My First Article

Here is the text from my first opinion piece, published on February 4th (keep in mind that I have chosen NOT to be political or serious):

Why I Love Rexburg

 

Recently I came across an entire website devoted to hating our town. It was a sad state of affairs, indeed.  Frankly, though, I realize that Rexburg is a bit of an easy target for the uncreative “big city” types—those people who think it’s cool to hate small towns, who have what I like to call a “Footloose Complex”, but what those people don’t realize is that Kevin Bacon traded in his sneakers for cowboy boots and made it work, and they should be able to do the same. Reading this nasty—and grammatically sketchy—website made me start thinking about all the reasons why I love Rexburg. Here are a few:

I love driving down Main Street at Christmastime; seeing all the lights and the old-fashioned tinsel poinsettias makes me think of Christmases past. It’s a morale-booster. I love the fact that it is the end of January and the last time I checked, there were still giant decorations dropping from the fir tree at the intersection of Main and 2^nd East. This is a town that can’t let go of Christmas. I relate to that.

I love that bright and early on sweet summer mornings, I can not only hear birds in my backyard, but I can also hear bagpipes playing somewhere in the distance. How many places have their own Bagpipe Club that can be heard throughout the entire town? Not many.

I love that giant squirrels reside in the evergreen trees all over Rexburg (even though I stepped on a dead one once, and we found a severed tail in our backyard the other day).

I love that the college kids keep our town young, and stocked with plenty of plasma in case of emergency. I love that they keep us on our toes when we drive down 2^nd South, and that they drive cars that were not meant to live in a town that gets this much snow. They look so helpless and innocent sliding all over the roads. It’s precious!

I love the neighborhoods near the university, the neat rows of brick houses built in the fifties and sixties. These are unassuming homes, built to last, and built differently from each other. I love that you can have five chickens in your backyard even if you live within the city limits. I love that I feel safe letting my seven-year-old son walk to and from school by himself.

I also love that my son can wear a Carhartt hat, shirt, overalls, and coat out in public and not be mocked, but appreciated. I love that our sign says “America’s Family Community” and it really means what it says because every third vehicle in town is a mini van with stick figure stickers on the back window that show each member of a ten-person family, including the dog.

I love Broulims. I love Horkleys and their obscenely cheap fountain drinks.

I love that if I really needed to, I could walk almost anywhere in town. I love that if a vehicle isn’t a mini van or a student-owned mini cooper, it is a giant diesel truck. I love the can-do attitude of the people who risk life and limb every time they get in their car to go to the grocery store during a snow storm, or just after a snow storm, or two weeks after a snow storm.  I love that school only gets canceled when it gets cold enough for the diesel in the school buses to turn to gel. Rexburgians are tough.

So next time someone asks you where you live, and you say “Rexburg” and they say “oh. I’m sorry” you just say, “well, I’m sorry that you are stuck at the jerk store and no one has bought you yet.”