Small Town Life

Linda and I recently renewed the lease on our loft apartment here in “Livable, Lovable, Lexington,” as the chamber of commerce calls it in marketing materials. And as former Lexingtonian Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson said of the town: “Of all the places…this little village is the most beautiful.” That it has remained a “little village” to this day is its biggest draw for us.

While we have been blessed to call more than a dozen places home, I must admit that Lexington ranks up there with the best of them. And given my roots in the Shenandoah Valley my return here has brought me full circle. Lexington is the county seat in an otherwise rural county and we are only ten miles from the Blue Ridge Parkway so our proximity to nature means we experience the best of both worlds.

As Rebecca Solnit writes in Storming the Gates of Paradise, “Places matter. Their rules, their scale, their design include or exclude civil society…They map our lives.” And Howard Mansfield adds in Dwelling in Possibility, “Great places—the places where we want to live, the places we visit—are built of relationships between small and large buildings, public and private, square and street, old and new.”

An exception, the tallest building in Lexington is the circa 1920’s six-story hotel that towers next to our circa 1890 three-story former bank building, which is the norm for not only our town but also other small historic towns, as it represents the proper scale to Main Street life and commerce. Our downtown basically consists of only three square blocks, with bookstores, cafes, and galleries lending a hipster vibe to the college town.  

“The idea of a small town represents a whole menu of human values: an agreeable scale of human enterprise, tranquility, public safety, proximity of neighbors and markets, nearness to authentic countryside, and permanence,” writes James Howard Kunstler in The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape. Lexington is gentrifying yet affordable so we hope to call it home for a while and continue to enjoy the small town life.

Community and Walkability

One major benefit of living with less stuff is the ability to move more freely and Linda and I have gravitated toward places conducive to community and walkability. Consequently, more than half of the places we have called home during our marriage have been in walkable locales (usually near water of some type), including Savannah, GA; Mount Dora and Celebration, FL; Nantucket, MA; Franklin, TN; and now Lexington, VA.

Lexington is the second town in which we’ve actually lived on Main Street, with the other being Nantucket, and we even live across the street from an outfit called Walkabout Outfitters, which supplies gear for area hikers of the nearby Appalachian Trail. One of the appeals of living downtown, especially in a small town, is what I call the walkability factor. A key benefit listed on real estate sites to entice people toward available properties, a high “walk score” typically means a premium sales price.

A good definition of walkability is: “The extent to which the built environment is friendly to the presence of people living, shopping, visiting, enjoying, or spending time in an area.” Author Jeff Speck writes in Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time: “The General Theory of Walkability explains how, to be favored, a walk has to satisfy four main conditions: it must be useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting. Each of these qualities is essential and none alone is sufficient.”

Henry David Thoreau stated, “I spend the forenoon in my chamber writing or arranging my papers and in the afternoon I walk forth into the fields and woods” (and neighboring Concord). As for me, I usually walk to a nearby café or the local library to read and research in the morning and do most of my writing afterward at my home office overlooking Main Street. The above picture is of the lane leading to the weekly farmer’s market across the street, another perk of living in a walkable community.

At least once a day, usually during our lunch break, Linda and I try to walk around the block together or, as time permits, across town to stroll the beautiful campus of Washington & Lee University. For more musings about community and walkability, feel free to check out “Loving Village Life” and “Of Church Bells and Community.” And do yourself a favor by going for a walk in your own community, wherever you call home.

Loving Village Life

I grew up on a dirt road in rural Virginia and couldn’t wait to escape my country corner of the world (despite a relatively idyllic boyhood playing in fields and streams). Fortunately for me, my grandparents lived in the Victorian township of Staunton, where there were some semblances of cultural life like a public library, a city park, and a movie theatre. Suffice it to say, I visited there as much as I could.

After recently reading the book titled Village: Where to Live and How to Live, I was reminded of these types of places I love to live. According to late author Peter Megargee Brown, the appeal of village life includes its human scale, historic architecture, and sense of history, the very qualities that have drawn me to towns and villages for as long as I can remember.

According to Brown, who was married to lifestyle guru Alexandra Stoddard, no personal decision is more important to body, spirit, and mind than where and how we live. Stoddard still makes her home in Stonington Village, Connecticut, the picturesque New England village that personifies the pastoral setting that Brown writes about, with its foremost quality being its walkability.

Another expert that Brown cites for his support of village living is the French philosopher Rene Dubos, who posited that people seem to function best in groups of fewer than a thousand persons and communities invariably decline as they expand. Of course, it helps if a village that small is located near a larger town with adequate amenities from which to fashion a life.

It has been our experience that the optimum size for a community is somewhat closer to ten thousand, as is the size of Celebration, Florida; Nantucket, Massachusetts; Franklin, Tennessee; and Rockport, Maine; all places we’ve called home since starting our minimalist journey a half dozen years ago. It may be cliché, but the key for Linda and me is a town that is “small enough to know you, but large enough to serve you.”

Searching for Mayberry

Maybe we’re chasing an illusion, but I don’t think so. As I write this, my wife and I are trying to decide whether or not to stay here in the Nashville area or to continue “searching for Mayberry.” I originally wouldn't have thought of our journey in such terms but upon closer reflection I must admit that we are indeed on a quest for the type of community depicted in the popular television program.

