A Room With A View

     Our old house on Glenwood Road was adjacent to Willard School. From my bedroom I could see the school yard and tell what sort of sporting events were taking place. Whether this was sledding in the Winter, baseball or stickball in the Summer, football or basketball in the fall, I could glance out and decide whether to get involved. If it was summer this was a no-brainer as we didn't have air conditioning installed until I was in high school. 

     The rest of the year I would usually just go out even if I wasn't old enough to play with who was competing. I liked to watch and learn from the older kids. When it was time to come home for dinner my Mom would invariably stand on our back porch and bellow out our names. She likes to tell this story on herself, and throw in the part about the kids in the school yard who would bellow back if we weren't anywhere on the field. I guess this sort of thing is done now with cell phones and GPS devices. Those electronic devices would have just slowed us down in my day, or gotten lost or stolen. I tell this story because I revel in the implied idea of community which it reveals. People in the neighborhood were looking out for one another. I prefer to believe this was a better idea than the current situation where it requires two wage earners in many cases to pay the mortgage for a home in Ridgewood which is largely empty Monday through Friday. 

      It seems to me that something is missing now in everyone's lives in suburbia, not just Ridgewood. This has happened as a matter of course and can't be reversed. Nobody wants to go back, or can afford to go back, to a simpler time and a less complicated existence. It was an era when school teachers and postal carriers could afford to live in Ridgewood. Their proximity provided an extra level of security to our neighborhoods, and made it that much harder to get away with childish shenanigans. Don' get me wrong, the time I recall had its own disadvantages, too. My Dad wouldn't wish his old 3 hour roundtrip commute to Wall Street on anybody, even if it did allow him to send 3 sons to college and graduate school. All I'm pointing out is that things are different these days, and I believe less inviting for people considering a move to Ridgewood. The tree lined streets remain largely the same but the people inside the houses appear to be strangers to one another, and not as cognizant of what is happening right next store to them.