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Thu 20 Nov, 2003 09:10 am
I've been thinking about Thornton Wilder's play a great deal since PBS aired the excellent version starring Paul Newman.
I live in a smallish New England town that is near Boston. It's an affluent town, known for its good schools and for housing stock that is more stolid than beautiful. There is little of interest here. No movie theatre. A small amount of commerce and a handful of restaurants.
I am certain that many of the people here think of themselves as good. I am preparing to move away from this town soon and as I ready myself to leave, these are the images I have of this town.
The former school board member who moved here with her second husband and her four children from her first marriage. Everyone knew that her hyphenated name was not her maiden and married name but the names of her two husbands, advertised like notches on a gunslinger's weapon. Bleached blonde and with a fierce face and manner, I mentally called her, "The Raptor," because she looked like a bird of prey. A working class friend of mine admired her, describing her as, "tall, blonde and lovely," and a crunchy acquaintance admired her for other reasons, her skill at shopping!
There is the community's most successful business woman with whom I played bridge early in my time here. At a bridge club meeting, she examined her cards while talking about how much she hated the older of her two daughters. I heard a similiar monologue from the wife of an attorney who also had a lot to say about education in town. We co-chaired a committee and sitting together to plan a bigger meeting, she told me her daughter was the sort of child she always hated. The irony is that her son, whom she adored, was widely thought of as a jerk.
I work at WilliamsSonoma and two years ago, a customer bought a fry pan and a knife and told me her life story. An hour later, she returned to the store: she had been in Filene's and her bag, which she thought rested at the floor next to her, disappeared. Within 10 minutes, yet another customer tried to return those items. This returner was my age and proclaimed that she could not have stolen the goods because she had always been faithful to her husband. She called my ugly and spat at me. She and her husband live in our town.
I wonder about writing a novel in which these people are characters. More to the point, I wonder whether finacial success isn't bad for people.
Wilder presented his characters as ordinary. The young man seems a little on the slow side, in intellectual terms. The smart young woman seems trapped in a world with little opportunity for women and her love for the young man seems artificial. Only later does Wilder let us know the fathers of the hero and heroine are the town's doctor and newspaper publisher. Is death the great leveller for Wilder or was he warning against rising above one's station?
What about your town? How do you feel people live and behave?
Where i live was once known as Mudsock, Ohio. But it was never incorporated, and largely the name was only known to the locals. My address is Hilliard, Ohio. This is a schizophrenic town. Fifteen years ago, the Rome-Hilliard road had perhaps a dozen houses--Mudsock had fewer than 50 inhabitants. The town of Hilliard has been, for most of its existence, and typical Ohio working class town: conservative, Republican, easy-going and quite. It had mostly existed for the farmers in the area. About a generation ago, as the monster Columbus grew to ungulf the unclaimed bits of Franklin County, the open fields around Hilliard appealed to developers. At first, industrial parks were built, with mostly trucking and other types of shipping and warehousing facilities. Columbus has had for quite some time a good employment picture. As the population expanded, developers began to build housing developments and apartment complexes. I live in one such apartment complex, which did not exist fifteen years ago when i first drove down the Rome-Hilliard road. Then, perhaps 50 people lived here on a five mile stretch--now there are probably 5,000 to 6,000, and a new development is being built right across the road from where i live. I went to Toronto to visit my sweetiepie, and i come home to find that i'll soon have even more neighbors. There is a fallow field to the north of my apartment, which still allows me to look out with the illusion of being in the country. It's just a matter of time until that gets gobbled up as well.
The rustic small town values survive, but in a state of tension with the residents of the affluent, largely middle-class housing developments. Recently, Hilliard town council has gotten nervous about expansion by Columbus, and have been in a land-grab war. They got a judgment against Columbus for one of the latter's annexations, and they've used the money for "road improvement." That means they've widened many streets as they approach important intersections, and put lane dividers in them, as it looks more sophisticated, i suppose. But the result has been to allow more traffic to back up at the choke points. They're really not up to the task of being a town which has suddenly become a city.
I'd like to move further out into the country, but as i have other, more important plans, i guess i'll just hang on until i leave Ohio altogether. I've never really gotten to know the residents of Hilliard, which i suspect is no loss. The residents of Mudsock have been swamped, most have sold out to the developers at a tidy profit, and moved on. The town has no character.
Setanta,
That's quite a bit of social history. A sad bit that leaves me a little breathless. I know Ohio: I'm originally from Michigan and my family often visited Ohio to see natural attractions, like the caverns, and historical ones, like the Air Force base with the flight museum.
I can't help but think that that our lack of contact with nature deprives us of some of the better parts of what constitutes humanity.
I was born in New York, at the time it was largest city in the world. But while i was still quite young, i went to live with my grandparents, and then lived with my Aunt. I'm basically a country boy, despite where i was born, and a high-quality of home education (for the French, education is what you learn at home, not in school). For me, there is literally a therapeutic effect from being able to see trees and greenery. I had previously lived in Columbus, and would often be depressed by my surroundings. Driving down tree-lined streets, a fairly ordinary experience, is nonetheless of great value to my mental outlook.
Plainoldme, Setanta
,
A wonderful set of impressions you offered us. Been a while since I read 'Our Town' . Mostly I remember the stage directions & the location of Grovers Corner (If I recall correctly) in the universe. "The Bridge of San Louis Rey' left a deeper and more lasting impression on me than any other works of Wilder. I'm not sure why, but I can vividly recall my state of mind and feelings when I read it.
Setanta here is a remarkably erudite and knowledgable person. I like to fancy that I know more about literature and history than most folks I meet, but I don't top him. I found the impressions you both offered here both interesting and refreshing.
I guess I am more of a city boy than either of you. Grew up in Ann Arbor Michigan and Washington DC. Lived near various Naval Air Stations in Virginia, Florida and California, and later in San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, and Baltimore. I enjoy the differing characters of these cities, and. perhaps because earlier I spent a lot of time at sea, I like it.
Hmmmm. Not receiving updates.
George,
Why would you suppose you are more of city person than either Setanta or me? I suspect that you are slightly older than me, perhaps about 60. You are from Ann Arbor which is still a small town although when I was in college, one sociology text listed several American cities as compounds, among them, Detroit-Ann Arbor. I am from Detroit and lived there most of the first 28 years of my life. With a short time in Nashua and ex-urban Massachusetts, I have lived literally within walking distance of another of that texts hyphenated cities, Boston-Cambridge, for 20 years.
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