It’s eleven in the morning in Taylorsville, your small town of three-hundred plus people. The weather is chilly and damp and not inviting, so as you watch the street outside the window in Wilma’s Place, the one diner in these parts, it’s no surprise that not a car passes. It’s just you and Wilma, the owner/waitress. Seems to be no one else in the entire world.
“I got that card you sent me, Jill. What was it called?” Wilma scratched her head with the eraser on her pencil. “Oh yeah. A Save the Date card. So you’re finally gettin’ hitched, eh?!” The older woman laughed good-naturedly as she walked away with your coffee and bacon and eggs order.
Until recently you had, in your more lucid moments, wondered what the heck you were still doing in this nowhere spot. The fact that the town had a newspaper is nothing short of a miracle, and all of it is your doing. As a writer with a journalism degree, you came home from the big city after college and rallied Taylorsville’s richest man to help you put a newspaper together. At least with a vehicle around to catch up on the comings and goings of the townsfolk, to tell of local good news and, occasionally, the unfortunate items, the town might have a chance of growing . . . or at least of giving to the outside world the appearance of having a community interface.
So Mr. Stivey, that wealthiest man in town, agreed that you had a good idea and bankrolled it. He became the editor-in-chief, even though he had no clue about anything having anything to do with newspapers. You became the Managing Editor . . . and the chief reporter. Heck, in reality, the only real reporter. Folks occasionally submitted their own news—“Mrs. Smith’s daughter, Erma, has returned home from a trip to buy some new cattle for the farm”—and it was, of course, printed. That was, after all, one of the reasons you’d wanted this paper in town . . . so that the town might have a way to share their lives with one another, one more way other than coming to Wilma’s place and chatting over some of the best bacon and eggs south of the Mississippi.
But there had been another reason you pushed to have a newspaper brought to your home town. Mr. Stivey’s son. You’d grown up with Eric Stivey, gone to the same elementary, junior high, and high school. Graduated in the same class. And somewhere in there, you and Eric fell in love. Both of you had originally dreamed of staying in Taylorsville, getting married, and growing a family.
Eric, however, hadn’t come home from college right away. He’d gone to Atlanta, the big city, and found that he got along well with the big city folks. He learned how to move in cultured circles, amongst people who had never set foot in any location the likes of Taylorsville. You and he had kept in touch off and on but, somewhere along the line, the love story seemed to stall.
Until Eric’s mom got sick last winter. He had to come home then. His dad wanted him to help him keep his businesses up and running while he dedicated himself to his wife—Eric’s dad owned the steel mill, the reason the town existed, and now the newspaper. Eric couldn’t refuse. And though in the beginning he dreaded coming back to Taylorsville to live, for any amount of time, he wanted to do this for his parents.
So Eric, in effect, became your boss. It was awkward at first but it wasn’t long before the two of you got back in the groove, almost as if nothing had ever come between you.
“Here’s your breakfast, sweetie,” Wilma came up beside the table and slid the plate in front of you. “How’s that coffee? Need freshenin’?” You said you’d love a bit more, hotter this time. She nodded. “Oh, and what about Eric?”
You look out the window. “He’s coming,” you reply. “I guess when you see him pull up, you can pour him a cup, too. He’ll be cold. The weather’s not like this in Atlanta.”
“Nope,” Wilma readily agrees, “there’s a lot here that’s nothin’ like Atlanta.” Then she grins again as she walks away.
Eric had asked you to marry him last week. His proposal had come as something of a shock, not because the two of you didn’t still love each other but because Eric knew you were dedicated to getting the newspaper solvent and working well before you considered ever leaving Taylorsville. His marriage offer indicated that he was willing to stay with you, here, at least that long.
The next day after he proposed, the two of you got together, here at Wilma’s, and compared guest lists. You knew you wanted to send out Save the Date cards, and he agreed it was a good idea. However, you wouldn’t send them out to just anyone. Only the people you knew you would have to have at the wedding would receive a Save the Date card. The invitations would go out later, in the traditional wedding invitation timing. You weren’t getting married until later next year to give Eric’s mom enough time to gain back her strength. Fortunately, she was doing well and would be able to make the wedding. She told her son that just seeing him at home made all the difference, and she was delighted to be taking part in the plans, giving them her list of folks to whom she wanted Save the Date cards sent. Your mother had a Save the Date card list, too.
You and Eric had put together your own Save the Date card list, and you were surprised he wanted to send Save the Date cards to so few people in Atlanta. At first, you were afraid he was ashamed—of the town, of the people of the town, maybe of you. He assured you that was not the case. He just didn’t care to bring most of those people into this world. Taylorsville had started to get inside him, become special to him for the first time in his life, and he genuinely seemed happy here. He wanted to keep hold of that special sense of his home town, and his people—and make it stay an “inside” sort of place. Only his ex-boss and his wife, and his secretary and her boyfriend, all from Atlanta, received Save the Date cards. All the other cards sent were to insiders. You understood.
So the Save the Date cards had all gone out, to most of the three hundred or so folks in Taylorsville, and Eric’s close family outside of town, as well as yours. You only had your mother here. Your dad passed away and you didn’t have any siblings. There were relatives in neighboring areas, and a few well out-of-state. Every one received a Save the Date card for your marriage to Eric Stivey, the son of the richest man in town.
You hadn’t planned it this way when you came back home to start a newspaper in Taylorsville. But thanks to circumstances, Stivey funds, Eric’s change of heart, and even thanks to Save the Date cards, your wedding had become Page One news for days in Taylorsville when it was first announced. There had been “freelance” reporters coming out of the woodwork to write the stories. You’d even hired a few. There was no way you, or Eric, were going to write stories about yourselves but since you were the news, there wasn’t a way you could get around not running the stories.
Life was good, eh? You had a newspaper, a soon-to-be husband, and a staff. Finally. A Save the Date card was pinned to your bulletin board at work, to your refrigerator at home, and everyone in town had been bringing their Save the Date cards here to Wilma’s, where she was creating a wall design with save the date cards for the wedding of Jill and Eric.
Speaking of Eric . . . he finally pulled up in his brand new red car. You signal to Wilma, she nods, and quickly she’s at your table, filling Eric’s coffee cup with piping hot java.
Life is good.