A Walk Through a Quaint Neighborhood

When I was a teenager, my mother often sent me on foot to our little, bayside downtown on an errand: A utility bill to pay, a library book to return, a drugstore item to purchase.

It was an easy, eight-block walk, but I preferred to take the back streets so I could pass by gardens and yards and houses, most built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The first lap took me through the parking lot of the old hospital, passing under its chapel and second-story greenhouse. The second phase took me past another greenhouse, this one at a private home, a yard filled with perennials, a rabbit hutch and several old churches. Finally, I walked pass a yard where pigeons were housed in tiny cubicles, and lastly, a dairy.

Then it was an easy sprint along the water, under towering elms and maples and past much larger homes.

Finally, I would find myself in our little commercial district, with two stately banks, a few gift shops, a drug store, post office, and telephone and power utility offices. My favorite stop was the Beaux Arts-style library with its reading rooms that looked out over the harbor.

There was always something calming about this walk, and the quaint neighborhood through which I passed help define my appreciation for a sense of place and my affection for the quaint.

But most of that is gone now. No one keeps rabbits or chickens in town. The pigeon man is long gone, and the old chapel and greenhouses are gone.

The charm we create now is more contrived. I miss the old days.