Small Towns

My parents grew up in this tiny town in northern Wisconsin called Merrill. That should probably be the name of my next child, because of how much I love that tiny town.

Tyler and I moved into our apartment right as the weather was starting to get warm.  It’s the first place I’ve lived that has a window in the bathroom – this fact earned a 4 out of 5 in my mental quantitative pro/con list for moving. The smell of our clean, pink bathroom and open window on a cool, jacket-weather summer evening was the exact smell of Grandma Florene’s on E. 9^th St. in Merrill.

In fact, much of Rexburg reminds me of Merrill – the courthouse here, though not as impressive, sits right in the middle of town at a busy intersection. Both endure bitterly cold and snowy winters. Neither is particularly diverse. I once asked my mom what it was like to go to school in the sixties during the Civil Rights movement. She said, “I wouldn’t know. There weren’t any black people.” Rexburg has Mormons and not Mormons. Merrill has “Lutherns” and Catholics. People drive the speed limit and always say a genuine hello. If it weren’t for the college, only the accents (doncha know) could tell them apart.

Reminiscing about my visits to Merrill is like watching a movie that was filmed this decade, but that takes place decades ago. Everything seemed dated and more simple and quaint there. And it isn’t just a smell that brings on these memories. It’s the taste of dill pickles, the texture of cold, freshly cut carrot sticks and the fizz of A&W Root Beer that remind me of Ron & Queenie’s pizza night at Grandma Florene’s. It’s the feeling of my finger in the curve of my tiny Corelle cup while eating applesauce that takes me to Grandma Faye’s back porch with Grandpa, his oxygen tank and her book of Herald Tribune crossword puzzles. It’s the sound of shuffling a well-worn deck of Bicycle playing cards or shaking a bag of tiles that says, I, too, will teach my child how to play 500 Rummy and Scrabble so that one day he can pummel his own grandparents, who will have become ever-so predictable.

Three weeks each summer and one each winter spent Up North was just enough to consider Merrill another home. My two grandmas, so completely different in every way, loved me exactly the same. One through telling me endless stories about farm life and being married to the handsome Nemo the Great and the other through reminding me not to wear my socks in bed (your feet need to breathe, you know) and hours spent playing King’s Corners and Rummikub. My grandpa – Nemo the Great – with his suspenders and oxygen tank, smelled like tobacco and cute old man. I don’t have a solid reason why, but I knew he loved me, too, and that he thought I was someone special and important. I was only 11 when he died and felt so badly that I’d forgotten the card tricks he taught me and that I never got the real story behind why his thumbnail was shaped that way (unless he really did get into a fight with a bear . . . or grandma).

As of last November, my grandparents are gone and I no longer have a real reason to visit Merrill. I have oodles of pictures and clearly plenty of things to keep my memories intact. And even when my dad retires to Wisconsin and I pass through with my own family, it won’t be the same.

I’ll be saying goodbye to Rexburg soon, too, and will most likely have no reason to come back here, either. A visit for a sibling’s graduation might call us back for a weekend, but again, it won’t be the same. Perhaps I’ll feel just as nostalgic about this place when I open the window of our next clean bathroom on a cool, jacket-weather summer evening.