THE WAY IT WAS - Anita Waggoner

Back in the 50’s and 60’s, a small town wasn’t just a place, it was a way of being.

Growing up back then meant living inside a wide circle of family. Aunts and uncles weren’t holiday visitors; they were everyday people who lived on the other side of the fence or just down the gravel road.

Cousins were built-in playmates, thick as siblings, and you measured life by who lived next door.

Women talked across clotheslines while sheets ballooned in the breeze. They traded local gossip, never hurrying because there wasn’t anywhere more important to be.

The men left early for work in pickups that rattled like old dogs, waving as they passed each other even though they’d do the same thing tomorrow.

Summer belonged to the children. Nobody locked doors, and nobody worried where the kids had gone, someone’s uncle was always within shouting distance, and every yard felt like part of the same home. Kids ran free from sunup until Mama called them home for supper.

The best part was knowing you were never alone. If a storm rolled in and the lights went out, you went next door and waited it out together.

Evenings were slow and easy. Grown-ups gathered in lawn chairs, talking about crops, factory shifts, or who might be getting married come fall.

The 60’s brought new things… televisions, bigger cars, talk of places far beyond that little town. But the heart of life stayed the same.

People looked after one another because that was simply what neighbors did. A child could grow up feeling held on all sides, as if the whole community had agreed to raise them together.

The towns may have been small, but the lives inside them were wide, stitched together by a thousand ordinary kindnesses. And for the children who grew up there, that circle of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins was the first lesson in what home truly means.

Looking back on my younger life in a small town brings a smile to my face. My hometown, Omak, Washington, was shaped by apple orchards, river water, and the steady rhythm of the rodeo grounds, where summer dust hung in the air like fine gold.

Later after living many years in the city, when life took me to Freedom, Oklahoma I experienced much of the same feelings I had while growing up in Omak, Washington, yet with a different accent, red dirt instead of sage, cattle instead of orchards, wind that never seemed to rest, but the heart of that little town of Freedom felt the same as the small town I’d grown up in.

Both small towns knew how to circle the wagons when times got hard, how to measure a person by character instead of money, and how to make a newcomer feel like kin.

Different landscapes, different skies, yet the same lesson waited in both places... a small town, whether tucked in North Central Washington State or in Northwest Oklahoma, had a way of raising me twice, once as a child and again as the person I became.