Keeping Tabs on the Community Bulletin Board
On a walk in my neighborhood a few weeks ago, right before I packed up and moved to the top of this mountain for the summer, I noticed a flier advertising dog walking services posted on a fence in my neighborhood. There was a photo of two smiling kids, each with a panting dog on the end of a leash. Five dollars for 30 minutes, it said. Haven’t these kids heard about inflation? Their phone number was written in by hand on the fringe of tabs on the bottom of the page, and I tore one off.
The next day I saw the dog walkers in the flesh, sprinting down the street. The boy was holding a hot pink leash attached to an empty collar, and the girl, waving her arms and shouting the dog’s name, appeared to be directing traffic. The little black-and-white dog running out in front of them was looking back over its shoulder with an expression on its face that looked an awful lot like laughing.
“We’re practicing,” the boy said, catching his breath as he lassoed the mischievous Boston Terrier who, the girl reported, is their own family dog.
As I passed the flier again on my way back home, I ripped off another tab, from the middle this time—a confidence booster. When I got home, I put it under a magnet on my refrigerator with the tab I’d ripped off a flier for a local woman who called herself the Geezer Gal, touting a specialty in fixing lamps.
I’m that person who stops in front of you in the doorway of the coffee shop, the co-op, or the library, and reads all of the postings on the community bulletin board. Though I never really need any of it, I just can’t walk by ads for jars of antique buttons, a pink vintage sofa with just one leg missing, or a litter of kittens in “assorted colors.” I have no use for another bicycle, snow tires for a 2003 Ford Focus, a collection of beer steins, or a load of topsoil, gravel, or hay. Still, I am glad all of these things exist on bulletin boards alongside ads for coin collections, babysitters, and people who make chandeliers out of deer antlers.
Once, driving through Miles City, Montana, in the middle of the night I spotted a flier near the restrooms at a truck stop with an eager-looking, curly-haired dog that said, “I’m looking for you, are you looking for me?” Mysteriously, there was no phone number or explanation, but it sure made me smile.
There’s not much opportunity on top of a mountain to pause at a community bulletin board, but with the help of a solar-powered radio and an antenna I’ve augmented with aluminum foil, the FM airwaves help me keep tabs on the community news in Kooskia, Idaho; Dillon, Montana; and places as far away as Spokane, Pullman, and Lake Chelan, Washington, while I scan the wilderness for forest fire smoke.
Part of my morning routine includes tuning into a radio station in central Idaho that runs a community calendar spotlight. The affable announcer usually plugs a community production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the park, a chili cook off, or a rummage sale to raise funds for the high school band’s trip to Dollywood. One day, there was a request for clothing and food donations for a family who survived a house fire.
This morning, there was a reward being offered for a wedding ring lost at the laundromat, and after that, a shout-out to the owner of a lost blue heeler who had shown up dragging a length of yellow rope, right there in the radio station parking lot. I pictured the dog, panting next to the announcer, a man I imagined wearing big headphones and holding a ceramic cup of coffee emblazoned either with the radio station’s call letters, or “World’s Best Dad,” while he leans into a microphone, glasses perched on the end of his nose
Another FM station in southeast Montana has a trivia break where you win a six-inch sub from Subway for answering the question correctly, a prize barely worth the effort of picking up the phone, if you ask me. But still, I can’t resist a trivia competition. One day, the question was asking for the name of a 1980s sitcom starring a child robot, Vicki, modeled after a human girl. I shouted out the answer from my mountaintop, just as the winning caller boomed out the name of the show, Small Wonder, in a deep, husky voice.
“Correct!” The announcer beamed over the airwaves, “And what’s your name, sir?”
“This is Betty,” the winner said in a gravely monotone.
I just knew that Betty was one of my people. I pictured Betty as a community bulletin board type who stops in doorways, and has probably stapled up a posting or two advertising a bread maker—new in the box—a computer desk, or one of those towering, carpeted kitty condos. I wanted to call the radio station to see if I could get Betty’s home phone number, just to chat.
Some days, I simply want to know that despite everything else going on in the world, communities still put on carnivals, turtle races, talent shows, and bake sales, and that county fairs still host concerts of resurrected 80s bands that feature no original members. On the most contemplative of mountaintop days, an announcement for the Orofino, Idaho, Class of 1958 Reunion can stop me from feeling like I’m sliding off the planet into obscurity, the same way the curly dog on that flier in Miles City, Montana, once made me feel less alone on a road trip.
On my way down to the spring, on the evening that I’m writing this, I traversed a slope of bear grass in full bloom. The creamy white puffs topping slender stalks announce summer’s full arrival on a mountain the way the ice cream truck with its tinny carnival music does in my neighborhood back in town.
There were other announcements along the way that clued me in to what my neighbors have been up to. Rocks overturned on the trail spoke of a bear’s work, searching for grubs to eat. Soon, she will leave piles of dark purple scat, announcing the beginning of huckleberry season.
Tracks of elk, deer, assorted rodents, and birds at the spring conjured up jokes about the office gossip that happens around the water cooler. Fresh boot prints, larger than mine, in the mud suggested I missed the chance for a face-to-face human conversation by just a few hours.
Toward the end of August, the water rushing through the pipe where I fill up jugs with icy water will slow to a trickle, announcing that it’s time to pack up and head for home.
I shoved my hands into my jacket pockets, fishing around for the lid to one of my water jugs, and instead found a little slip of paper, like a fortune from a cookie. It was the tab I’d torn off of the flier at the beginning of summer for the dog walkers back in Missoula. I realize that by the end of summer, the kids will either have gotten lots of practice dog walking, or they’ll have ventured into car washing, cat sitting, or running a lemonade stand. Either way, I think I’ll give them a call when I get back home, and treat my dog Jack to thirty minutes of adventure with kids for the bargain price of five bucks. And just in case I lose the tiny piece of paper with their phone number, I’ve got another one at home, under a magnet on my refrigerator.
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Karla Theilen is the Neighborhood Storyteller at Strong Towns. Karla is a writer, storyteller, and Registered Nurse based out of Missoula, Montana. Her penchant to explore wild places informed early career choices as a trail builder in the Grand Canyon, and a forest fire lookout in Idaho. Her current writing inspiration comes from a different kind of wilderness, navigating healing journeys with her patients in far-flung places where she works as a travel nurse. Her writing has been featured on NPR, and select stories and essays have been anthologized. She has been Facebook-free since 1972.