photo © bob arnold
DAY OFF
Yesterday was wonderful after we left the hospital and dropped off one more of Sweetheart’s medical tests. Now the day was ours! We drove north to a college town and arrived at 9 a.m., just in time to freeze in a bakery that took all day to warm up. When we returned at 5 o’clock in the afternoon to find an evening sweet to share on the ride back home, the bakery was now too warm. Very Goldilocks. The town is the closest place we can think of to the film Pleasantville. It is all collegiate. There are no rough and ready folks anywhere, and if there are, they stand out. The streets are almost paved in gold. The Barnes & Noble was accepted by the town but it is not allowed to call itself Barnes & Noble; it remains The College Bookshop. Though it is not. The quality of books has gone downhill since it was The College Bookshop and all of the charm of old ivy league intellect and color has been misplaced by a bland Starbucks counter. What once smelled like books that Bennett Cerf once touched, now smells like Betty Crocker. Same initials, but.
All day we walked the streets, side neighborhoods, into the trees and sun-felt campus, nibbled foods, paged through a ton of new books — JG Ballard stories, photography by Eggleston whom I love, a Denis Johnson crime caper, Wendell Berry farming essays, and I scuttled through the new issue of Poetry (hit & miss) and Paris Review (pretty darn good). We then went back to the college campus and tracked down the exhibit room for Dr. Seuss, an alumnus. Nice room but really for that burst of Seussian energy, it's all bottled up. A friend recently told us the true outdoor world for Seuss is at the Springfield, Massachusetts museum quadrangle, a spot on earth jumping with Seuss characters. We’ll have to have a look. Believe it not, the shaggy Appalachian Trail plows right up through the main street, but it’s completely invisible, except when a starry-eyed wanderer is caught all bundled-up and booted on a street corner waiting for the light to change. In downtown Pleasantville. If you are ever in this town, and stuck, we can tell you where every free bathroom is.
A New England boy, Bob Arnold believes you love and fight to save the small town.
