into his office and said that he didn't want to ask, but he had to. Did I drink? I told him that myself and the other bball player that was there just split a beer, just to try it. Even though it was a lie... Merrrrrrrg, wrong answer. He told me that I had broke team rules, and that I would have to face the punishment of sitting out a game like the mens coach was enforcing. The next game was the 2nd round of the region tournament against our rival Shelbyville. That's when i realized the severity of the situation. I cried, he cried, I had to tell my teammates, I had to call my college coach to inform him and listen to the speech, my Dad came to school that day to talk to the principal, I got lectures from my teachers on how disappointed they were, made my mother cry, had to read the articles in the newspaper, listen to people talk about it on the radio (yes I'm serious), annnnnd then I even got an email from a dumb dumb sophomore girl talking about how she knew I was stripping on a table, and stealing girls boyfriends, and that im lucky she's keeping this stuff to herself because i could lose my scholarship if she told, and then signed it -The Class of 2006. Well, my mother broke into my email and read it. And basically cried herself to sleep for a week I later learned. NONE of that was true...
So, I had a heartbroken verrry pissed off family, a whole town was was disappointed in me, sat the bench in street clothes my very last high school game (which we lost), had my future college coach worried I was a hellion, and was grounded for a long time. But basically we were humiliated in front of our whole town. Alllllllll because someone just told on us that there was a party, there were NO COPS! We were so scared, we even destroyed the video. This will forever be known in Lawrenceburg history as 'THE Party.' It still makes me mad to think about it.
So, If you want an easy job.... go be a cop in Lawrenceburg. (if you're reading this and you're a law enforcer, im jk)
