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Stay happy, stay rural

By Sheryl Riley

I have spent all but eight years of my life outside the city limits of Paris, Texas, in the small community of Powderly. As a student, I couldn’t bring myself to leave this beautiful rural area. I figured that if I left and moved off to a busy city like Dallas, I would never be able to ponder, as I do, on the vast countryside.

When I ride along with someone going north on Highway 271, east or west on Highway 82, or hit the back roads, I always daydream and think about how people in the “old days,” two to three hundred years ago, even got around.

Looking out through my car window, I cast my eyes upon grassy hills and flat land, and I think, just how did they ever manage?

Sometimes, I look at the world as it is today and dream about being back in those times. I see families in their wagons with white canvas tops, being pulled by teams of oxen, and I see rough-knuckled cowboys parading around on their horses, hooping and hollering. I see girls in long dresses and boys in trousers and shirts running on the hills, rolling down them, and racing barefoot across open land. I dream about those day, and then I realize that the closest I’ll ever got to being free like that is if I stay in a rural area.

Never could I leave and move to a haze-filled, overpopulated city when I can stay in an open country area. This is why I choose to attend Paris Junior College, my hometown school. Here, I can move on with my life and still be able to dream and reflect about the “old days.”

Sheryl Riley is a freshman business administration student at PJC from Powderly, Texas.

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