Lord love the city.

Usually I welcome the opportunity to travel - for work, pleasure, doesn't matter. And I don't even care how far away it is. Chicago, San Antonio - just as good. I'm not in my normal routine, sitting at my desk, looking at the same cars at the same intersection out my window, so it's all good.

And usually, I'm not a city snob. I grew up in a major city, Houston, and I've lived in a moderately sized city the rest of my life, Austin, except for 5 months that I spent in a college town in the Midwest, so it's true that I've spent pretty much my entire life living in cities. But small towns have always been part of my life, and I've always enjoyed them.

My grandparents lived in a small town, and we visited them at least once a month when I was growing up, and as I said, I lived in one for a bit, and several of my friends had family in small towns that I visited with them, and my parents retired to a relatively small town, so I've spent a lot of time there, so I've spent many a day in small towns. I've always liked them. Until this past week.

I had to travel to a small town in East Texas for work this week. Along the drive, which lasted several hours, I passed through a number of small towns, each more depressing than the last. I found myself thinking, as I passed through each one, "If I had to live here, I think I'd kill myself." I thought it about each aspect of each town. "If that's where I had to eat Mexican food..." "If that's where I had to do my grocery shopping, in some rinky dink place called 'Fred's'..." I just kept imagining if each of these towns were "home" how I would feel. And I couldn't drive through fast enough.

Then I got to my destination. The person I had to meet for work was not around when I got there, then when he finally arrived, he said how he didn't know I would be there - despite several emails, me talking to him about it in person a couple of weeks ago, and a phone call earlier this week. I was speechless. How does this person run a business?

I knocked out my work in a hurry, but had to stick around for a meeting a little more than an hour later. I had no intention of hanging out with this moron for all that time, so I excused myself to go looking for a library - see if I could check my email. I stopped at a bank to get directions. They had closed at 2:00. On a Thursday. So, then I started driving around looking for the library. It wasn't that big a town - I was sure to stumble upon it.

Instead, I stumbled on a visitors center. Cool - they could tell me where the library was. If they'd been open. They had closed at 4:00. Okay. Well, they had some maps out front of their building, so I grabbed one. Library = not listed. But all the restaurants, a famous local bakery and a few other vital locations were listed. What the frig, man? This "small town mentality" was about to piss me the hell off. Was ANYONE working?? So, I started out again, just driving.

Then I found it. Sure enough, I'd stumbled upon it. The library. It was open - hurrah! Just one problem: the Internet was down. Naturally. The librarian told me there was some place at the mall, or the "mini mall" as she expressed it, that offered Internet access. So, 2 minutes after parking, I went back to my car...which a local in a piece of shit sedan had just dinged. I was so pissed, I tried to key their car slyly as I got into mine, but their car was so trashed, you couldn't even tell I'd scratched it. Would nothing go right in this town?

I went in search of the mini mall. I never found the mini mall, but I did find the famous bakery. Fine. I'll go sample pastry and drink cheap coffee. Why the hell not? Finally, it was time to go to my business meeting. It was at the town's fru-fru restaurant. The lemon for your tea was in packets on the table, as was the powdered creamer for your coffee. The meal was smothered chicken over rice, of course, and the veggies had been boiled of all color and served next to a salad of iceberg lettuce. I guess the Dairy Queen didn't have enough privacy for the important business matters that needed to be discussed. At least there I could've gotten a pineapple milkshake.

I endured the meeting until it was reasonable to leave, then got back into the car to head the several hours back home. And I got lost. I couldn't get out of the damn town!!

I had originally planned to spend the night there, and I'd been bitter about having to drive all the way back home that night, but by the time the visit was over, I was quite happy to make the drive home. To the CITY where I live. God bless it.