Where I Live
by Ron Greer
To get to the main part of town you have to walk past a colonial cemetery and cross a covered bridge. This will get you to the highway that passes through town, where you'll find the gas station convenience marts, and the yarn store and antique shop, if you're into that sort of thing. We also have a post office, a bank without an ATM, a bed & breakfast, and two bars. We also have four churches. One day I saw some of the local kids painting the fire hydrants red white and blue.
A lot of people from my side of the bridge employ their cars and trucks to navigate that short passage between "us" and "them", but I like to walk. It gives me a chance to collect my thoughts before I plunk down real money for cheap beer or good coffee, and it can be a rather pleasant walk if planned properly. There is an immense field beside the bridge where they grow cow corn, and the snowmobilers do their laps there in the winter months. The field has had a "for sale" sign sticking out from the river's edge since I've lived here. And right across the other side of the bridge is a park with a gazebo. A lot of visitors do their "turnaround" in its parking lot, as they don't want to deal with traversing a quaint covered bridge they didn't expect. And a lot of the teenagers drink their beer under the gazebo.
The covered bridge is only wide enough for one vehicle at a time, and a gutter is provided inside for a person like me to walk along. The locals still have a tendency to speed up as they approach the bridge, but they will slow down if they see someone on it, and give a friendly wave. That is, if they aren't dumbstruck that someone would be hoofing it on foot.
I helped a guy put the town Christmas decorations up on the bridge once. I was walking by, and he was swearing at his son, who wasn't being much of a help. It was a gigantic plastic bough with red and green lights. I climbed the ladder for him and plugged in the lights, getting a small shock from the metal ladder in the deal.
My street, which intersects the road to the bridge, goes for quite a while to the west. I keep meaning to fix my bike up so I can see how far it goes. We've got a few more fields and campgrounds in that direction. I once got in an altercation with a turtle I tried to help across. It kept snapping at me every time I tried to pick it up, so I let it take its own stupid life in its hands.
The house I live in I bought with my ex-girlfriend when we were still together. Her mother put up most of the money. What little sex we'd been having dried up the day we moved in. She has since moved on, back home to the west coast with a new fiancee. She calls me occasionally.
It's an ongoing project, the house. We got it cheap because it was in a state of disrepair and had been unoccupied for several years. Things haven't gotten much better. Apparently it used to be in the valley where the reservoir now is, and they moved the place here piece by piece. Some of the workers lived in it when they were building the dam.
The property went through several hands. On the deed, they always sell it to the next person for a dollar. It used to be a whole acre, but the guy who played handyman for the old woman who last lived here slept with her enough times that she gave him a quarter acre behind the house. He's passed on, as they say, and the property is rented out. Apparently the two of them used to get drunk and work on the house together before they fell to their urges. It shows.
In one of my more writerly moods, I thought the house should be named. I was thinking of Washington Irving and Sunnyside, or Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Old Manse. In that respect, I thought of naming the place The Old Manse also. I asked my ex-girlfriend's opinion, and she didn't hesitate for a moment. "The Sugar Shack" she said plainly, and chuckled... Now I can't shake the name off.