Community stories.
Stories about neighbors, small towns and strangers who show up.
The Ice Cream Truck That Brought Us Back
For thirty eight years I fixed other people’s furnaces, and the week I finally retired I went out and spent nine hundred dollars on the... Read more
The Coupon Lady Who Saved Our Store
I have been clipping coupons since the Carter administration, and for most of those years the only people who noticed were the cashiers who sighed... Read more
The Barber Who Listened
I have been cutting hair in the same chair, in the same shop, on the same square in the same small town for fifty years.... Read more
The Neighbor Who Kept Mowing My Flowers
My husband Brambrook stood in the ditch in front of our house at six in the morning, in his undershirt, holding a fistful of flattened... Read more
The Yard Sale Sign That Made Us Friends
There was a hand-painted sign face-down in the ditch at the end of my driveway for the third time that week, the paint I’d let... Read more
The Pool Party My Camera Caught
My neighbors threw a Fourth of July pool party in my own backyard while my husband and I were two hours south visiting our daughter,... Read more
The Ramp Our Street Rebuilt Together
The smell hit me before my eyes made sense of what they were seeing. Fresh-cut cedar, sharp and clean, drifting off the porch light into... Read more
The Yard a Stranger Cleared
My name is Arlene Whitcroft. I am seventy-eight years old, and I know what my neighbors say about my yard. I’ve known for two years.... Read more
The Stranger She Chose As Her Father
At 9:47 on the last Friday morning in May, I was standing at the end of the third row of folding chairs in the Cedar... Read more
The Seat at the Head Table
For forty-one years I cut hair in the front room of my house on Sorrel Street, in a town in central Nebraska so small the... Read more
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