Even though it’s no more ‘my’ town than this ‘identity’ I refer to as ‘I,’ I think of it as my little town. It’s the closest to me, just a few miles away, and has almost anything anyone could need in a town: a couple of restaurants, a post office, and a general store, among other amenities. And just a few miles beyond, the last gas for 80 miles south.

I needed to vacuum the residue of another pack rat nest out of the air duct system hidden beyond the glove box. I’m grateful I learned how to replace the cabin air filter years ago, so I can change it whenever mice nest in the hollows or in this case a pack rat fills the duct with leaves and twigs. I’d already pulled most of them out by hand, so I drove up to town this morning to use the car wash vacuum, still only a dollar in quarters thirty years on from the first time I used it.

It was a morning filled with brief and cheerful interactions, once I survived the pickup with trailer speeding down the middle of the narrow winding road out of the canyon. Other drivers, and there were a surprising number of them, smiled and waved as we passed each other.

A woman pulled up at the other vacuum right after me, with a Wren-sized longhaired dog between the front seats. I’d left Wren at home because of how she responds to the house vacuum. I was amazed at the calm of this dog as her person reached in with the noisy hose, and after we were both finished I said I was impressed. We chatted a minute with smiles and she said “glad to meet another dog lover!” A man in the wash bay smiled and asked, “Did you git ‘er done?”

At the post office, Patrice was more helpful than she needed to be, and at the general store a nice young lady led me to mouse traps and read the fine print for me on a balsam fir mouse repellent. It only occurred to me as I was driving home that maybe these people were extra nice because I was using a cane. Or maybe it was simply because I was pleasant and smiling at them, too.

I was especially grateful for the choice I made to walk from the PO to the store —a whopping fifty yards— a distance I have driven for many years simply to minimize steps because walking hurt so much; and it was on the way home. I looked from the PO uphill to the store and thought, hey, I can walk that now! What a simple joy it was to stroll that short distance on smooth pavement, and carry my small purchases back down the hill to the car, on a sunny, mild day in my bustling little town.