What I love about small town life

We live in a classic small town. The picture above is of the circle, just a half-mile from our house, with its beautiful landscaping and fountain, surrounded by historic buildings including the county's main courthouses. The population here is 4000-something, but that includes the folks who live in the rural areas outside of the town itself but that are served by the local post office. We live on one of the main streets, lined with beautiful and mostly very well kept old homes; the official historic district starts a couple of blocks in towards the circle, but I think it's fair to guess that the vast majority of the homes built within Georgetown itself were built anywhere from the late 1700's to the very early 1900's.

As much as I miss the quiet of living on dead-end streets, as I did for 20 years before I moved here, there are so many things here that delight me that are an integral part of small-town life.

• Several times a day I stop and listen to the nearby church bells ringing, from one of the older churches in town. Most of the time it's just marking the time, but often they're playing songs on their carillon.
  
• Often I hear the whistle from trains passing through town; the original train station, no longer used because there are no longer any passenger trains coming through, is recently restored and available to rent for public events, and is just a few blocks from my house.
• There are little shops and restaurants and the library all within walking distance. I'd really appreciate it if there were more than there is, but the business area apparently died down considerably in the 60's. However, we could walk to Smith's (now known as the Georgetown Family Restaurant but no one with any history with it will ever call it anything but Smith's), to a delightful central-American Mercado, to a coffee shop, and just to the circle to exercise ourselves and the pugs and enjoy looking at all the old houses.
  
• In theory, both Von and I could easily walk or bike to work (1/2 mile and 1 mile away, respectively). It doesn't happen often though, because of Von's reluctance to walk around in uniform and my reluctance to get up at anything other than the last possible minute for work.
  
• We can go onto our front porch or let our granddaughter crawl around in the front yard and exchange smiles and waves with people who are walking by.
  

All in all, I'd say that I'm a real convert to the pace of small-town life, and I really enjoy our small town.