This is a personal post a bit aside from our usual research. I elected to do it since I have just returned from a trip to The Village. A bit of a pilgrimage I should say.
On a whirlwind trip to see family in Taunton, one morning we had a free moment and started the drive down at the end of School Street where it meets St. Joseph's Cemetery. The narrator, myself of course, started even before the cemetery. Isn't that where they raised greyhounds? Was there a pig farm around there as well?
On to the house where my parents lived on School Street when I was born. On and on the Village mantra continued. Just when we crossed Braga Square I noticed that the School Street Bakery was open. We stopped the car on a dime.
As soon as I walked in....BAM, as Emeril would say, the aroma stopped me in my tracks. IT WAS EXACTLY the same as when I was a child!!! It looked the same, the little bell rang above the door (or did it, Was it from my memory?) When the lovely lady came out from the back (as they always did), I told her what the warm aroma was doing for me, and she smiled knowingly.
As soon as I walked in....BAM, as Emeril would say, the aroma stopped me in my tracks. IT WAS EXACTLY the same as when I was a child!!! It looked the same, the little bell rang above the door (or did it, Was it from my memory?) When the lovely lady came out from the back (as they always did), I told her what the warm aroma was doing for me, and she smiled knowingly.
Off to have breakfast with two childhood friends, I purchased some turnovers and left. The experience stayed with me all day long.
Driving the Village, I was saddened to see homes not in the best of shape. Homes where I had known the families who had lived there in my time, and kept them immaculate. But, now and then, a house shone with loving care. Sometimes those houses were still in the families I
had known growing up: that felt good.
.....
Time passes and as Thomas Wolfe said, you cannot go home again. But, Thomas, sometimes a wonderful aroma comes to you....the nose knows, in your mind and with
the memory of your heart, you really can.
Thank you, School Street Bakery, for still being there.....
photo below mid School Street in the 40's
Three of us that gathered last week, and one that is always in our hearts
photo 184 School St. back yard.
Graduation from Cohannet School in the 50's.
i lived across the street from tony and his greyhounds rember them well my mother now lives in her childhoud home on winter street
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jerry. It is so good to still have ties to the Village, wish I did!
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