Small town life

Last night we had a minor emergency. Tom was eating supper with us when he (who has been ill and had just seen the doctor and received several medicines) began having trouble breathing. When we asked him if he was okay he had trouble responding.

Steve jumped up and went to Tom's side. Steve tried to get Tom on his feet and get him to walk to the car. I ran to the phone yelling, "Car or 911?" When I heard Steve say, "He's going down, and I can't get his pulse," I called for an ambulance.

The dispatcher took my name, our address, and the nature of our emergency and said they'd be at our house in a few minutes.

The ambulances make daily runs up and down East Street, which borders the side of our house, and is the quickest, most direct route from the hospital to the highway. They never go down the street in front of our home, which is also the street on which is our address.

When the ambulance pulled up at the front of our home a few minutes later, we thought it odd, but were just relieved to have the EMS guys so quickly. They walked in the house, checked Tom, looked at the medicine he'd taken, and were pretty certain one of the meds caused his distress. By that time Tom was sitting up, and though he was a ghastly greenish-yellow color, he could speak coherently, and decided he didn't need to go to the hospital.

The phone rang. It was Chuck (who lives a block away, but on the same side of the street as us) and he wanted to know if we were okay. I explained to him what had happened and asked how he knew the ambulance was here. He said, "Small town. Everybody knows what goes on." I replied, "I'll bet Scoon called you." (Scoon is one of Chuck's close friends, and he and his family live catty-cornered across the street from us. If it weren't Scoon, I figured it would have been Harriet, Scoon's sister, who lives across the street from Scoon, and two houses up the street from us. She can see our driveway from the windows of her house.)

Later, Scoon came driving by while I was outside talking to another neighbor and he confessed that it had been he who called Chuck and told him, "Something's going on at your sister's house." I told Scoon what had happened, so he could pass it on to everyone else who wondered.

In the meantime, Steve had asked Mike and the other man why they'd driven up to the front of the house rather than coming up East Street, as they normally do. Mike said, "Well, your wife gave us your address. We're more familiar with landmarks. Now if you'd told us you lived in the old Tucker house, we'd have been here sooner. "

Now I know - unless there's good reason to believe otherwise, assume my fellow townsmen grew up here and give both our address, and the name of the house as it's been known for the last 50 (almost 60!) years: The Tucker Place.