Fun Monday - Giving Thanks

Fun Monday is once again trying to survive, resuscitated this week by Sayre. Sayre would like to know, at the beginning of this month, what it is that we are thankful for.

There are a ton of things for which I am grateful; family, friends, our military, a job that I love, my critters (even the sick one), etc.

I am going to focus today on the town in which I live. I love this town. Like most Texas towns, ours is built around the courthouse square. We have a lovely old courthouse which is still serving the town. Our town is small enough to feel like a small town and large enough, as the county seat, to provide more than enough places in which I can spend my paycheck. We have more churches than bars and more schools than restaurants. We have original cobblestone streets downtown, pavement through town, and caliche roads outside of town. We have a bowling alley, a movie theatre, an aquatic center, a YMCA with a new weight room for the teens, a community center and a very active senior citizen's center. We have a terrific public library, a hometown newspaper, our own radio station and a museum. We have a new hospital scheduled to open next month and wonderful people to staff it. We have a new branch of Amarillo College about to begin construction. We are, in this economy, still growing.

Our service organizations provide just that - service. Tuesday is election day which means that the Kiwanis is hosting a pancake supper. The Methodist church always has a breakfast for the hunters on the opening day of hunting season. The VFW provides both a place for remembering our vets and teaching our youth to honor the flag. We also have Elks and Shriners, Moose and Knights, Pilots and study clubs, all striving to make our town an even better place to be. The community center, the high school, and the mart of Wal take turns sponsoring blood drives. In reality, the main problem we have in November is that, with so many churches and organizations providing Thanksgiving baskets, we have to make sure that the recipient families are not duplicated. Our youth are currently holding blanket drives, canned food drives, and looking for more ways to serve.

No, we are not perfect. Yes, we have problems. This is not the post for that. This is the post in which I thank God that I not only live in Texas, but in this little corner of Texas where, according to my daughter, the biggest problem is that the people are "aggressively friendly."