One of the first things I remarked when I first arrived in Marysville — aside from all the squirrel statues — was how the town felt a lot bigger than it really was.
In my mind, a town of 3,000 or so was supposed to look different and feel different. So to drive into town and have it feel so similar to a bigger place was odd.
Whether that feeling came from the busy downtown strip, the sprawling neighborhoods or the cars lining every street, I’m unsure but I felt a keen sense of deja vu when I was shown around.
It felt as if I were just outside of my hometown of Springfield, Mo., cutting through the suburbs. I joked that it felt like I would turn the corner and I would suddenly be back home. The houses were the same, the stop signs the same. It all felt so familiar, and that’s not a comparison I would give out lightly coming from a city of nearly 500,000.
Even with Marysville feeling larger than I had hoped, I was still worried as I arrived. The thought of what I would do in a town so comparatively small for two whole months never left my mind. How would I survive, I wondered on the six-hour drive here.
I am someone who relishes living in a big city. I enjoy having access to all the shops. I like the hustle and bustle of an urban area and all the events that go on. Heck, I even miss the traffic sometimes. Having only a single Walmart in town was a foreign concept to me. Having no Starbucks was a horror.
Luckily, however, I have found my worries unfounded. No, a Starbucks did not pop up overnight. Instead I found that I did not need access to all of these shops and experiences for entertainment.
I found that Marysville has so much more going on than I had realized. If I wanted coffee, I could just walk to the deli; if I wanted some dinner, there were plenty of restaurants around; if I needed groceries, well, I’ve been to a Walmart before so that didn’t feel too different. But the point still stands. Everything I needed was here.
Even beyond that, I found so many fun things to do, restaurants to go to and places to visit that I would have never seen in Springfield. Marysville does a tremendous job of always having something going on around town. Every day there seems to be something new, and every weekend there seems to be some fun event.
Just take Skyfest, for example. That level of pageantry and spectacle — for free — would be unheard of in Springfield.
In fact, I have yet to have a weekend where I thought, “Ugh, there’s nothing going on.”
I’ve just been so pleasantly surprised by my time in Marysville and, while I’m unsure whether life will ever take me back here once I leave, I can say that my time here is not one I will forget.
I would still recommend adding a Starbucks, though!
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Madison Reece, 22, was a news intern at the Marysville Advocate. She worked in Marysville for the summer as part of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors internship program. She studies at Missouri State University in TV and film production and journalism and is originally from Springfield, Mo.
