Before I write anything else, I'd just like to note that I'm going to do my best to refrain from leaving any clues as to my precise whereabouts.  This is partly because I honestly believe that my situation is one in which any single person could find him or herself if he/she were to move to a small town, and partly because I'm pretty sure that if I were to give the name of my small town, I might get a chorus of, "Oh, but Small Town is a fine place! How can you say that?" Assuming anyone reads this, that is.

A little background information is in order here.  I'm a college professor, and before moving to Small Town a couple of years ago, I taught at Giant State Research University (GSRU) in the western United States. GSRU was a great place to work, and I loved my job, my students and my colleagues, several of whom were my good friends.  I also loved Mid-Sized City, where GSRU was located.  It was a college town much like others in this country, but with enough independent industry (that is, independent from GSRU) to keep life interesting and to avoid that insular feeling that college towns often develop. It had great independent and chain bookstores -- new and used, a thriving arts scene, several independent movie theatres that showed foreign and art films (and not just the ones nominated for Oscars), fantastic dining, and a diverse population. By "diverse", I mean that the population was not only ethnically diverse, but politically, economically, socially and age-wise.  It was -- and still is -- a magnificent place to live.

So why did I leave this earthly paradise?  Greed.

GSRU is a wonderful place to be a teacher or a student, but a lousy place to make a living.  Salaries were in the bottom quartile of salaries for university faculty around the country, and cost-of-living raises few and far between.  What merit pay was available could be acquired only after a lengthy and exhausting "verification" process that was hardly worth the meager raise.  I'm in my forties, and the fear of hitting my fifties with little in savings or my 403(b) to show for it was keeping me awake nights.  For a while, I contemplated leaving GSRU and looking for a job in the private sector, but I love teaching, and after fifteen years of it, I can honestly say that I'm only now getting any good at it.  I still feel that I have something to offer young people, and I know that they still have much to teach me.  

So when the job description for my present position was posted to the Chronicle of Higher Education and certain listservs, and several friends sent me links to the description with notes: "You HAVE to look into this!", I decided that the time had come for a major move.  The description was certainly attractive: a nine-month contract at Tiny Comprehensive University, with collective bargaining for faculty, a salary around $30,000.00 more than I made at GSRU, and based in a little town with cheap, plentiful housing.  I applied, and got the job.  Four months later, I had bought a house in Small Town, moved myself and my pets all the way across the country, and tried to settle down and settle in.

Now if only my new neighbors would talk to me. If only there were some place I could meet people my age other than in church or bars.  If only there were something to do in this city other than go to the tiny mall, go to the single multiplex movie theatre, go to the single, Large Chain bookstore (I'll give you a hint: there's a "B" and an "N" in its name) in the entire city, go walking, go drinking, or go quietly nuts.

Much of Small Town's civic life is inextricably entwined with the church scene.  Churches around here come in two flavors: a rigid, pre-Vatican II Catholicism and a dull, gray mainline Protestantism of the sort gently lampooned by Garrison Keillor.  Keillor makes it all sound so wonderfully quaint and charming, but let me tell you, absent his lovely sepia wash, that sort of churching will kill your spirit in very short order. Both the Catholics and Protestants offer an unending cycle of jumble sales, bingo games, revivals, Bible studies, and potlucks. 

I've lived in Small Town for three years, and I've visited three different churches.  The first two were Catholic (I was raised in that church). The second was Missouri Synod Lutheran, and I visited for a few weeks at the behest of a coworker at Tiny Comprehensive. The only difference between the churches is that the Missouri Synod Lutherans don't have the Infant of Prague or the Mother of Sorrows staring at you in church during services, and the Lutherans are also far better singers.  Additionally, the Catholics have prettier churches and better food at their potlucks. The church I attended in Mid-Sized City was nondenominational and quite progressive in its theology.  Here in Small Town, "progressive" means "heretical."

I'm not married, and I left no significant other behind in Mid-Sized City. I have no children other than my pets. I'm a short, decidedly chubby, middle-aged college professor with a double chin and a pronounced waddle.  I don't have a scintillating personality or a charming smile that would distract anyone from the hard truths I just listed.  And yet, I've met a substantial number of women I've met who think I'm just waiting for them to turn their backs so I can pounce on their men, drag them back to my house and do depraved, undoubtedly perverted and possibly illegal things to their bodies.  This makes me grin.  Some of the men think I'm waiting for an opportunity, too.  This makes me roll my eyes.  Admittedly, it's a novelty for me to be seen as some sort of wanton hussy, but the charm of it has grown pale.  I'm tired of women grabbing their husbands' arms when I walk by, and I'm very tired of having to stop myself from snarking, "Oh, really ... who the hell wants your husband anyways, aside from you?"

The single, local multiplex has 20 screens.  At any given time, ten of them will be showing two Hollywood blockbusters (five screens for each film), and the other ten will feature an assortment of movies that have been out for a few weeks.  None will show an independent or foreign film.  "Slumdog Millionaire" didn't show up until it was nominated for an Oscar, and it was in the theatres for two weeks.  This summer, I expect to have to choose between Harry Potter, Transformers 2, Star Trek and X-Men: Wolverine for my viewing pleasure ... or get something from Netflix.  Small Town has one Hollywood Video and some Redbox kiosks in the supermarkets, none of which carry independent or art films.

I like my job at Tiny Comprehensive, and I like my students (I'll write about them in another post).  But Tiny Comprehensive has negligible music, drama and arts programs, so the likelihood of Small Town developing a live music or arts scene is pretty dim.  The nearest major city is two hours away, and it has many excellent universities, small and large, so college students in this state looking for good arts programs don't enroll in Tiny Comprehensive. Young people who come of age in Small Town leave as soon as they can, either to attend college elsewhere or to find work and a livelier scene.  The ones who stay and do not enroll in Tiny Comprehensive either expect to join their parents in some family business or on the family farm, or take retail and service jobs in Small Town and quickly settle into an unbudging, unblinking quiescence.

Even if there were an arts scene, or better theatres, or better bookstores, I'd still have no-one with whom to share them.  I'm too old to hang out with college kids, even if my faculty status didn't make that problematic.  Most of the faculty at Tiny Comprehensive is either approaching retirement age and just ticking off the days until they move to Florida or Arizona, or young marrieds with children whose off-campus lives revolve around said children, and there's not much room for an unmarried woman with no children in their scene.  The few single men and women I've met here, at work and off-campus, are native Small Town'ers who have longstanding relationships with other natives, and no need or desire to keep company with a newcomer.

In this economy, I'm grateful to have a job that pays as much as mine does. Truly.  I'm well aware that securing a well-paid tenure-track position like mine is nothing short of a miracle, and that there are better, more experienced teachers than I who are working in confidence-destroying adjunct jobs for little pay and less respect.  Small Town is such a cheap place to live, and my salary so high, that I'm saving a huge amount of money without even trying very hard.

But good grief, I'm lonely here.  Well-paid and prospering, but lonely.  I may have to give up my dreams of a materially comfortable retirement, move back to Mid-Sized City or someplace like it, and work for the rest of my life -- a life filled with friends and intellectual stimulation, one hopes.  I could deal, I think.