Working overtime today, and a geologist stopped by to chat. He's a Trump fan, as I am, and we started talking politics. He brought up the fact that today's media constantly promotes "The Coasts" and talks about anything else as being merely "Flyover Country." You're supposed to be ashamed of living anyplace else.
As an aside, he mentioned "Iowa Park, Texas" --- I perked up: I lived there as a kid for 6 years, ages 4 through 6, and then again from ages 9 through 11. Turns out that this man graduated from high school there in '75. And he knew exactly the street I lived on (514 W. Rebecca)! As soon as I mentioned I'd lived there, he excused himself and came back minutes later with 2 Iowa Park high school yearbooks!
Though I was just a kid before I moved to Azle, Texas, in '76, we reminisced about stores and streets and football rivalries of Iowa Park (Hirschi Huskies and Burk Burnett Bulldogs, et al). When looking through his yearbooks, we even found my old babysitter --- Frieda!
When my family lived there the first time, '69 through '71, we lived on Sunset Drive. Two teenaged babysitters for me lived across the street, Frieda and Connie. Frieda, the red-haired and nerdy, was the "good" babysitter. Connie was the bad one; she left cigarette butts by the fence in our backyard (and there were extra butts there, too, indicating that, probably, a boy had been there with her), and so my parents decided never to use her again. After that decision, Connie confronted me on the street with the argument re why she should remain my babysitter: "Nobody at school likes Frieda." I reported this fact back to my parents; they stuck with their choice of Frieda.
I like this geologist a lot. (1) He's a constantly pleasant and interesting fellow. And (2) He told me today upon finding out that I had also lived in Iowa Park, "And I'd thought you were so cosmopolitan!" :)
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