Doo Wop a Wop

As much as R and I rail against the university gobbling up the historic homes in the downtown area of West Plains (why in the world didn’t they put the campus on the outskirts of town where there is PLENTY of open land?), if the university hadn’t come to town, there would be no Civic Center and no Community Programs Department, and we would not have gotten to see the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival’s delightful presentation of Much A Doo-Wop About Nothing, a 50-minute restaging of Much Ado About Nothing in a 1950s era soda fountain. What a treat. We suffered major culture shock when we moved here. Both of us grew up in the bustling suburbs of Los Angeles, where there were plenty of places to go and things to see and a million different restaurants to choose from. Then we lived for a couple of years near a college town in Oregon, which also had community cultural events of the university – in fact, that’s where I learned to play the guitar (semi-funny story that was embarrassing at the time: I had to bring N with me to one of the classes, and while we were walking down the hallway he saw the Fire Alarm button and pressed it). And then here. Seriously rural America, where the nearest decent sit-down restaurant is 12 miles away (I don’t count the truck stop), and the nearest Mall is a 90-mile drive. Well, at least the “culture famine” is easing some now. I’ve written about this before in at least one previous post, so I won’t belabor the point, except to say that we take none of this for granted!