Thirty years ago, when I first moved to Long Island, N.Y., someone gave me baffling directions to a place in the country: “Turn left at the fork right there where the peach farm used to be.” Although I was in love with eastern Long Island’s rural quality, the old-timer who was trying to help clearly had experienced some loss of beloved landscape. When he approached that fork in the road, he could still see the missing peach farm that was now invisible, at least to me.
I had a similar experience when I
moved to Lindsay 23 years ago. What my
newcomer eyes saw was a small town still vibrating from a once vibrant
small-farm economy, despite the recent loss of Lindsay Olive to the rough winds
of time and the overplanting of olives on the west side. But long-time residents told me of the losses
they saw every day, and chastised me for appreciating that which now gave them
pain. “You should have seen it before,”
they said, most of them unclear as to what had caused the decline.
The town’s downward slide continued,
and now my eyes see what’s missing. My
heart has dull aches from lost landscapes and places of business where the
proprietor knew my name as well as how long it had been since I’d had my
lawnmower tuned up or my distributer replaced.
I miss the farms where I knew who was driving the tractor. Like my former neighbors before me, I now find
myself skirting the missing places where the memories are best, and nod quietly
to those brave souls who have replaced the local entrepreneurs who took off or
up and died.
I don’t think this fact of life is
recognized by planners and community developers, much less new business
owners: how the elimination of familiar
sights and sounds can dispossess the members of a community from their
attachment to a place. But I hadn’t
recognized how I’ve done it to myself, too, until I had breakfast at Lindsay’s
Country Waffles last week.
It used to be the Olive Tree
Restaurant, once connected to the Olive Tree Inn, which is now a Super 8. The old names doffed their hats to the source
of half of Lindsay’s economy and its total claim to fame; in identifying with
their location, those business names contributed to the town’s sense of
place. Not much else has changed, actually,
besides the color schemes and the missing horde of farmers and businessmen who
used to come for their noontime meal and jamb the reservation list during the
Farm Show. The food is just as good and
some of the waitresses are still there, the ones who know how long it’s been
since you ordered french fries and wonder why you didn’t make it in last
Tuesday. The ones who call you by name
even after a long absence.
It felt good to be home. It felt good to slash the yolks of my
over-easy eggs and let them run over the perfect hash browns. It was delightful to slurp chopped melon from
the fruit cup and watch my partner drizzle syrup over his lofty pancakes. It was pure heaven to talk over breakfast
while the coffee mugs were refilled repeatedly until we could hold no
more. And it was delicious to remember
all the other times I’d sat in that booth with friends both near and from far
away, the life shared in that restaurant for more than two decades. It gave me back my sense of membership in the
community.
Change isn’t easy: dealing with it is harder than we think. Remembering the past is important: it can
make us aware of how we got here and keep us apprised of what is possible in
the future. But if we don’t watch it,
remembering can cause us to dismember ourselves from the present and from our
place in it. If we’re not going to
relinquish our place in time, we have to cope with change and reweave the
threads of community on a daily basis.
Thank you to Luanna, Gladys and Diane for
continuing to set the food before us, and to those newcomers who help make it
happen. Thank you to the regulars who
still eat there and keep that restaurant open.
Thanks for the memories, both past and future, as well as the food and
sense of community. And thank you,
Lindsay, for helping me learn these facts of community life.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Trudy Wischemann is a once-migrant community researcher who writes. Thanks also to Ben Montijo for remembering what I wrote two weeks ago and telling me about it. You can send me your stories of re-membering c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.
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