And once upon a time, in a land called America, the people would come in from their mountain cabins, farms, and mill towns with their young ones to joy in the closeness of community on warm sultry summer nights. The American dream was never about grand mansions, designer wear, exotic vacations, health clubs, silicone implants, Viagra love affairs, fortress malls, boutiques, forever war, the prison industry, or slave labor junk stores. It was about a man being able to make a living for his family. It was about a simple life of small town living, where people congregated on Main Street for the Fourth of July parade. It was about swimming holes, country lanes, fields of corn, teachers who challenged the young to greater heights (not social engineering! ), doctors (not technocrats), marshland songs, a whippoorwill, splashing streams, and woodlands with secret paths. It was about rain washed streets; where barefoot children splashed in puddles, blew magic bubbles, caught fireflies, and played hide-and-seek long into a muggy summer’s night. It was about concerts in the park, the clink of milk bottles, and visits to Grandma’s house; with her blue hair, flowered dress, and flour dusted apron. It was about the certainty of love with the slamming of a screen door, a child running in flowered meadows, and at day’s end, neighbors gathered on darkened porches, holding tight the wonderment of the day. It was about Hometown. — by Judith Moriarty
Once upon a time, in a land called America…
