High Crime Area - Not !

I was interested in reading the Saskatoon StarPhoenix and the article Rural Resurgence stating that small towns were seeing growth that hasn't happened for many years.

Our small town is no exception as there is very few (if any) lots for sale in the town at this point in time. There may be some lots coming on the market down the road, but for now it is fairly slim pickings.

Along with the influx of people to the towns, there is a note in the above story about the 'quality of life' that is present in small towns and alludes to whether this may stay the same in the future as more and more people move into the towns. This will be interesting to watch develop.

For my own part, I find the crime rate in the small town that I live to be almost nil. There is some crime for sure, but nothing like you get in the cities. A case in point was the Monday before Christmas I was delivering my newspapers at about 6:00 a.m. I got to one of the last streets in town which actually leads out of town and as I walked up the street, I just had to chuckle to myself. Now the house that was causing my mirth is a corner house and luck would have it, there is a street lamp on this corner. The owners of the house had turned on their outside porch lite to illuminate the front step. Same step is about 25 steps (my strides) from the street.

Now sitting right smack down in the middle of the step is a 26 oz bottle of Lamb's White Rum with some Christmas ribbon around the bottle's neck. This was a 'Thank You' gift from the owners of the residence to their local paper person, ie ME. A person would have to be darn right blind if they couldn't see this bottle of rum sitting on the step.

Now what struck me as so funny, is that this gift sat out on the step in full view of the street all night long. Most folks in the town usually are in their beds between 10 and 11 pm, so the bottle was sitting out there in full view for 7 to 8 hours with people walking by and cars/trucks driving by. As I thought about the idea of leaving a gift out like was done, I was not really surprised that in small town Saskatchewan you could/would do such a thing. I just know you would never do such a fool hardy stunt and try and do such a thing in any of the cities of our province and actually expect the gift to be there when the intended recipient came by.

As the StarPhoenix article alluded to, I just wonder if in a few years the small towns are going to be able to keep the 'safe communities' that we have now. I for one sure hope so. It was just for this reason why we picked a small town to retire too rather than the hustle and bustle (and crime) of the 'big' city.

For now I can log this in as a 'treasure' to my time in living in small town Saskatchewan.