Sky and earth, moon and sun, people and animals, that is what this city was made up of pre-1980s, when retail and real estate replaced the rural and the outdoors. Last night was the Harvest Moon and lots of Leominsterites trekked up to Sholan Farms to enjoy a good time all based around that old moon......but it wasnt long ago when we really did plan our pleasures around the natural flow of the seasons. There were no computers, no cell phones, no super tvs with hundreds of stations, all clear as a bell, no binge tv watching or video games across the universe....we had people and gardens and apple orchards and farms and chickens and goats and cows....we had communication with the outside world but it took the form of a door stop of a telephone with finger holes for dialing and it when it rang it rang up and down the street through a party line of neighbors.. Long distance was frowned upon because it was expensive and it usually meant a death or tragedy in the family. Dating was done face to face, we asked a girl out and often times we were shut down. It seems to be a lost art, asking another out for a date....our tv sets were nice but way too primitive for binge watching, only 3 or 4 channels available and the reception was simply fuzzy...we waited for Lucy and Jackie Gleason and cartoons and Stooges for us kids, but the shows started at 5 AM and ended at midnight as the station went to bed with the rest of us. So we woke up with chickens and we usually went outdoors.... No fast food and very little retail, we were a town of farms and plastic shops, a labor camp of sorts where the day was split between work and home, we fished and we picked apples and bought our food at corner stores....we made hay by the harvest moon and we shoveled snow all winter but we ate hearty foods to go with the temperature drop. In autumn we went to dances and school functions....the library was a ticket outside of town, as were the corner stores which sold magazines and comic books, not many regular books were available for purchase, but the two movie theaters made us cosmopolitan in our tastes....radio was super popular and we had three very listened to local stations that played music with disc jockeys, and we had two local newspapers and the Boston papers and tv guide and the Sporting News. We didnt have 24 hours sports television but we had a 3 minute sports segment on the noontime news and a strong youth sports program . The Red Sox were the big shots and it was a mans game. A trip to Fenway would cost you a dollar and there wouldnt be too many women sitting in the stands. The games were played during the day mostly and the same guys who liked the horse tracks populated the bleachers.....so the Moon was much more important to us then because we went our in the evening and the moon affected our moods....we sat by the Light of the moon and held hands with our best girl and we sat on stoops and lawns under the moon and we chit chatted with friends and family. In the summer evening we stayed outdoors as long as possible to avoid the heat and humidity of our apartments...air conditioners were a rarity.....fans a luxury.....our retail was all downtown on a strip of land from the Columbia Hotel to the Dunkin Donuts on Lancaster Street and if you wanted to shop at night and see your neighbors and friends , Thursday nights the stores were open in the evening...everyone knew the name of every lawyer and doctor and dentist in town, there werent many, unlike today when there are nearly a hundred of each it seems. Bottled water, nope...but it did come out of hoses in our backyards and we put it into canteens to carry around with us. Goves wasnt the only farm by any means and many a youngsterhttps://youtube/watch?v=zVb-CYsEEzY worked on a farm in the summer or picked apples one of the orchards....the holidays were a reason to go downtown and celebrate and we paraded on the 4th of July and labor Day and we were patriotic members of our country, the USA.... Today Sholan Farms is the last link to our agrarian past. Under the harvest Moon is a celebration not an every day event anymore...we are more likely to be attached to a computer or phone or smart tv or phone....we talk not on street corners or stoops but online right here on Facebook and we no longer know many of our neighbors. No more rec centers and teen dances, no more staying home for a phone call or waiting ten years to see Disneys Bambi.....the world has become compressed and the natural world is not so relevant anymore...zoning has replaced roosters crowing and cows in the yard...but we have a faint memory of the old wild child we were and that is why people came out last night to celebrate the harvest Moon and the last apple orchard in the hometown of Johnny Appleseed...
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 09:50:32 +0000
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