There's a particular kind of patience that comes with living in a small town. Not the restless kind of patience of someone waiting for something to happen, but rather the quiet acceptance that things will happen when they're meant to, and rushing won't change the timeline.
You see this most clearly on Jefferson Street on a Friday afternoon.
Herb Grissholm lost his driver's license last summer. The official story involves the Twins playing a doubleheader, the Prohibition Bar and Grille having cold beer and a comfortable barstool, and the local police having a low tolerance for that particular combination. Herb, being a practical man, decided that if he couldn't drive a car anymore, he'd simply find an alternative. So now, on any given day, you might find Herb cruising down Jefferson Street on his green John Deere lawnmower, moving at approximately three miles per hour, waving at everyone he passes like he's in a parade that nobody else knows is happening.
Law enforcement has opinions about this. The city council has opinions. But Herb? Herb just keeps mowing.
The thing about a lawnmower on one of the busiest streets in Flat Rock is that it stops traffic. Not with urgency or chaos, but with a kind of enforced slowness. You can't honk at a lawnmower. Well, you can, but as Nancy Bauer, from Klein's Pharmacy discovered, It won't make Herb go any faster. Instead, it may warrent an obscene finger gesture instead. So you just... sit there. For however long it takes for Herb to make his way from one end of town to the other, moving at a pace that was designed for cutting grass, not transporting people.
And something interesting happens when you're forced to slow down.
You notice things. The way light hits the front of the Flat Rock Gazette office. The tiny ripples in the old pane, and that the glass must be original to the building, because new windows are too perfect. The flowers that someone planted outside of Shear Ellegance, the beauty salon, different from what was there in the spring. The person crossing the street who you haven't seen in months, and suddenly you have time to actually wave back instead of just nodding as you drive past. You might even pull over and have a conversation. What else were you doing that was so important?
In a big city, this would be infuriating. People have places to be. Schedules to keep. Meetings that can't wait. But Flat Rock operates on a different timeline. It's a town that understands that sometimes the destination matters less than what you see on the way there.
There's a rhythm to how we drive here. Nobody's tailgating. Nobody's cutting people off to shave thirty seconds off their commute. The people of Flat Rock take turns at intersections the way they handle most conflicts. With a quiet nod and an understanding that we're all just trying to get where we're going. If you need to turn left and I need to turn right, one of us will wait. There's no drama in it.
Someone once said that you could tell a lot about a person by how they drove. Not whether they were reckless or careful, but whether they understood that driving wasn't a race. It was a conversation with the road and the people on it. The person in front of you slowing down isn't trying to ruin your day. They're just moving at the speed that makes sense for them.
Herb Grissholm on a lawnmower is just the logical extreme of that philosophy.
I asked Del Paulson at the gas station what he thought about the whole situation. He just shrugged.
"Herb's not hurting anyone," Del said. "He's getting where he needs to go. Takes him a little longer, but then, what's the rush? We're not going anywhere."
That's the Flat Rock way. We're not going anywhere. The lake will still be there tomorrow. The coffee will still be hot. If you're late to an appointment, people understand. They'll wait.
There's something to be said for a town that moves at lawnmower speed sometimes. For people who understand that life isn't about arriving first, but arriving together.
It could be why most people in Flat Rock don't mind getting stuck behind Herb. Sometimes the best speed is no speed at all. It forces you to notice things you'd otherwise miss. Maybe that's what Herb has understood all along.
So the next time you're stuck behind that green John Deere, take a breath. Notice something. Wave at someone. Have a conversation. There's no rush. That's the real speed of Flat Rock. Not three miles an hour, but slow enough to remember why you came here in the first place.