“You didn’t think we’d actually do it, did you?” said Mr. Angles.

“I had my doubts,” I admitted. “Talk is easy. Doing is something else.”

He’s Worshrag’s father-in-law but I’m calling him Mr. Angles because he is an analytical type, figuring the angles. After living their lives and raising their family in Monroeville, Pa., he figured all the angles on the idea of he and his wife Oh! Susannah moving to Chester, W.Va.

He did figure the angles but I think the biggest was not an angle at all. It was love. They just fell in love with Chester.

They love the open, friendly people in Chester, the nice restaurants, the well-kept homes and streets, and especially the way Chester people continually walk up and down the sidewalks of Carolina Avenue, the town’s main drag. Every tidbit of information and history they heard about Chester, every Chester resident they met over the past three years since their daughter Busy Bee married our son Worshrag, has only made them love Chester more.

Bob Barnett wrote “Growing Up in the Last Small Town,” a memoir of his youth in Newell. It’s a wonderfully written book. I highly recommend it, and Newell is a nice little town. But I’d give the nod of “last small town in America” to Chester.

It’s hard to find a place to live in Chester because other people know it’s a nice town, too. Houses are snapped up the day they are put on the market. Nice rentals, same thing. He is retired. With Oh! Susannah’s very recent retirement, another string holding them to Monroeville was cut. They began looking in earnest for a house or rental in Chester.

Honey and I met the in-laws for lunch a few short weeks ago at the Mexican restaurant in Newell (yes, I said I like Newell). They were on one of their scouting missions for a place to live. While driving around Chester afterwards they saw a “for rent” sign on a large renovated home. The owner, Big Mike, happened to be there. It was serendipity or fate or whatever you choose to call it.

They stopped to talk and Big Mike showed the house. He had beautifully rehabbed the residence over the past three years, so they essentially have a new house to move into.

They signed a lease and found a buyer for their house in Monroeville, their son,. It has been a good house in a decent neighborhood, but of an age (back when Westinghouse was going, as someone put it) that it needs quite a bit of repair and renovation. The son has the youth and energy. Mr. Angles and Oh! Susannah can walk away from doing a “retirement rehab” and enjoy an exciting new life in Chester.

Mr. Angles had planned to hire a moving company. (I hate movers. Second-hand experience has taught me to not trust them.) I convinced him that the Miller family had enough muscle to handle the heavy lifting if he would rent the truck. Plus, we’re cheap by nature.

Our daughter-in-law Busy Bee flew up from Alabama to help her parents box up kitchen and other household goods. Mr. Angles rounded up a crew to help load at Monroeville, mostly men friends from their church, and on Saturday we filled a 28-foot U-Haul box truck solid from deck to roof, plus a pickup truck full. I drove the U-Haul and didn’t even hit anything. At Chester, our family army of ants had the trucks unloaded in two hours.

“You know we could never move like that. We have too much stuff,” my wife said, stating the obvious.

After the freedom of the farm it would be hard for me to live in a town, but if I had to, Chester would be OK. I can certainly understand moving out of a Pittsburgh suburb, and the idea of an older couple moving after retirement is not unusual. What’s a bit unusual is that they moved an hour west to a nice small town, instead of heading south for sand, heat and brown, wrinkled old people in Florida.