Village Life (Small Town Living)

For the past 40 yers, I have lived in a small town in a small bungaow. I have known my closest neighbors, and although in this very mobile modern American world where people move around frequently some have moved on, I have neighbors who have been here as long as I have.

When I first moved here, my next door neighbor, Charlie Hooper, was the one who lit the fire under the Real Estate man who was dragging his feet on the purchase of my house. I was desperate at the time because I had givn notice on my apartment in Philadelphia and was all packed up when my first house purchase fell through. Those home owners had lost the house they were buying and the problem dropped down the line onto me, with a toddler and a full time job to handle.

Charlie gave me a wooden 1950's Coca Cola Santa he had made and that Santa has stood sentinel at the foot of my druveway every Christmas for 40 years waving at passersby with his hearty smile! I think of Charlie Hooper and his kindness every year when I put Santa back out front to greet the season.

Today on my way to the local Dunkin Donuts for my special treat of a lette' to give me the energy to help my sister with the final phase of the Christmas decorating, I saw Mark Cassidy, the man across the street who takes out my trash and recycle cans for me each week. He was just a little boy when I moved here and he is a handsome and chivalrous grown man now. His mother was in the Seniors group I founded to get her out and about after her husband died about 10 years ago.

Right now my neighbor from around the corner, John Krauss, is walking my big and energetic (even though she is old) Lab/Husky mix Uma. He walks her almost every day, only missing when he has a work appointment or a doctor visit or a grandchild's sports event. His wife was the one who told me about this house when it went up for sale 40 years ago. She was best friends with my babysitter at the time, Vicky T. My daughter and I saved the Krauss's house from burning down 3 years ago, when a cigarette in the planter ignited the fertilizer and set the porch furniture on fire. We were walking my dog and my daughter with her keen eyesight saw the smoke. We roused the nearest neighbors who had a fire extinguisher and who turned on the hose and put the fire out before the fireman arrived.

Another neighbor, Eleanor, a few blocks away is my sometimes walking buddy although we have both been out of commission in recent months with back and knee issues. Another neighbor, Debby, who lives in Marlton now, used to live behind me. Her backyard bordered on mine and I used to talk to her mother over the back fence. Her mother was a German war bride and every spring planted a little kitchen garden by our fence. Debby and I text with one another daily and her niece's family lives in the old house now.

My closest neighbors to the West recently moved but the new neighbors are friendly and warm. My neighbors to the east are sisters, one of whom is housebound with back problems. We see one another periodically when the well sister, Linda, is outsde getting in her car or doing a little yard tidy.

The town right beside mine is the one where I spent my entire adult career life, teaching, first working on a Federally funded program at the library, when I was right out of college, then moving pn to teach English at the High School, finally, as my continuing education and college degrees mounted and changed, I became Art teacher in the grade school (which is now closed, empty, and replaced). I visited the abadoned building once and it was ghostly, I could almost hear the echoing of childrens feet and voices as they raced down the hallways.

Often, I drive the mile and a half or so through my town, Mount Ephraim, into Gloucester City, the town where I worked and which is located on the banks of the Delaware, to look at the Delaware River.

Right across the Delaware river on the river bank in Philadelphia is the church my family attended for a couple of generations, Gloria Dei, Old Swede's Church. It was founded by the early Swedish settlers in the late 1600's. Several blocks away down Oregon Avenue is my childhood neighborhood, where my parents bought their first home, right after the second World War, in which my father served in teh US NAVY and was fortunate enough to survive.

It means the world to me to be so close and attached to these places, my home-ground, my village.

I watch a British series called Heartbeat, which is set in a Yorkshire village, and I can't help but note how my American suburban life is similar to the life of the village of Aidensfield in Yorkshire. My earliest ancestors are from England, as well as Southern Germany and Scandinavia. AS the modern world, here in America, is described more and more as lonely, I reflect on how my little hometown world is rescued from that anonymity and loneliness by our 'village' life, the neighbors who check in on me in my old age, and who help me, my sister who lives a small drive away. And I am sorry for the many people I know who do not have these blessings, whose children have moved across the country, whose brothers and sisters have retired far far away, or died, and who have no close neighbors or family. I think it takes a long time to form the warm family type ties I have with my neighbors.

This is something for which I am grateful this Thanksgiving, my Village Life!

When I went out onto the porch just now a raucous bird called out "Don't forget us!" and of course, the old old trees that were here when I first came and are now as old as I am, having been planted when this house was built 80 years ago, have been my neighbors too, the trees and the generations of birds and squirrels, opposums and raccoons, skunks and migrating flocks of small black birds that show up every Spring when the grass is bright green. These too are my neighbors in my Village Life.

Happy Thanksgiving, my friends far and near and known and unknown!

wrightj45@yahoo.com