Please, give me your thoughts. Should I make sure and NOT quit my day job?
Some names/locations changed to protect the paranoid.
Newcomer's Journal
October 3, 2006
Fignozzle and his family recently relocated to Mayberry from Knoxville, Tennessee.
He currently works with NoName Corporation's IT Division.
This is the first installment in his observations on life as a newcomer to the Lake Mayberry area.
Ben can be reached at Fignozzle at yahoo dot com.
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Leaving behind the familiar comforts of home and moving to a new locale can be an overwhelming prospect. Even if the outcome of your move goes reasonably close to plan, the tasks and timing involved in unplugging your life from the resources you've relied on for the past 20 years can be enough to make a person question whether they have made a wise decision to pick up stakes and move. Despite these obstacles, there often comes a point when you know that the choice you've made was for the best.
As I conducted my job search last year, I came across an interesting listing: a major company was looking for an IT professional who also spoke fluent Spanish. These divergent skills might not be difficult to find in Miami, Houston, or even Atlanta; but the thing that intrigued me about this opening was the location: Mayberry, Alabama. A quick check of Mapquest showed me what seemed to be a very small town, sufficiently removed from the noise, crime, and traffic of large cities, and at the same time within easy reach of several urban centers, should the urge or necessity strike. A Google search brought up the Lake Mayberry Area Chamber of Commerce website, and this gave me another positive impression of the area.
Oh, and it also looked to be on the edge of a nice-sized lake. This definitely warranted a closer look&
My father was an FBI agent, and during my formative years, we lived in one of several nondescript suburban communities surrounding Washington, DC. They were all lacking in any distinguishing feature that would set them apart from thousands of other bedroom communities on the margins of America's urban centers. After my freshman year of high school, my folks decided we would move to a tiny little farm town out beyond the Beltway. I was devastated at the thought of leaving behind the rest of my pack of 15 year old roaming delinquents. Regardless, I managed to resolve the inevitable by convincing myself that, by coming from a toney place like Fairfax County, I was sure to be 'God's gift' to the little rustic community to which I was headed. I was wrong, of course, but found my time in the epicenter of rural Virginia's FFA country to be some of the happiest times of my life.
In the ensuing years, always in the back of my mind was the intent to one day find another little place like that to call home.
Nearly three decades later, my opportunity arrived. Having grown tired of the predatory government contracting environment in Oak Ridge Tennessee, I've come to Mayberry to interview for a position with NoName Co. I am having lunch at Freds Pub with my prospective boss, and we are talking about school options, quality of life in a small community, the Mayberry lunch traffic we had just driven through (4 cars), and the challenges of attempting to effectively bring 21st century technology to play in a hundred year old company whose core business is still basically t-shirts and athletic wear. Our meeting went well, and while I waited in Knoxville to see if an offer was forthcoming, I had the pleasure of discussing a move to Mayberry with Susan McCoy of the Mayberry Chamber of Commerce. She sent me an information packet the size of an overstuffed briefcase, and I used it to familiarize myself with the area's selling points, just in time to receive and accept an offer to come to work providing computer support for NoName Corporation's IT group.
While my wife and youngest daughter remained in Knoxville preparing our house to put on the market, I lived for a month in the Jameson Inn, along with my teenage son and oldest daughter. We ate a lot of take-out those first few weeks, and enjoyed laying around the pool after work and school during those dog day afternoons in late August and early September.
During our time in residence at the Jameson Inn, a moment came when I had a pretty good impression that things were going to work out well for the Fignozzles here in Mayberry. As I dropped my son off at the middle school for the day, he asked if he could go after school with some friends over to Carlisle's, where he informed me that there is still an honest-to-goodness soda fountain, and then down to the First Baptist Church to shoot basketball.
In Knoxville, this would have been cause for alarm. Here in Mayberry, It was hard not to think of Andy, Opie and Aunt Bea as he got out of the car.
I smiled and said "sure son, go enjoy yourself. I'll pick you up when I get off work."
At that moment, I was sure.
Moving my family to Mayberry, Alabama is one of the best things I've ever done.
