I had important missions recently as I walked up Main Street. I had to buy milk and go to the Post Office, but first I had to stop at the Police Station to tell Chief Beth Bezio that I am in town this week so I don’t miss my weekly elder-care check-in.
Not that I’m elderly by any means, but that visit comes with hand-baked treats, delivered every Tuesday by Officer Gretchen Gerstner who owns Baked in Shelburne Falls. I don’t care how young you are, you want to be on that list. The elders of the town kind of disdained being checked on every week until Chief Beth and Officer Gretchen came up with the Sweet Treat program, and now that stop-in is just about the most important part of every Tuesday.
Next week I go to Newport to work a couple of festivals there, and I didn’t want anybody delivering those treats to think I was gone ahead of my time, in any fashion.
Then I went on to find young Nate Ruth and say that, indeed, he was right when he had told me my goddaughter Lola’s coming to visit in August. Good thing he said something, as she’s staying with me! News travels funny in a small town, but I confirmed it with Lola’s mother, and now I have to start cleaning.
I made it to Neighbors Convenience Store where the Dougs and the Waynes sat out front, talking about who used to live in which house in town, and who lives there now. Back in the day “Doug” and “Wayne” were popular names around here, as all the members of this informal group were baptized that, though there was an Ernie among them today. They all grew up in or around Ashfield, and entertain me greatly with stories of the good old days. It’s where I learn my history, and is probably one-stop delivering for Officer Gretchen on Tuesdays.
Doug Field asked when I’d gotten back from New Orleans. It’s been a few weeks, but do you know long it took for them to even notice, or especially, to care that I had been gone? Years! It wasn’t until I sold Elmer’s in 2018 that a Doug said to me, “Well, you tried. You kept the place for 13 years, didn’t make things too bad, and you’re still here. OK, you belong here now.” Lord, I about cried that day, I was so happy!
I lingered for a few good stories, bought my milk and walked over to the Post Office, where I found my display of colorful signs, arranged on the wall as this month’s art show.
A woman stood at the counter going through her mail.
“The weight of the world is upon my shoulders,” she said.
Back in 2005, shortly after arriving in Ashfield, I made my first trip to the dump. Coming from a city, I had no idea how dumps worked, and thus, parked my truck in a way that accidentally blocked the path to dumpsterfication.
A woman stormed over and gave me what for on my apparent privilege. This took place just days after Hurricane Katrina had destroyed my house back in Louisiana, so I burst into my first real tears since the event and sobbed, “I’m sorry! I just lost my house in Katrina, and I don’t know what I’m doing!”
The woman then cried real tears of her own and wept, “I’m sorry for getting so mad! My father died this morning!” And we cried together, there at the dump, bonding us for life.
The woman weighted by the world this morning was the same friend hampered by grief 17 years ago, so I walked over to ask what was going on. “Well,” she said, “The world’s not so weighted as it was, as two elephants just died, and two Sequoias died along with them.” She held up a piece of mail proclaiming that.
“That isn’t very good news,” I said, and she agreed, that being her point all along — what are we going to do about this world where we lose the good species of the past to the problems of the future?
I started home and saw Marcine, sprucing up the library gardens. I mentioned I am headed to Newport, and she told me about a ghost she met there once, a story that I’m going to tell every Newport old-timer I meet in hopes that one’ll say, “Yup! That was old Missus Sullivan. She used to haunt that house up on the hill there. Scared us all, back in the day.”
That’s how they do in New England towns and it’s why I enjoy them so very much.