Warren County Kindness

An often overlooked community quality is the “niceness” quotient.  Every community claims to be nice, but without any quantifiable figures or examples.

Well, on a cold winter’s night on Sunday, December 22, my wife and I and our three kids were returning from family Christmas celebrations in Eastern Iowa.  The time was late, the temperature ware around zero degrees, and the car was packed full presents, suitcases, and miscellaneous items.  We were also all exhausted and anxious to be home.  At least two of the kids were sleeping so we knew that our first order of business would be to unpack the kids from the van and nestle them comfortably them into their beds.

One problem remained.  While we were gone that weekend it had snowed about five or more inches.  Kelly and I anticipated that once we returned there would be no way to enter our driveway to our Indianola home.  The possibility was that we would need to park the van along the street and march through snow to enter the house - at least until we cleared the snow.  Our assumptions appeared to be true as we entered the community.  The winter storm had indeed made its way through Indianola that weekend!

When we approached our home, however, our sidewalks and driveway were clear of snow!  We had no problem driving our Kia Sedona into our garage.  We had no idea who had performed the act of kindness, but were very relieved that we did not need to spend the next 45 minutes clearing snow but could instead settle everyone down for the evening. 

Our family is still relatively new to Indianola.  Kelly and the kids only came this past July.  Yet on this night we all felt very blessed to call Warren County our home and to have such great neighbors in Indianola.