Around town.

I guess I can grudgingly accept being called a city dweller.  I’ve lived in a large urban area now for nearly five full years.  There are still things about urban life and attitudes that greatly annoy me, but the fact is, I’m a city person, even though I love the countryside and wilderness far more for both its aesthetics and lifestyle.

The urban to rural contrast has revealed itself to me socially in the past couple of days.  I’m spending the Christmas holidays in the small town where I grew up in southwestern Ontario.  Yes, it’s technically an urban area, but it’s small enough that it’s culturally rural and extremely easy to know who many people are after a few years and for them to know me.  In fact, I’m surprised that people recognize or remember me.  Yesterday I went to the church I worship at whenever I visit here.  On a good year, I’m maybe there for four Sundays, yet people still always recognize me and stop to talk after the service ends.  My usual pew, about six rows back from the pulpit next to a stained glass window with a plaque in memoriam of a long-gone Lutheran beneath it is as familiar as ever.  Do any others dare sit there when I’m not around?  I honestly doubt it.  Nobody changes pews that readily.

I left the church noticing the gas gauge in the car was mighty low so I headed for the Shell pumps in from of the Mac’s convenience store.  Lutherans rely on grace, we know God won’t strike us down for getting gas on a Sunday.  As I was filling the car, the guy at the next pump shouted “Hey James, how’s it going?”  I said “Pretty good, and you?”  He said “Yeah, good.”  He was wearing sunglasses and a heavy coat with the hood up.  I didn’t recognize his car and noticed a wife and children inside.  I thought to myself “well I’m glad you’re friendly, but I have no idea who you are.”  I think I had figured out who he was by the time I was finished filling up the car.  I’m still not entirely sure though.  I’m not used to this kind of familiarity in the city.  If anybody I didn’t recognize talked to me like that at a gas station in Ottawa or Gatineau, I’d call the cops.  In my hometown, it’s just normal. 

The surprise of being recognized in public continued today.  I went into the local credit union where I still have an account and one of the staff members greeted me by name.  That does not happen at the caisse populaire in Gatineau.  I walked over to the drugstore and noticed the woman at the checkout is the same woman who worked at that drugstore 20 years ago when I’d stop in for a chocolate bar or bag of potato chips on the way home from school.  She’s outlasted two store locations as a franchise of three different drugstore chains and I honestly thought she had retired.  I placed my purchase on the counter and after saying hello she asked “Well I haven’t seen you here in a while, where do you live now?”  I told her and she looked incredibly surprised.  The drugstore lady always seemed to know a lot about her customers—perhaps too much.  I’m sure my current city of residence is now written down in her daily journal of who shopped at the store.  I’m just glad I wasn’t buying anything that was potentially embarrassing.  In fact, I’m pretty sure that whenever someone in my hometown has to buy anything embarrassing at a drugstore, they drive to another town.  The same thing happens when extremely religious people want to buy liquor and not be seen in the liquor store parking lot or find out inside that others like them are also shopping for booze.

I am far from being a fashion expert.  In fact, the materialistic obsession with fashion really annoys me.  I am satisfied with my clothes as long as they are in good condition, warm, and publicly respectable.  I did however notice on this afternoon’s trip downtown that I probably looked like I wasn’t from here.  I parked the car in front of the hardware store and walked to the shops I needed to visit.  It was raining so I took an umbrella.  Nobody in this town uses an umbrella.  They’re a hardy bunch.  I saw hatless people wearing coats advertising hockey teams, or heavy khaki brown coats purchased from farm supply or work wear stores.  In a town like this, a guy getting out of a Hyundai with a Quebec licence plate who is wearing a black wool coat purchased at Hudson’s Bay and is carrying a black umbrella is probably mistaken for some travelling swindler, insurance salesman, or apprentice undertaker.

There’s a cosy comfort in being around familiar people, especially during the Christmas season.  I’ll enjoy it for a couple of weeks and then just as it seems tedious and encroaching, I’ll return to my regular life of just being another account number in the line at the credit union or customer at the drugstore.