Our local small town. A map dot in coastal Georgia. In a county with an average of 6.6739 acres of pine trees per person. (Seriously, a statistician counted.)

Early morning.

My favorite time of the day.

Around me, movers and shakers chug coffee and clamber to action. These are the people who build things.

Houses. Businesses. Portfolios. Dreams.

There’s Tom*, owner of a cabinet shop. He exits the Friendly Express, toting four bottles of Mountain Dew. All for him. If he could rig an IV to drip a continual dose of the stuff into his system, he would.

Screeching in across the street is Sharon, best nail-tech ever, barring none. It’s 8:15 and she’s right on time for her 8 a.m. customer. (Her timing? We’re fine with that around here.)

George honks and waves as he drives by. He builds fences. Several miles of it for us alone.

I greet other locals as well—black, brown, white, young, old, blue-collar, professional. It’s a hodge-podge of familiarity.

I love the friendliness. The smiles. The easy-going banter.

People around here still adhere to the whole love thy neighbor creed. It reminds me of where I grew up, except that was even more rural.

Everyone gets along just fine around here. ‘Course, newcomers are considered suspect until they declare a side in the age-old college football rivalry (Georgia vs. Florida). We’re close enough to the Florida line for it to matter.

Doesn’t make much difference which side you pick; folks just don’t want to be surprised later. They rely on knowing who they can complain to if their team loses.

Everyone converges at the convenience store. Doctor Powell in scrubs. Sam, owner of the most farm acreage in the county. Monica, gassing up for her courier run to Jacksonville. Dave, the accountant, grabbing a donut for the road. Others—strangers mostly—driving decaled vehicles, passing through on their way to businesses or customers.

It’s a great place and time of day for writers like me to shop for interesting characters.

Mostly, I like their energy. It was my energy too when I was caught up in corporate life.

Sometimes I miss the verve that comes with exposure to movers and shakers.

But, that’s all I miss. I like my “semi-retired,” quiet farm life where I can read, and write the many stories and books in my head. Photographing nature right outside my front door is another bonus…as is playing my music as loud as I want, when I want.

At this moment, I’m walking.

I do this daily. Three or four miles, each morning, in and around the local town.

I pray, reflect, breathe deeply, listen to audiobooks, take pictures, greet neighbors. (Sometimes duck from them if I don’t remember names of offspring.)

Today I don’t go far before a tornado of ebony and fur galumphs into my path.

I’m not alarmed. I’m not living in the city or the mountains anymore.

Instead, the whirl comes from a young, black Labrador. A teenager in people years.

All impulse, no control.

He has pearl-white teeth. Slobbery jowls that drip gooey deposits on my shoes. Massive lion-paw feet at the end of skinny, coffee-table legs. Clear, innocent, enthusiastic eyes.

And, the inability to be still more than two seconds.

I’ve never been owned by a black Lab. But I know that—even more than my German Shepherd and my Border Collie—Labs do what they want, when they want, where they want.

This Lab seems to think he has a statutory right to be bouncy.

He frolics around me. Pees on a flower, a bush, another flower, a spot on the road.

His body squirms and bobs and wiggles and dances in all directions at once. He chases a butterfly through a patch of wildflowers, pees again, then scurries back.

I like his fervor. His gusto.

It seems familiar.

Maybe this is moving and shaking on the back roads.

And that’s just fine with me.

 

*Names have been changed to protect me, ‘cause I live around these people.