The other day I read that a local author likened where we live here in Franklin to Mayberry and I had to agree that it comes as close as anywhere we’ve lived to date, and we’ve lived in some pretty cool places by anyone’s account. Whenever we mention living in such places as Savannah, Georgia and Celebration, Florida and Nantucket, Massachusetts and Franklin, Tennessee people act incredulous.

And we’ve not only lived in cool places but in cool spaces within those cool places, right in the heart of the historic districts of each. Suffice it to say that a sense of place is very important to us and we love living within walking distance of cafes and other so-called “third places” apart from work and home. But it is other people that we most desire to connect with and that part has been somewhat wanting in our experience.

While my wife is typically more sociable than I am we are both pretty outgoing and even though we have no trouble meeting and making friends it seems that people are often too busy to maintain friendships nowadays. And while we can’t necessarily turn back the clock to bygone days of yesteryear we are striving to live counterclockwise on our journey toward a kinder and gentler pace of living. We crave community and connection.

Of Church Bells and Community

As I sit here at the Five Points Starbucks in Historic Franklin, cornering a table and watching people as I write, I am reminded of the strong sense of community here and how it is something that I crave wherever I live. Churches are one of the pillars of community and just this morning I passed the church between home and here that serenades us with the peal of hymns each hour, not an everyday occurrence elsewhere.

Yet as I thought about it, I realized that everywhere my wife and I have lived for the better part of our more than two decades together has been within earshot of church bells, a fact that had never dawned on me before. Whether the Methodist church here in Franklin, the Congregational church in Nantucket, the Presbyterian church in Celebration, the Presbyterian church in Mount Dora or the Methodist church in Savannah, we have been blessed to live near these pillars of community.

Another recurring theme at the places we’ve called home is our proximity to each town’s other community outposts such as the post office, public library, city hall and local bank. It is no small pleasure to be able to take care of life’s business within walking distance of home and it is not a convenience that I take for granted. My wife and I have made it a point to live in various versions of “Mayberry” and we cherish the sense of community.

The Beauty of Grey

Okay, I confess: I like the color grey. And yes, I prefer the old English spelling of it also. Actually, I came to the realization the other day that it is my favorite color of all. I guess I was in some kind of denial about it until I had to acknowledge that my car is grey, my scooter is grey, my computer is grey, my house I sold was grey, my wardrobe is very grey and what is left of my hair is becoming ever more grey.

While I consider myself a very black-and-white kind of person when it comes to principles, I cannot help liking the color grey and its many hues, from light grey, or heather, to dark grey, or charcoal, and all that is in between. I suppose I am particularly enamored with the sleek minimalism of grey and the understated elegance that it reflects. Besides that, I am not sure what it says about me other than that I simply treasure the beauty of grey.

So suffice it to say that I love living on the island of Nantucket, which is called “The Grey Lady” partially due to its fog-laden location and partly due to the abundance of grey-colored houses here. Whereas the fog is weather-related the architecture is man-made, largely the result of the island’s Quaker settlers who believed in an egalitarian unanimity. As a matter of fact, a running joke on Nantucket is “meet me by the grey house with the white shutters.”

Another appealing aspect of Nantucket’s grey-scale landscape is the total absence of billboards or even chain establishments on island. Other than a Ralph Lauren store that apparently got grandfathered under the guidelines, there are no national brands represented here and the result is a community vibe reminiscent of kinder, gentler times and places in America. Coming from the commercialism capital of Central Florida to the offshore oasis of Nantucket has been a welcome respite, grey days and all.

Thinking of Abundance

I share my thinking on this blog for the creative fun of it and the simple satisfaction that comes from communicating with readers about what’s on my mind. With that said, like any other blogger, or creative artist of any stripe, it always feels good to be validated in one’s thinking and that is the prompt for this posting.

As a longtime subscriber to Fast Company, I am regularly treated to a cornucopia of innovative and interesting ideas so suffice it to say that I was particularly pleased to read a recent article about the business success of Panera Bread [which I had written about in my 06/15/09 posting titled “Mobile Avenue”].

As I mentioned in my post, Panera’s “unlimited Internet access is the drawing card for countless professional nomads like myself who are looking for a cool, cozy place to conduct business.” My point was, and continues to be, that businesses with an abundance mindset will trump those with a scarcity mentality.

As the aforementioned article states, “Mention Panera Bread and fans are as likely to praise the free Wi-Fi as they are to gush about the Asiago cheese bagels. And that, execs at the restaurant chain say, is the point. While its competitors scale back on upscale ingredients, trim portion sizes, and create value menus, Panera is selling fresh food and warm bread at full price, and encouraging customers to linger. That recipe is succeeding.”

The article also points out that while others aim to limit laptop-lugging patrons, Panera has realized that fostering community contributes to cash flow: “And the company has combined that menu with an unpretentious atmosphere—there’s no table service, but also no time limit. As a result, it has become as much community gathering space as a bustling lunch spot. ‘In many ways, we’re renting space to people and the food is the price of admission,’ says CEO Ron Shaich.”