What is this Newfangled World Wide Web, Anyway?

I just received my weekly hometown newspaper today, The Apache News. This is a much-anticipated event for me, making every opening of my mailbox kind of like opening a box of chocolates: I never know what I’m going to get, because the papers get to me sporadically. Some are only a week late, sometimes I get three at once after a long, dry spell. (Mind you, Apache, Oklahoma is only three hours northwest of Plano, so I think possibly they are mailing these using the last remaining legs of the Pony Express – although even that would be faster, probably.)

Anyway, when they do come, I devour them eagerly. And quickly – since they are only eight or so pages, mostly ads for churches or the local Mom & Pop Quick Stop or obituaries. But the front page is saved for all important news of the town – including the Town Board Minutes, the Library News, and listing all names of all children making the A/B Honor Roll every 9 weeks in all 12 grades of the school system (sometimes as many as 60 kids!).

Now that I am an internet entrepreneur, you can imagine my interest in the following article:

I mean, this is big news. The Apache Flower Shop now has a web location. Imagine that! What will they think of next?

Some of you will think I am making fun of this shop. (In fact, I was thinking earlier tonight when I was having trouble working my scanner to get this article through it that God was trying to tell me to hold back any comments because of how they may be construed.) I have many, many fond memories of this very same shop from my childhood . . . my prom corsages, Homecoming mums, Valentine’s roses (the one year I got any), all came from here. My best friend’s Mom worked there while we were growing up. One of my friend’s Mom owns the shop now. (She bought it from my brother’s best friend’s wife.) What I am really doing is congratulating the shop on a masterful piece of publicity – generating enough buzz from a URL to get them front page press coverage.

But no, my comments on The Apache Flower Shop’s foray into the 21st Century are not meant to ridicule. They are really intended to portray my bittersweet feelings about such a long-standing Apache icon getting modernized. This is the Little Town in Oklahoma where I grew up, where I can still walk down the street and people know who I am (even though I’ve been gone 18 years), where my parents still leave the house unlocked except when they are gone overnight. I have wonderful (and, most likely, highly selective) memories of the town as a great place to grow up. In my mind, it will always be that same town – and, in fact, on the surface it still is, because when you drive through town, most of the same names are on the businesses, most of the same families are still there in the same houses.

But it’s moments like this that I realize time doesn’t stand still even in Apache, Oklahoma, population 1500. And while mostly that’s a good thing, it does make me sad that a part of Mayberry is getting chipped away.

That said — when I do want to make poke a little fun at Apache, I’ll include a picture of the Yard of the Month. This is a town where rusty old tractors are considered yard art, people still hang their clothes out to dry in the summer, and having two bathrooms in your house makes you rich.