"Good morning, Mrs. Smith. Fine day today, isn’t it?" I say.
"Good morning, Mrs. Gibb. Yes, it’s lovely today, though a bit cool," she replies.
I finish my errand before her, my next door-neighbor, and nod politely as I hurry to pay the proprietor for my purchase.
My next stop is the country store where I collect some groceries, and the owner greets me and offers his help in carrying. "I’m fine," I tell him, and drop my armload on the counter where his wife keeps a jar from rolling away on me. "Well, good morning," I say, "and thank you. I seem to always pick out more than the quick items I came in here for." We chat a bit as she rings up my purchase and I count out my dollars and change.
I bid her good day, and wrestle in a package for mailing at the post office. "Hello, Ralph," I say, and he answers in kind and asks how I am.
I am just about done, and on my home when a lady, a stranger notices my sign. "Excuse me," she says, "do you have your card on you? I was told by Mrs. Fraunhofer that there was an excellent picture framer right here in town, and I’ve been meaning to call on you." I greet her politely and assure her that I am indeed, the best, if only framer in town, and give her my number and hours of the shop.
At last I am home, but as I unwind from what seemed like a quick run around shopping, I realize how very much I love living in a small rural town where just about "everybody knows your name." While of course I have set the pace when I first stopped in and pumped gas at the station where I ran into my next-door neighbor and rather formally greeted her. But once she followed my lead, the stage was set, and the time could have been a century ago. It just feels right here, just feels like home.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
Interesting. I often feel this goodness of living in a small town when I’m driving through the backwoods, seeing the tiny farms that remain, the foundations of old farmhouses in the woods, the town center. And then my reverie is smacked in the face by the cancer-like growth of million-dollar developments. I’m curious as to how rural you think Burlington is and will remain? I’m sad that it seems to be ironically losing the very rural character that everyone wants to live here for.
Burlington is fast changing, it’s true. You’re a longtime resident, but even in my fifteen years here–and that would have been considered a newbie–I do see so much construction going on that it is a little heartbreaking. But the problem here is like everywhere else, the farms just can’t keep going on and are tempted by huge offerings for their land. I once had a debate in philosophy regarding the value of vegetarianism in turning grazing lands into housing for the rising population. You can imagine, as a meat and land lover how I brought that one down.
It would be nice, now that I’m a Burlingtonite, to put up a “closed to new building” sign. But that simply wouldn’t be fair. So while we need to share the land, we unfortunately also need to do with less of it personally. The multi-million dollar housing is something we have to live with, as well as the low-income housing that is starting to come in as well. I think that as long as the town center can remain as it is, with Ron at Agway, and Ray at the market (this is changing already), and Susan the framer, we can hold onto some sort of “rural” flavor in a growing suburbia.