I admit to being pretty unaware of what happens in the town I live in.  I don’t really associate with anyone.  I simply live here and pay taxes.  Odd? Maybe, but that’s how it’s been for as long as I can remember.  We’ve always lived here, but after I moved schools in the sixth grade, we stopped really being a part of the community.  Instead, we were members of the community where I went to school. When I went to college, I became a part of that community. When I started teaching, I became a part of that community.  I never moved to any of these places, but that’s where I spent my time.  But since Ike is approaching, I picked up the newspaper today – thinking I would read up on the preparations being made here, and instead realized that our little town is booming – or at least on the way to doing so.  I know several people who are making nice chunks of change from oil being drilled for on their land.  Right now if you own mineral rights in our area, you are in the process of making some money.  Looking at the ads today, I noticed that within the next week we have two community meetings going on – one for advice on leasing your mineral rights out and one for cell tower lease negotiations. Unfortunately for me, I don’t own enough land to profit from either of these opportunities really, but one set of my grandparents actually sold a small selection of their land to a cell phone tower company, and my other grandmother has leased her mineral rights to an oil or gas leasing people.  Apparently this is a really big industry right now here, and I was clueless.  Maybe I should read the paper more often.