Like a lot of small-town kids, I always dreamed of living somewhere else, not because I didn’t love Sabula, but because I hadn’t experienced much beyond it yet. The world felt big, and I wanted to see it.
And I did.
For about seven years, we lived 1,300 miles away in San Antonio. Phil continued to build his career there, I found my way into the assessment industry, and our kids spent their early elementary school years there.
It was a wonderful chapter of our lives, but we wanted to be closer to family and wanted our kids to have their grandparents, great-grandmother, and cousins nearby as part of their everyday lives.
So we moved back home, and moving back gave me a whole new appreciation for the place where I grew up.
People sometimes ask me why I love living in Sabula. The easiest part to explain is the beauty.
From my deck, I look across the lakes toward the bluffs, and I love watching the palette change with every season. Some summer mornings, the water is so calm it reflects the sky. In the fall, the bluffs turn red, orange, and gold. I watch geese raise their goslings along the shoreline, eagles fly overhead, and pelicans gather on the lake. I even enjoy the winter view for a bit, when everything is covered in snow and ice. But the novelty wears off pretty quickly, and I’m more than ready for spring when everything starts turning green again.
Then there’s the Mississippi River. The smell of the river mixed with a little boat exhaust will forever smell like summer to me. I’ve fished those waters, swum at the beach, and spent countless days boating with family.
A couple of years ago, Mom, Dad, and I anchored along the riverbank catching bluegills as fast as we could reel them in.
We were using worms. Unfortunately for me.
If you know me very well, you know worms rank only slightly above snakes on my list of favorite things. Dad baited my hook at first, but the fish were biting so fast I couldn’t keep asking him, so I squeezed my eyes shut, held my breath, gagged dramatically, cut the worm into pieces, and somehow got it on my hook.
Dad just laughed.
Funny thing is, I don’t remember how many fish we caught that morning. I remember Dad laughing.
I also have so many memories here with my grandparents and great-grandma, who all lived just a couple of blocks from us. I spent a lot of afternoons at their houses or running little errands for them because they were only a couple of blocks away. My great-grandma would give us a quarter to walk to the post office for her, which happened to be exactly enough to buy a Butterfinger at my uncle’s grocery store on the way home.
I was married in the same Catholic church where my grandparents and parents were married, and both of my kids were baptized there and grew up going to church there too. I have fond memories of church festivals, pancake breakfasts, bingo, and all the things that made the church about more than Sunday Mass. The building still stands, but the Catholic church community that was such a big part of my childhood is no longer there.
After spending their early elementary school years in Texas, our kids came back to Sabula for middle and high school. They rode bikes, ran all over town with their cousins, spent summers on the river, and went trick-or-treating on the same streets where I once nearly suffocated through a plastic Halloween mask while hauling around a bag overflowing with candy.
Another thing I appreciated about raising our kids here was the school. Some of their teachers had taught me years earlier, and in a small school, kids had the chance to try everything: sports, band, choir, plays, whatever interested them. Everybody got a chance to be a star in their own way, and the community showed up to support them. I still remember when our boys’ basketball team went to state my junior year. A caravan followed them to the games, and when the boys came home, there was a huge welcome waiting. They hadn’t won the championship, but making it to state was something our whole town was proud of.
Living in a small town means I can walk over to my parents’ house after work. Until recently, Mom and Dad were both there. Mom and I still sit on the deck talking about the weather, the dogs, what’s for supper, or whatever happens to be on our minds. Sometimes I stay for fifteen minutes, and sometimes it turns into a couple of hours. I never need a reason to stop by.
People ask me if I ever get bored living in a town this small. Not really. Life just looks a little different here.
We know the people who own the businesses and the people who work in them. The gas station isn’t just where you buy gas. It’s where you grab a pizza, run into somebody you know, and end up visiting for twenty minutes. I walk across the street to my neighbor’s house to get my hair cut. The older gentlemen gather at the fire station for morning coffee, where I can’t guarantee every story leaves with exactly the same details it arrived with.
Information travels fast in a small town. Sure, that means there’s gossip, and occasionally a story picks up a few extra details before it makes its way across town. But it also means we usually know who the troublemakers are, we notice when a stranger is in town, and when something bad happens to one of our families, it doesn’t take long before people know and start checking in.
After my dad died, I was especially touched by the people who weren’t close friends but still stopped to offer condolences, sent a card, brought food, or shared a memory of Dad. In a place like this, you don’t have to be part of someone’s inner circle to care when they’re hurting.
I love the sense of safety, too. I walk the dogs before sunrise and after dark without thinking twice about it, and my kids grew up with that same freedom, riding bikes and running all over town with their cousins. We know our neighbors and our police officer, and if the kids were somewhere doing something they shouldn’t, there was a decent chance we’d hear about it before they made it home. These days, the biggest threat on my walks is the lady in the white van whose dog apparently considers us a threat to national security.
People still stop to talk here. Literally.
One day I walked out of the house with all five dogs loose and headed toward the truck for our daily ride to the post office. My neighbor drove by, stopped right in the middle of the street, rolled down her window, laughed, and told me she wished she’d had a camera to capture it.
We’re also those people from the Facebook memes who hear the tornado sirens and, instead of heading straight for the basement, walk outside to see where it’s coming from. After a good thunderstorm, we’re driving around town before the clouds have completely cleared to see what blew down, whose patio furniture ended up where, and whether anybody needs help. Part of it is checking on our neighbors. Part of it is plain old curiosity.
On summer evenings, people grab an ice cream cone and take a drive around town while kids ride bikes, neighbors visit from their yards, and somebody is almost always fishing or headed to the river. You might see a mink run across the road with a fish hanging from its mouth or a doe wandering through town while everyone tries to figure out where she’s hiding her fawn.
You might even see somebody pulling a boat trailer behind a lawn mower. That’s just life on the island.
One of my favorite weekends of the year is Island City Days, which happens to be this weekend if you’re looking for something to do. As a kid, it meant rides, games, friends, and staying out later than my parents probably wanted. These days, I love watching people come home, families gather, old friends find each other, and another generation of kids make their own Island City Days memories. Then the sun goes down, the street dance starts, and some of us who were once those kids are still out there with our friends having just as much fun, although these days there may be a few too many beverages and Fireball shots involved.
Serving on the City Council has made me appreciate Sabula in another way. I care about its future, and I want to help preserve the things that make people want to call this place home. I just hope we never lose the part of Sabula where people know their neighbors, where the volunteers who answer an ambulance call are familiar faces, where kids have room to be kids, and where people show up when someone needs them.
Last month, I shared the story behind one of my favorite Sabula traditions, the American flags that line the perimeter of town each summer. Each flag honors a veteran who once called this little island home, and over the years it’s become a tradition our community has grown to love.
This year, one of those flags bears my dad’s name. I slow down every time I drive past it.
Generations of my family are gone now, but their memories are all over this town. They’re in the houses they lived in, the streets we walked, the church where we gathered, and the river where we fished or boated. They’re in the parks and yards where we played kickball or kick the can, the trees we climbed, the places we swam, and all those little spots around town where some part of my childhood happened. Even now, I can drive down a street, pass a house, and remember exactly who used to live there, even though they’ve been gone for years.
I have a feeling a lot of people who grew up here could say the same thing. There’s something about this little island that stays with you, even when life takes you somewhere else.
I realize now just how special this place is. And one thing I know for sure: there really is no place like home.
Cheers to small towns like ours, to the people who make them feel like home, and to the generations of memories held within them.
Anyway—off we go. My dogs are waiting for their walk around this little town they love too.
© Erica Shoemaker | Anyway… Off We Go
