Closure

Oh, how interesting, rootdoctor! My xhubby and I spent about a year living in Luck. I really liked it there, but there wasn't much of a way to make a living unless your daddy owned a dairy farm! I used to say it was the most beauty place in the world to starve to death!

So was the town's motto "You are in Luck, enjoy your stay"?

It should have been, Aimee! Luck had many small, family run industries, a yo-yo factory, an arrow factory, and a leather mocassin factory. My husband & I went to visit the little mocassin business to get some leather scraps, and while I was looking through his scrap box, the owner visited with my husband. At one point the owner said, "Yes, Luck has been good to me." In an effort to join in the conversation, I replied, "Ah, but luck is what you make of it." They both gave me a strange look, and after we left, my husband rolled his eyes in disgust and said, "He was talking about the town of Luck!"

I like these little stories.

Très charmant.

Adam.

My time in Wisconsine was truly 'Tres Charmant', Adam. My eldest son, now 37, attended kindergarden in the church basement there. We moved back to Indiana after living in Luck for about a year, then returned to visit three or four years later. As we walked down the street, people greeted as if we'd never left.

We stayed at the local boarding during our visit where rooms were $5 per night or $20 a week, extra if you planned to eat there. They had several elderly guests, so it must have been the unofficial retirement home. One old gent would walk down to the local dimestore to pick up a bag of hard candy, then return to the boarding house to sit in a porch rocker. There he'd share candy and stories with the local children.

Of an evening, the lady who ran the boarding house would make the rounds of the rooms to make sure all her elderly guests were in their own rooms (romance springs eternal) and tucked in for the night. On our second night, one of the old beer drinkers spent too much time at the Bon Ton Bar (situated in the heart of the loop), and we could here him crawling up the steps using his cane for leveraqe, while the landlady followed behind him scolding him roundly. Even that was quite 'charmant'.

It sounds like Bedford Falls.

Adam.

There are (or were) many little towns like that in rural America. I wish I'd have visited more of them.

My wife and I have been to a hundred towns like that in New Zealand..., Kaitia, Wanaka, Paraparam, Timaru, Brightwater, Nelson, Opotiki, Dargaville, Kerikeri (to name but a few), but have never seen one quite like this in America.

I'm convinced that the "malling" of America, the destruction of the town center, the desertion of the village green, has in some basic way undermined American culture, and, dare I say it..., contributed to making us more consumers in search of a good deal than citizens populating the town square.

This might be a rather daring thing for an urban dweller to say here (let the wrath fall on me if it must).

Adam.

There are many things I don't like about Main Street Georgetown, but I must give them credit for adjusting in the past thirty years what the malls in Austin seemed destined to end. Every corner downtown is wheelchair accessible, and has benches and shade trees for people to use. There is a quaint building that was once part of a church, and it was moved to a location just off the square and public toilets installed. This is a feature rarely seen in cities. In season, one entire side of the square is closed to traffic one afternoon a week so local people can sell their produce, including all sorts of jellies, bread, emu oil and other things produced in the area. There is a store just for senior citizens to sell things. A coffee roaster has tables and chairs on the sidewalk as well as inside, and you can buy numerous types of coffee along with snacks. Yesterday, when I went to the cancer center to get labbed, two ladies rushed up to me as I signed in, all dressed and made up as clowns, and tapped me on the shoulder as they started making wisecracks and joking around. One showed me her three carrot ring her DH gave her for Christmas, and the other pressed two tootsie rolls into my hand. At any given time, things like that are likely to happen around town. During the first week of December, the whole town looked like Santaland, with homemade cookies and other goodies on every corner and many in between. "It's a Wonderful Life" was free at the restored movie theater just off the square, for two whole days.

I credit the "outsiders" with this development. G'twn can be a snooty little place, but people from other places have moved in during the past few years and sort of forced the changes. The clown ladies belong to some civic organization I never heard of, and I could tell by their accents that they definitely are not natives of Texas.

Isn't it odd that by losing its small town snobbery to newcomers, G'twn became more like a small town, with old fashioned charm?

