Harper's Population Problem

Yesterday I told y'all about our new traffic light. I kinda feel like that light is a harbinger of problems to come. Our population. For years things worked out well and the number of people living in Harper was pretty much constant. Our kids got the benefit of being raised in a small tight community, going off to college, and then finding meaningful employment in a larger town. A few stayed and raised their children here. And we had new people moving in to get away from big city life. So for years we stayed right around the 2000 mark. That all changed with Hurricane Katrina. Some people moved up from New Orleans temporarily until things stabilized down there. But some stayed. I noticed five cars stopped waiting for the red light to change and realized we were on a downward spiral in terms of quality of life. Down at the barbershop today Hilburn Hawkside summed it up.  Hilburn is the fellow that keeps up with the animal population for the county. He said, "I don't know if you guys realize it, but we are approaching a time when people will outnumber chickens here in Harper. And that's bad, folks. That's real bad."

Tales of Harper, short stories and poems about the fictional town of Harper, Mississippi is available on Amazon Kindle