Question came out of nowhere

The question came out of the blue.
I was walking through a local restaurant when I saw a good friend. He was having lunch with two guys I didn‘t know. My friend and I kidded each other a bit.
Then the question came.
The two guys at the table were from out of town, my friend said. They were interested in the community, as in interested from a business standpoint.
What could I tell them about Jay County?
Or as one of the guys said, What’s your 30-second, elevator speech about what makes this place different from other places?
Okay, put yourself in my shoes for a moment.
You’ve heard the question. Would you be prepared to answer?
More precisely, would you be prepared to answer if you knew that giving a good answer might translate into new jobs, new opportunities, new investment, new growth, and an increase in the local tax base?
And more to the point, are our elected officials and civic leaders prepared to answer that question, knowing how high the stakes could be?
I did my best.
I told them that Jay County is a place that refuses to be ordinary, quoting an aphorism from my friend Bob Schmit.
I told them that if the county seat happened to be 10 miles closer to a big city, we’d be a different place. We’d be a satellite of something larger. But because we’re a bit farther away, we’ve had to fend for ourselves.
I told them about Arts Place and cultural opportunities that weren’t even dreamed of when I was a kid. I told them about the community centers in both Dunkirk and Portland. I told them about John Jay Center for Learning.
I told them about how going through the crucible of school consolidation finally got us thinking like a community of 21,000 instead of little burgs competing with one another.
I spotted Rob Weaver walking by and bragged about the fact that Jay County is rare to have both broadcast and print locally-owned media and the impact that can have when it comes to keeping the community moving forward.
I bragged shamelessly about everything you might imagine.
And when my 30-second elevator talk was done, it turned out that 10 minutes had passed.
Did it make a difference?
We’ll probably never know.
But as I walked out to my car, having said good-bye to my friend and his guests, I felt as if I’d passed a test.
And I wondered how often those tests pop up for other people.
When people ask you about the town you live in, what do you say?
Do you sing its praises, acknowledging its shortcomings but emphasizing its strengths?
Or do you bad-mouth your hometown because that’s the easier and lazier thing to do?
A young friend relatively new to Jay County told me not too long ago, that one of the things he’s grown weary of is the tendency of local residents — especially young people but not limited to them — to kick dirt on their own community. That’s not only sad, it’s stupid.
For me, the question came out of the blue.
What would your answer be?[[In-content Ad]]