Main Street America

Things were slow at the hospital today.  I got the delicious call off at 5:15AM.  A day to one's self!

Not far from my Hamlet of Hamburg there is another town called Franklin.  Time has dusted this once bustling town with hardship, strip malls, and big box stores.  For me it has always maintained a forgotten charm.

On a quiet sunny day, like the one I find myself in, you can hear the soft puffy breeze of summer passing, it whispers of days gone by.  This is a new bridge they built over the Franklin Pond.  I've been told by many that this was THE place in high summer at one time.  There was a beach and a freshwater pool where the falls now are - the only clue is an out of place concrete pillar that juts out of the water.  There was an ice cream shop across the street and cabins on Rt 23 that city types came up and stayed in.

Franklin was a mining town, a bustling place of work and community at one time.  A small hospital sat up on the hill and there was a true blue steam engine horn that would blow.  I was treated to an informal tour by Phil Crabb Freeholder one day at the Franklin Fire House.  They still have the original horn on display there but ironically with all of our modern technology nothing will ever blow that horn like the steam did.  Rumor has it that you could hear it all the way to Newton!

 

Our local newspaper is so blessed to have historical writer Jennie Sweetman as a contributor.  This woman paints life the way it was then.  My favorite article to date was the one about Victory Gardens on just about all the properties.  The town itself is lined with 'miners bungalows' and true date homes.  You have to get out of your car and hoof it for the full effect.  If you listen while walking under the dappled trees in town, the whispered breezes will tell you where to look on some properties to get a flesh out of where those gardens, now gone, had been.

My youngest son, Michael,  doesn't know it yet but he is on a quest for this kind of life.  He tells me all the time 'there has to be places like this somewhere where everything is in walking distance Mom.  Where there is a library, a diner, a place to hear bands, where kids play in creeks...these places gotta be somewhere Mom.'  It is my hope that this boy will find one, or his generation will find themselves back to them.  It was simple.  It was close.  It was sensible.  It was community. 


It's a far flung thought,  but sometimes I think if our world should change somehow, somehow become smaller, more localized in a way;  the structures of these sort of towns would see their day again...and I don't think it would be a bad thing at all.

For now though, should you find yourself in a town like this, park your car and walk...listen to what the dormant Victory Gardens and the breezes say to you.

Good Energy on your next day off!