Big Towns and Little Towns
It was an early Thursday morning. I just left my hometown of twelve
hundred residents. My plane was scheduled to leave Sioux Falls for
Chicago at 10:00am, so I was arriving at 8:00am. Interstate 90 was
very busy. I figured all of the traffic must have been commuters
traveling to Sioux Falls for work.
The traffic seemed to get worse as I entered Sioux Falls. I thought
to myself, BIG TOWNS are for the birds. Vroommmmm, screech,
OH BOY that was close. Sioux Falls is huge! How can people stand to
live in such a busy community with so much traffic? After two close
calls, I finally arrived at the airport.
Within the time it takes to eat a small snack and drink two pops, I
was standing in Chicago. I was overwhelmed and scared. There were
hundreds, maybe thousands of people trying to hail a cab. I felt
like a precious flower in a field of aggressive, thirsty weeds. I
finally caught one of the cab driver’s attention. The driver said it
would cost close to sixty dollars to travel to the hotel. Needless
to say, my shuttle bus slowly made its way at parade speed to the
hotel. A drive that should have taken fifteen to twenty minutes took
close to three hours. I was already four and half hours behind
schedule.
When I arrived at the hotel I looked up and could not see the sun
because the tall buildings were obstructing my view. There were
thousands of people on the streets walking home from work. Every
block had a little grocery store. Eeeeeerrrrrrrreer…, an
ambulance and two police cars pulled up outside one of older
remodeled buildings. No one seemed to care. People walked right by
the emergency vehicles and did not stop or even look at the life
threatening event taking place. In my hometown, people will leave
the supper table to follow the ambulance or fire truck miles to
catch a glimpse of the action. Later, I found out that ambulances
arrive so often that people are immune to the sound of the sirens.
From what I could tell, if you seem interested in the action, then
you must be a tourist. I was amazed to see an ambulance
arrive outside my hotel about every 30 minutes. Then I realized that
more people live in one building than my entire home town, maybe
even the county.
The conference was over and I arrived at the Sioux Falls airport.
Sioux Falls didn’t seem so big anymore. The traffic didn’t seem as
congested and there wasn’t as many people going to work; at least in
comparison to Chicago. I guess the size of a town is relative to
what a person is used to. Well, this fish likes to be a big fish in
a little pond and not a small fish in a big ocean.
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