Yesterday we went for coffee and ended up talking with an old friend – a man about the age of my son whose children I taught back in the day. He’s been overseeing a construction project just south of the village and has become acquainted with many of Oysterville’s newcomers – people about his age, many of whom have second homes here in town.
“So,” he said, “as an ‘old-timer’ with deep roots in the community, how do you feel about the changes in Oysterville these days?” Quickly, of course, the conversation went to familiar themes.
“I miss the old working-class character of the village,” I said, “when most of the men worked in the oysters and the women were ‘homemakers’ and baked chocolate chip cookies for a treat.”
“Yes,” he said, “and there were kids. The school was still open…”
And so we lamented the changes – the fact that neat rows of daffodils have taken the place of blackberry bushes alongside the road and that more and more the “yards” as we used to call them are being landscaped and cared for by crews of worker-bees.
We talked about the differences in financial status that have surfaced over the last twenty years and the slow drift toward a fully sanitized village of McMansions and fancy cars. And, we skirted the subject of those who are included in the “new” Oysterville and those who are not. Thankfully, Nyel and I are mostly oblivious to the social goings-on of the recent arrivals. Not in our network, you might say.
We love it when we are included in some of the activities, but truth-to-tell, we wouldn’t much fit in with most of it. Too old, too poor, too stuck in the-way-it-used-to-be. (Or is that my rational to keep from feeling left out?) I am reminded of my mother’s frequent remark when, in her day, she found herself in a similar situation. “I wouldn’t want to live forever,” she would say. I’m beginning to see her point.
As much as we try to embrace the changes and the change-makers, it’s hard not to feel peripheral and unnecessary. It’s not anything we speak of often but the feeling is there – like that apocryphal elephant in the room. I must say, though, that it was comforting to learn yesterday that even a non-Oystervillian sees what’s happening and laments along with us. And, a non-Oystervillian who is a generation or so behind us at that!
I was brought up in small oystering/lobstering village in Connecticut, Stony Creek, on Long Island Sound. My mother always used to say, “When The New York Times discovers this place, it will be ruined.”
Sure ’nuff, in the late 1980s, the Times did a huge story about Stony Creek in its Sunday section. Very shortly thereafter, wealthy New Yorkers started buying up the charming little houses that lined the shore, tearing them down, and building McMansions.
I used to own my parents’ house there, which was on a peninsula, but could not afford to keep it. When I inherited it, the taxes were $1,200 a year (1991). By the late 1990s, I was being taxed by the waterfront foot, and they were $9,000 a year, and going up to $12,000 a year. I can’t even imagine what they must be now, but I’m betting it’s around $20,000.
Needless to say, most of the original Yankee families, some of whom were there for generations (I was the third generation in my family) are gone. Many of the ones who didn’t sell when the buying spree started have been forced out by the cost of property taxes, including me.
The oysters and lobsters are gone, too.
Thanks for writing, Elleda. Such an old, familiar story! I’m glad you shared, though. Probably one of those misery-loves-company things!