Serenity in Starkville is over.
I enjoyed the final few minutes of it last night on my front porch. I watched a beautiful sunset while holding hands and singing campfire songs with two tiny squirrels that I’ve come to know and regard as friends.
But before we could finish our last few tunes, I heard a low rumbling in the distance. I looked west, toward Wal-Mart, and saw a cloud of dust headed in my general direction.
As the earth around my feet began to shake, my squirrel friends scattered. I’ll see them again in May, unless Starkville land developers can cut down all the trees in town before then.
Ok that was a joke. There’s no way all the trees in Starkville will be cut down within the next year. There are several still standing near the proposed Cotton Mills development and it looks like no one will be building anything there for quite a while.
Anyway, I didn’t panic when my peaceful small-town world starting crashing down around me. I’ve lived here for many years now and know to just shake my head and smile.
The Students are back.
This week college-aged kids from literally all over Northeast Mississippi will be descending on Starkville to attend Mississippi State University. They bring with them closets of maroon apparel, daddy’s credit cards, and a healthy appetite for alcohol and fast food, all cornerstones of a healthy economy.
But these cornerstones go home every summer, and for a couple of months Starkville residents are treated to some time off from our noisy neighbors next door.
We generally maximize this downtime by visiting other towns with larger populations or staying inside our homes while the streets melt.
And it’s wonderful.
But every fall the students return, and they do so with all the grace and delicacy of The Rapture.
In fact, looking toward the edge of town each August might make an uneducated Starkvillian think they were experiencing the End of Days.
The above-mentioned students arrive in U-Hauls, trailers, pickups, and flatbeds with more hand-me-down wares than a depression-era thrift store.
These 18 year-old greenhorns are escorted on all sides by a trove of parents attending to their every need, much the way agents and publicists hover around celebrities.
After the trucks are unloaded and the apartment is fully endowed with both futon and mini-fridge, parent and child will exchange a tearful goodbye and – once the other is safely out of sight – begin plotting how best to enjoy the next four (or more) years.
Now I know what you’re thinking. This scene is fairly common and is easily replicated in many college towns across America.
But neither student nor resident is ever fully prepared for what drafts into town behind the students each fall… bikers. Thousands of them.
As if leaving Mary Clare behind at college isn’t tough enough on her parents, they have to see leather-clad rednecks on Harleys heading into town as they leave.
The Sturgis Bike Rally, held just south of town, brings a surly brand of rural-burlesque human being to our fair county, and their presence (combined with that of the returning students) is impossible to ignore.
Just walk into the local Applebee’s around dinnertime this Saturday night.
No other restaurant in America will be serving patrons with a wider range of education, disposable income, or hygiene.
You won’t catch me there. Like most locals, I’ve stocked my fridge and pantry with enough food to sustain me for several weeks. A Wal-Mart trip during a week like this is as dangerous as it is fruitless.
No, I’ll be on my porch.
Looking for squirrels and counting the empty U-Hauls as they ease back off into the rural Mississippi night.
