I’ve been a small-towner my whole life. I’m actually somewhat of a small-town hopper—moving from one neighboring town to the next-all within a 10-mile radius of each other. Though this has been mostly a symptom of my childhood and not something I actively chose—I’ve found it weirdly edifying to travel so tightly within my formative years.
Something I grew increasingly aware of as I aged and as my zip code slightly shifted 4 miles this way and 8 miles that way, is the staggering differences between three buddy towns. I suppose time also played its role in the changing dynamics of these places I called home.
Old mill town, has everything you could need in its center ; Split ends? Head over to the father-daughter barber shop where they can give anyone a trim or a makeover. Craving a pizza? We’ve got dominos! Not a za guy? No problem, just store hop to Subway, or better yet; the ma and pa shops on either side of the road where the hashbrowns are crispy and the iced coffee has that little something extra to get you going. Bookish? Perfect, grab some lunch, get a trim and spend a few hours in the library looking your best with a full stomach.
After you’ve done all that; there’s plenty of sidewalks to stroll safely as you finish digesting your tuna club and coffee and your mind begins the digestive process of Tolstoy, Dickens and Nietzsche. Once you’ve walked and thought and feel peckish for socialization all you have to do is loop around to your starting point for a game of bowling with friends or an arcade session.
Now I live in “cow town.” The one with the highest reputation, yet the one I’ve found the most loneliness in. Perhaps I have the shedding of my youth to blame. But since I’m human with a working ego I’ll place 60% of the blame on the spread-outness of the town. If old mill town is a beehive eager to produce then cow town is lethargic from an overdose of honey. Sure there’s cow town center where you can fill up your gas, grab a coffee, a sandwich and a snack, but that’s it.
Certainly there are several bodies of water worth admiring, but no sidewalks to sight see them from. You’ll have to time your glances out your car window just right so you catch the sunsetting a sparkling blaze to lakes and ponds in order to avoid cars driving contrary-parallel to you. Cow town’s unofficial motto—no car? Get walking and get ready to leap off the side of the road and tuck your knees as a soccer mom comes barreling toward you with the zeal of Johnny Lawrence launching at Danny LaRusso. No mercy! It’s a scene reminiscent of the 2003 dramedy starring Peter Dinklage “The Station Agent.” Walking through cow town? Get ready to leap and tuck, my friends.
I’ve worked my way backwards here because my youngest days were spent in town number three: The Hannah Montana Town. The setting of my burgeoning life has a sprawling nature to it—perhaps a “best of both worlds” glint. Take the farmish stride of cow town and the hip tone of old mill town, mix it all together and you’ve got a Hannah Montana town.
The town’s center is teeming with people eager to walk on sidewalks-a-plenty with storefronts prepared to greet them. Not a fan of the center-of-town strip? No problem. Take a stroll along farm roads while the crickets sing to you and a warm summer breeze does what only it can do. Smell the natural world as it hugs you and heals you of whatever needs healing within you. Don’t rush home, you’re allowed to linger in thought and that fuzzy feeling that walking along earth’s surface does to a person.
If you wish to hear about my favorite small town then it’s my trip last summer you’re fishing for. I visited Adams Mass at the end of the season.
I stayed in a rectangle of a hotel with corn hole in the front lawn and a reliable view of a mountain-range sunset. It was clear none of us booked a room there for the amenities. We all knew it was the view that hooked us in. Hooked together we stood morning and evening as the sun raged its massive body over and under the mountain-affected horizon—the jagged edge of our yellow sun sawed its way between the mountain ridges, and our collective shadow arched around us as our light source changed direction. Between sunset and sunrise we stood shivering corpses waiting for our yellow god to remind us of the warming effects of true beauty.
What we did or saw during the time between sunrise and sunset didn’t matter. Although I did find a spectacular record/CD/used guitar/used everything maze of a store in downtown Adams. It’s also worth mentioning the cozy and differently stunning view one could gaze upon at the cafe/inn at the bottom of the hill of the rectangle. One would be hard pressed to choose where to rest their head between the two. The couple that owns the place at the bottom of the hill had just about finished their first season in Adams. I got the sense I was one of their last visitors on that September day.
They sold their city lives for a quieter and happier one among the New England mountain range. It seemed they had found what they were looking for. My traveling companion and I derived joy from their joy of running a successful shop and inn that, on top of it all, the locals and visitors seemed to appreciate the existence of. If you seek nature like I do, then Adams could be the town for you.
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