Tips and tricks for new Malta Residents, Part IV

I continue to collect helpful hints for our new comers to the greater Malta community. We old timers want to make sure the new folks enjoy the full advantage of living in a small town. As can be said of small towns most everywhere, there is no need to use your car’s signal lights when driving about as everybody knows your schedule and where you are going.

The most popular social hall in town is the post office lobby where many trek daily to exchange the latest family news. Malta folk are great believers in recycling and should they receive something in the mail that they can’t use, it will be left on a shelf in the post office lobby. Should you need a catalogue on arts and crafts, farm equipment, plants and seeds, books and movies, or the latest in fashions, we guarantee that one of those catalogues is setting on the shelf just waiting for you to give it a new home. Should you need still more free reading material, hustle on over to the front entry way of the PC Library. Friendly folks continue to drop off books and old magazines they finished reading ages ago. Never mind that the GOOD HOUSEKEEPING magazine could be three years old, the recipes are still great. Happy reading.

When driving out of town in a westward or southerly direction, always take reading material with you. Just about the time you think you’re making great time to get to an airport, you will have to come to a screeching halt as up ahead there will be a friendly flagman, with stop sign in hand. You will soon join a very long line of cars patiently waiting for a pilot car to lead the group through summertime road construction. The only thing you can really do for the next twenty or more minutes is roll down your window, swallow an aspirin, sit patiently, and pull out a magazine or book. When the pilot car finally makes an appearance, you will be joining a long line of various vehicles plodding slowly through a new construction sight. Enjoy the view!

I was recently reminded that Malta has an unofficial Neighborly Fruit Tree Law. If your neighbor is the proud owner of an apple tree whose branches hang over the fence into your yard, then you are entitled to pick any fresh, yummy fruit hanging over your side of the fence. It is advisable, however, to send a pie or two their way to keep the tree from being chopped down.

Now for special advice to our new comers who have relatives living in large metro areas. It is quite likely that your New York cousins will want to visit you to see what life is like in small town America. Should they decide to visit in October, make motel reservations for them NOW! In October this area endures something known as “deer hunting mania”. Although our license plates begin with an 11, we will soon be visited with trucks having a 6 (Bozeman) or 7 (Kalispell) license plate. These fine folks have come to hunt deer and every motel room in town during October will be filled. I cannot stress enough that one MUST make reservations NOW for your visiting New York cousins, or they could be staying at your home.

Please point out to your metro visiting cousins, that many of us feel very lucky to live in Malta. For a small town we have a newspaper and radio station which offers us what we consider important local news. Our restaurants, furniture store, drug store, hardware store, gas stations, movie theater, bargain store, two gift stores and family department store are all owned by local people, thank you, and not some huge conglomerate back east somewhere. Our younger folks keep quite busy with sports, school and church activities, 4-H, Builders’ Club, and Key Club. We older folks are busy with church, Rotary, Kiwanis, book clubs, hiking groups, quilting organizations, and various volunteering situations to gladly help out others.. Yes, we do battle pesky mosquitoes in the summer, box elder bugs in the fall, and very cold temps in the winter, but for the most part, we feel lucky to be in Malta. New teachers and other new comers to the Malta area, we are sure you will soon feel the same. Welcome home and God bless. RSV