Coming Home to Timothy

Coming Home to Timothy
by
Robin Hall


Saturday the twenty sixth of February was the day. The nice small city of Timothy was excited. The clean streets were swept once more. The decorations and banners were hung. Tim, as the old timers called it, was ready for the Homecoming.

Timothy had a few deep dark secrets but no one was telling. Now this all sounds confusing even to me so I will go back thirty years to the Preparation for the Homecoming and explain a few things.

At that time the world was changing faster than folks could ever remember. There was no way to tell a brief trend from a long term social change. There were the beginnings of some real nastiness in the country as well.

Timothy had always been a tolerant place to live. Different age, racial, gender and ethnic groups got along just fine but folks saw that there was trouble brewing elsewhere so the citizens and council had a meeting. They decided to tune in, turn on and drop out. And they did.

The stronger young folks were encouraged to tune in. They tuned in to radio, TV, movies and newspapers just to find out how bad it was out there and reported regularly to the city council.

The whole town was encouraged to turn on. There were exercise classes for everyone, health clinics within easy reach of all and lots of sports for young and old. The city parks were filled with folks practicing tai-chi for instance and music. Competitions and cooperations abounded.

The better educated of the group, and a few used car salesmen and women, were expected to drop out and they did. They dropped out of town and went into politics in the State of Mind the border of which ran right through the center of town. Others went into politics in the State of Confusion the border of which also ran right through the center of town.

Then they all did their jobs, kept active on the city council, had meetings and began the Preparation. The politicians were of course the most devious. At the state capitols they all got active in road construction policy, taxes and other committees of value. They saw to it that over time two intersecting superhighways that were being built crossed about ten miles from Timothy so its own citizens could always travel easily when they needed to go anywhere. North, South, East or West.

They also saw to it that no signs were ever put up and that the off ramps were even more confusing than most and would always lead the unsuspecting back to the same road they were on unless they had the town MAP.

The politicians in the tax bureau were busy too. Now all the citizens of Timothy wanted to do the right thing with their tax dollar but they also knew the states rarely did.

They wanted to pay their fair share of taxes for the betterment of all but they did NOT want to pay for the pork barrel projects like the dead end road at Loosedale, that abounded. After computers got invented in Redmond, WA this became easier. The tax politicians figured out how much real tax the state needed and found a way to pay that and NO MORE. They also found a way so that no one would ever discover how they did this.

Now none of Timothy’s politicians were fooled when the capitol of the State of Confusion was changed from Winton to Giggleopolis and they continued to do their jobs. In fact one or two just might have had a hand in the silly sign painters mistakes if you know what I mean.

It presented further opportunities to change some things back home. Like the city's state border running down the center of town. By the time the new state government got to work in Giggleopolis, the border of Timothy had been moved back into the hills of the State of Confusion which helped Timothy miss a few of the ridiculous tax burdens as well.

Life went on and on. Then the Homecoming came and went. Folks came home to stay because they had worked hard to build a fine city. There was no crime to speak of because folks lived decently and didn't need crime. Oh sure, the errant tagger came to town looking for new vistas to mar but they were quickly absorbed into the work force as sign painters or other useful citizens.

Sometimes when a car strayed from the main roads and found itself in a nice city that wasn't on any map they would be followed around by the local biker gang who were just the police force in funny clothes. They covered the blue lights on their bikes with club colors on their off duty hours but if the car looked suspicious, off came the cover and the car was properly examined.

This was just one example of good city planning. Having off duty police use their cars around town, meant that there were many more cars and motorcycles patrolling the streets and the cost was quite reasonable.

The small city of Timothy is still there not in one state or the other but where it really wanted to be. Like a lot of decent hard working places all over this country the folks are proud of the work they have done to make it so nice. I'll bet you could find one of these towns if you tried really hard. You just might be Timothy material yourself.