Living that club life
...but the local clubs are less about Tiësto and tequila shots, and more about wholesome volunteering
Welcome! I'm Sara Ramsey, a novelist and former/future tech worker who recently moved back to rural Iowa. I write about my wild and weird #smalltownlife, as well as anything else that strikes my fancy. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please join me!
Hello friend,
It’s when someone offers to teach you to play bridge — so they can invite you to the local bridge club — that you know you’ve really arrived.
So far, I’ve been careful about committing to anything here. The one time I said a tentative yes to something led to me running the whole mural festival, so I feel my caution is justified. I’m still testing the waters — and I’m scared of how the sharks are circling at the scent of my fresh blood.
I’ve alluded to how much of our local economy is run by volunteers. While most people here would rather die than be called socialists, the faltering economy is underpinned by overlapping networks of mutual aid that look out for each other. Rotary, Lions Club, Hospital Auxiliary, Cattlemen’s, Garden Club (x2), Optimists, Arts Council, Historical Society, Soda Fountain Board, various tiny historical charities, 10 or 20 different churches, Chamber of Commerce, Theatre Board, some secret societies, Old Settlers, County Fair Board, the volunteer firefighters, the secondhand stores that donate their proceeds back to the community, the Legion posts, the Friends (who put on the town play), alumni associations for schools that closed years ago…the list goes on and on. That doesn’t count the PTA, 4-H, Future Farmers of America, Scouts, and other kid-geared organizations, or the aid groups within the Amish communities, or random groups like bridge club, or various small neighborhood clubs that are slowly dying out.
Keep in mind, there’s only 6000 people in this county. The largest town is 1600 people; the other towns are 500 or less. They maintain an amazing-when-you-think-about-it array of clubs and organizations, all with their own meetings and dues, responsibilities and expectations. And those groups keep the whole community’s social calendar going with events and fundraisers.
But while things are still mostly working, and mostly fitting into the rhythms I remember from my childhood, I look around...and all I see is need. One local nonprofit that I care about has a board whose median age is at least 70; their oldest board member is a decorated World War II pilot, if that tells you anything. I went to an informal chat organized by the economic development office, and I ran into someone who was very excited that I’ve moved back because they need people like me around. He knows me, but I don’t think he really knows what my skills are — I’m just a warm body who isn’t burned out by volunteering and is still young enough to take on half a dozen groups at once1.
On some level, all of this is delightful. On another level, it’s exhausting. At a meeting of my secret society this week2, one woman told me that she’s tired and ready to pass her torch — but she’ll keep doing it all anyway, because there’s no one to pass the torch to.
At that same secret society meeting, I followed up on a request for volunteers to help with the mural festival. I know that 80% of the group is also part of the Garden Club3, and I knew from my mom that Garden Club had already committed to spending a whole day providing snacks and drinks for one of the mural sites. So, I offered them an out and said our society didn’t have to volunteer too — but I was immediately vetoed, since they all felt that our group needed to also volunteer as a separate entity. I know some of them are also in other groups that are volunteering, and so individuals may spend all of Labor Day weekend volunteering as part of 2 or 4 or 10 different groups.
And yet they will all show up, repeatedly, to make something happen if it’s important for the community.
It’s wonderful, and heartbreaking, and so alien from my city life that I can’t help but ramble through this letter. And I wonder how to spread this kind of community in urban, and especially suburban, areas — or whether it’s even possible when cities get to a certain size.
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When I went to the Rural Development Conference a few weeks ago, one of the keynotes mentioned that an unacknowledged rural superpower is how much better rural areas score on metrics around connectedness and loneliness. Loneliness is a major predictor of health in later life — so it’s nice to know that our connectedness might ameliorate some of our issues with toxic farm runoff.
Looking back, I never felt lonely in San Francisco. I had a robust network of college friends, work friends, writing friends, random bartenders, the owner of my favorite breakfast place, the manager at my favorite dinner place, etc., etc. But that may be because I’m hardwired to look for community wherever I am, and I somehow succeeded in retrofitting my fancy Marina neighborhood into feeling like a small town.
I did, however, feel lonely in Denver, which I moved to inauspiciously close to the pandemic. I had friends from work, and my best friend from second grade (who has always been a bright light in my life)….but that group could have existed in Denver, or Austin, or Toronto, or Berlin, and my connection to the place would have been equally nonexistent. The pandemic exacerbated all of that, creating a disconnection and loneliness that I had never experienced in my life. It was so disorienting that I think I would have spun out into the void if I hadn’t made regular road trips to Iowa.
The irony, though, is that I don’t really fit in here, either. I felt that disconnect acutely in high school, although I had a good enough time despite being a total freak show when it came to my academic prowess.
But so far, my experience is: you can be as weird as you like here (within some boundaries that I’m still testing), and people are mostly welcoming anyway, especially if you show up for town events.
And they’re especially welcoming if you volunteer to plan those town events. So I guess planning this mural festival will buy me major credit to cover the weirdness of my semi-nomadic writing life.
I don’t know about bridge club, though. I’m pretty sure joining bridge club automatically ages you thirty years, and I pay too much for Botox to immediately negate it.
Cheers,
Sara
I’m selling myself short here — I had some notoriety in high school and was the first kid to go to an Ivy-type school in thirty years #nothumblebrag. But still, he doesn’t really know if I’m a capable adult, vs a child who excelled at the SATs.
It’s not a scary secret society — we don’t have a Sea Org. It’s a women’s group focused on education philanthropy. More on this some other time.
I could get into Garden Club if I asked. But I’ve had a pot of dead mums in my front yard for six months, so I feel too fraudulent to seek an invite.
OMG!!!
I miss our chats so much trying to find my new path in life as well. Thank you for this read ,wonderful.