The Local Newspaper

For twenty or so years I had a house down by the seashore in a small town south of Boston.  The population was a mix of Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, and Jews; once a fishing village on a spit of land jutting out into the sea, it now housed a working class community who left town at six or so in the morning for their various commutes. There were two large Catholic churches and a very grand and ornate synagogue.  Everyone was committed to an ethnicity, and had come from other parts of Boston, the Italians from East Boston, forced out of their space when the airport was enlarged, the Jews leaving Roxbury when the southern black migration came to land there.  The town was proud of itself, of its children who played well on the high school sports teams, of the ones who went on to college or professional schools.  The Garden Club beautified the major intersections, there was a very well maintained and supported charitable agency offering clothes and services for those in need, and the town's elderly had a building just for their activities; every year the Catholic Church staged a parade when the priest blessed the sea or the fishing boats or one of those Old World routines that made for cozy headlines nowadays..  Yes, it was cozy, everyone nodded to passersby, the traffic moved slowly except when "the summer people" arrived to open their houses and crowd the streets, although actually everyone took it in good part since these folks brought considerable money into the town.  My being a professor kept people at a distance, afraid they would be embarrassed into saying something stupid.  That was okay with me since I was truly afraid of having to respond brightly to some of the banalities in conversations I overheard in the stores.  Although you could see that there was a lot of financial hardship, it was a lazy kindly mindless life in that town, and I liked gardening and keeping to myself.  Since I am a reader and researcher of chronicles I instinctively subscribed to the weekly local newspaper, providing me with verbal testimony of what I might have experienced by simply walking around and engaging.  I loved reading the paper, the police blotter's amazing record of bizarre crimes and misdemeanors, not to mention sheer craziness, like the woman who called in to report seeing a kangaroo in her backyard!  The photos of the youngsters who won awards, the look of pride and joy on their faces, the wedding announcements, the photos of fiancee and future groom, simple and grand, the planning board, the selectmens meetings, the letters to the editors; I was living social existence vicariously. And most of all, the obituaries.  I am a great devotee of obituaries, surveying the passing parade of American humanity, from the Harvard Magazine's review of our greatest over-achievers, who generally had three careers before going to meet their Maker to those in the Times and finally to those in this little local rag.  So many eighty five, ninety year old women, "a homemaker, whose greatest joy were her grandchildren, who took pleasure in crocheting, and attending church."  I could not part from this experience when I moved out, and now six years later I still subscribe and every week in the relative isolation of Sarasota Florida where the news is all of the condos which developers are putting to block the sun, ruin the traffic patterns, destroy whatever vestiges existed of small town life, where the local newspaper's accounts of local traffic fatalities, stabbings, breaking and entering, and the endless list of persons slain by guns accidentally or on purpose, make me remark to myself "We're not in Kansas anymore Toto," and I turn and pick up the little weekly newspaper at my side for spiritual refreshment and reassurance.