Lately we have been exploring some of the smaller nearby towns. Today we resumed the series of weekend journeys that had been interupted by the family picnic and then house guests last weekend.

This time we headed northeast to a little college town called Commerce where Tricia wanted to revisit a quilt shop on the square. There is probably less traffic heading east than in in any other direction out of Dallas. We took the Interstate to get it over with fast and then turned north on a two-lane to Commerce.

As in most old towns businesses have moved out to strip centers along the highways. Much of the old town square was boarded up. It was the lunch hour and the only activity seemed to be in the three restaraunts. We picked a sandwich shop and then headed next door to the quilt store where Tricia conducted the business that was our excuse for the trip. The proprietor mentioned that she had had fifty women there that morning for a class.

When we stepped back out on the square though we didn’t see another soul. There was nothing else open except for a police station. Nevertheless it was a workable town square with a post office and a library.

I’ve always longed to live in an old-fashioned small town like the ones in the books and movies. Of course it is a fantasy to imagine that such a thing could have survived.

We got back in the car and drove on east to the next town, Cooper. It had some of the old-fashioned houses with big porches that Tricia likes and it’s own town square. We stopped in at a building called Millers Drugs to see about getting something to drink. Inside was a well-preserved drug store from early in the last century. Along one wall merchandise was displayed in dark wood cabinets with glass fronts. At the back was a pharmacy and along the other wall was an honest to goodness soda fountain made of marble. In the middle were a row of black leather booths. Behind the soda fountain were a couple of teenage girls.

I went up to the counter and ordered chocolate sodas for us both and we sat in one of the booths and drank them. Meanwhile we eavedropped on conversations. At the counter the girls gossipped about high school stuff with another girl who had come in with her little brother. In the booth behind us an old-timer remininsced about cruising for chicks on the town square and sitting in the very same seat in this same drugstore drinking sodas back in the 1940s. His companion said she had been raised on a nearby farm and came to Cooper for the first time when she took her driver’s test. She recalls her father telling her that “if she could drive in the traffic in Cooper she could drive anywhere.” They both laughed at that and the man said he remembered the traffic being worse here than it was in Dallas.

In case you are wondering this is a town with a current population of about 2000 and not a single traffic light. But I remember my own father saying much the same thing about traffic in the little town he grew up in. His town is practically dead now but the way my Dad tells it on Saturdays back in his youth there were so many people he couldn’t get down the sidewalk.

I wonder if it is possible to buy a little house in a town like this and go back in time? Could we plant flowers in a little garden in the front yard behind a picket fence and could we sit in a porch swing in the evenings watching the neighbors pass?