Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska

Wanda's Diary Entries

Thursday, March 2, 2006

Yesterday, I picked up the phone to find on the other end a woman named Marlene Flinchim, a friend of many years. “Did you recently donate a camera to Goodwill?” she asked.

So began another endearing chapter in our saga of small town living. I thought for a moment. Frank and I have known Marlene for many years. She and her late sister Etta Mae Pope and her husband Shorty own a mountain house just up the Orchard Gap Road from our orchard. Lovely people, they used to invite us to come over for stew and biscuits. We used to invite them to come pick cherries.

It’s been several years since I’d spoken to Marlene. “Yes, I guess I did, when we moved offices.”

“Well,” Marlene said, “I picked up this camera at Goodwill in Mount Airy, and realized it still had film in it. So I took it to be developed and sure enough saw photos of you, Frank and Henry and another family.” She wanted to know how she could get these photos to me.

I gave her our new office address and offered to pay her for her trouble.

“No way,” she answered. “This is on me, as a thank you for donating the camera.”

It struck me that only in a small town could you give away a camera and have the undeveloped photos come back to you. Small town living can be as good as it gets!