Well, Aimee. I guess it just goes to show that friendly is as friendly does, whether is new or old. Friendliness was the first thing that made me want to make my home in Seward, Alaska. Of course, the snowcapped mountains and beautiful bay helped in the decision!

Northern Wisconsin gets its share of summer tourists, due to all the wonderful fresh water fishing lakes around there. It's been so many years ago, that I'm sure things have changed. That old man on the boarding house porch is probably buried in the local graveyard, and the kids that shared his candy have probably inherited their daddy's dairy farm or moved on to a more urban life.

I guess we can't all live in a small town, and I'm sure it would be pure hell for some, but isn't it nice that some folks actually move to small towns to share that small town flavor and keep the economy going. I have to generally agree with Adam's assessment of death of many small business to urban sprawl and the many malls that began springing up in the 60's, but growth is surely inevitable. I'm so glad some of the new residents of Georgetown could recreate the old town theme and make it their own.

It's funny that urban planners are now creating "small town developments" in an effort to give people that feeling again. In one I read about, the houses' backs faced the homogenized streets, and their fronts faced huge common courtyards with sidewalks and a parklike setting. Some developments even include a public square of sorts for gathering, and the beloved FRONT porch is being re-introduced as a place to relax instead of a privacy-fenced deck in back.

I miss front porches!

Yeah, so do I! And Louisa has one with her new house!

You all just need to come to Clymer to see a small town! Some things have changed in the last 10 years - the elderly butcher doesn't stand in the middle of Main Street directing traffic with his cleaver when the fire siren goes anymore, but you can still get a good long chat at the hardware store, or a cup of coffee at the Dutch Village with a HUGE made in the kitchen sweet roll. And while Necker's Company doesn't sell cattle feed anymore, they can fit you up with boots, coveralls, gloves and fresh cut meat, locally grown potatoes and a can of peas for dinner. The kids like to go to the vet clinic (veterinarian) with Grampa because they have a bowl of candy on the counter, and there's a John Deere dealer with toy tractors, a tiny appliance store, a Chevy dealer, feed mill, library, bank, doctor's office, insurance seller, attorney (both home grown), 3 churches and a gas station, a milker systems dealer, and a couple of "garages" where you can buy tractors other than green, an undertaker, a K-12 central school, a garage where they'll fix your car, if they aren't working on the race cars, a new counter top business dealing in stone, a fire hall and that's all downtown!

Now what was this about hijacking threads??????????????????

ps - Adam, get on I-86, head west until you get to the Sherman Exit, turn left for Clymer, or you could check out Sherman first (they have a bar! Clymer is a "dry" town). The Sherman exit, by the way, is the next to the last in NYS.

This message was edited Saturday, Jan 18th 6:14 AM

Kathleen, you should write brochures for the Chamber of Commerce! That all sounds so quaint and folksy.

Kathleen, and to think that I never wanted to go back to visit NY after my Grandma died (a native of NY).

My small town still has a lot of its original small-town goodness, but it is being infected by the grow-or-die mentality, too, sadly. A huge new road is being built that will be lined with strip malls. The Farmers' Exchange closed 2 years ago, they are probably going to tear down the silos, the end of the small-town, rural nature of the town is going, going, gone :( population: 20,000 and rising quickly

On a brighter note, the individual neighborhoods are still very much neighborly. We all know (or at least recognize) each other, greet and chat together when we pass by, look out for each other, and go way out of our way to help one another. The best part of small-town life!

That sounds like Granville was before the old businesses closed and the art stores and card shops moved in. Taylor's pharmacy is still there and has a soda fountain in the new store, but it's not the same. Too big. The little bookstore "Granville Times" is long gone; I used to go there after school all the time. Shumway's hardware is long-gone, too. There's still a good contingent of locals who come downtown, but it's more trendy now. I still miss living in Granville, though.

Kathleen...you forgot to mention the BEST thing of all...the swing on your front porch!! Just sitting there, swinging, watching the buggies go by...even some cars. Everyone that passes waves at you. The milk truck comes and picks up the milk from your dairy farm. BEAUTIFUL!! Jo

Gee, Jo, we never got you into town - it's 6 miles west of us. there are a good number of porches in Clymer, too.