Westward Ho!

[Editorial]

The modern family is scattered to the four winds.

The families have always uprooted their homes and moved… across great oceans. Across the mountains. Across the great prairies. They have searched for new land, new opportunities, and new jobs.

When I was growing up family was all around us, my aunts and uncles, my cousins were all around us… then we moved.

All of a sudden my friends were not related to me. Cousins, aunts, and uncles were for holidays four or five times a year. We were the outcast by distance.

My cousin Vinny no longer showed me how to smoke corn silk and tell me the “facts of life” now it was my neighbors clique.

Building family bonds are not there anymore, being part of community, or feeling of belonging are gone from our lives.

My brother’s four children are living in three different states on the eastern seaboard and he and my sister-in-law live in a fourth state. And my brother’s children were each born in a different state.

In today’s “Gig Economy” people do not set down roots anymore and businesses don’t have roots in a community. When I was growing up New Britain was a company town for Stanley Works you could work there beside you family and your neighbors. It was a generational company but now all that is left here is the headquarters and that might even move.

Me? I have lived in the same town for over 65 years and I have seen it change. From a town of 5,000 to a town 20,000. From where everyone knew your name to a town of strangers. Where I live it is a village in a part of a town. We had our own post office but the government in its infinite wisdom closed and with that our village lost its identity now we are just the town with the same Zip Code. As my generation dies out the only thing to remind people of the village will by the Congregational Church that bears its name.

All thing change. But at what price?

[/Editorial]