Elisa Campbell
Camelot had it easy. You remember - the musical, not the Kennedy post-assassination myth. If you're old enough, or just enjoy musicals on video, you can even hear Richard Burton's voice, "singing" the words:
The winter is forbidden till December
and exits March the second on the dot.
By order, summer lingers through September
In Camelot.
The rain may never fall till after sundown.
By eight, the morning fog must disappear.
In short, there's simply not
A more congenial spot
For happily-ever-aftering than here
In Camelot.
All they worried about was the weather.
For our own Camelot in "Happy Valley," we need more amenities. I can see it now.
Downtown has a mix of fun boutiques, little imaginative restaurants, book and record emporiums (some with cafes) and hardware stores. Upstairs is an exciting mix of apartments, condos and offices: space for local architects and even lawyers, plus a couple of insurance agencies and financial advisors and the dot coms that proved stronger than the venture capital-bubble debacle. The coop grocery store and pharmacy attract members and customers from near and far, who meet each other around the juice bar or sit outside under the umbrellas and talk into the evening, sipping decaf alcohol-free mocha pina coladas or lapping up cholesterol-free all-natural ice cream from the community dairy. Now and then someone wanders over with a local brew, but that's OK now since everyone knows when they've had enough. Because everyone quit smoking at least a decade ago, there's no litter under the tables, and people hardly remember smoking was ever an issue.
In the community center, senior citizens and high school students engage in friendly but fierce competition in chess, billiards, and ballroom dance. There's talk of adding Olympic-class gymnastics equipment to the gym, in a mezzanine overlooking the pool with its great sliding wall and roof that make it open-air during those perfect summer days and evenings. The local exercise science and gymnastics pro has offered to donate his expertise.
Half a block from the business and government center are spacious and well-maintained older houses like my grandmother used to live in, with lawns and old maples and a few hydrangeas in the sunny spots. Hummingbirds swarm around the flowers, and pileated woodpeckers keep the insects from doing in the ancient trees. The giant elm tree on Sunset, now at least two hundred years old, is not only thriving but also spreading its seeds. The seedlings are lovingly dug up and moved to suitable locations. The shaded streets are officially part of an arboereum, demonstrating the variety of native hardy species that offer us shade in return for some care.
In the neighborhoods, pollution-free and fare-free buses go up and down every street, at 10 minute intervals, picking people up at their doors, delivering them to comfortable and beautiful central hubs where they can shop or go to the library or catch another bus within a few minutes to go to another neighborhood to visit a friend or a doctor's office or hair dresser. In the mornings, the bus is full of parents and kids, like a traveling inter-generational birthday party, dropping kids off at daycare and school before the parents bid each other goodbye and jaunt off to work at one of the campuses or catch another bus speeding out a now traffic jam- free Route 9 to 91 and the employers south of us.
The hubs have plenty of free invisible parking, complete with charging stations, for the energy-efficient and non-polluting vehicles of the people driving or biking (snow melts automatically on bicycle lanes) in from further out. The hubs feature art and music by local people, and were welcomed into the outlying neighborhoods by residents glad to have both the excitement of more people and art within walking distance of their homes.
Luckily, even though the enticements of living downtown or near the hubs have raised property values, there's still plenty of developable land with fantastic views of the mountains and no neighbors, so single-family houses with yards and garages and picket fences are still affordable to people who work in town or in neighboring towns. The businesses are so successful, with everyone shopping locally, that they can carry most of the local tax burden. Between that and the state and federal contributions to local and regional quality of life programs, town real estate taxes are $10.98 per thousand, so no one is priced out of the market.
With the graduation of generations X, Y and ZZZ, students at the colleges and university demonstrate the success of the previously-experimental maturity gene. Families are glad to have students living next door, helping with shoveling the rare snow, mowing the few lawns that still grow taller than a few inches, and raking up the leaves from those majestic maples (that task won't be necessary in a few decades, as the deciduous trees die off and are replaced by the permanent ones, but in the meantime ....)
Which is a good thing, since one thing that hasn't changed is Labor Day weekend. Here they come!