Freaks!

Great conversation around the sanding table at work today. We were talking about the big house, just about every room of which is filled with cabinetry and built-ins that we have made. I expressed disdain for the place, chock-a-block of styles. But what's more, I said, it represents a change which has taken place here in Bucks County. Where once were farms, now there are developments filled with McMansions. And the Big House is exemplary for that.

It's shocking to realize that in Plumstead Township, where I live, there are no longer any dairy farms? A quarter of the kids that I went to school with were farm kids, sitting next to you in American History, smelling like manure, fresh from the morning milking.

A friend of mine in elementary school was from a dairy farming family. My friend Jeff hated the cows. But his older brother Dave wanted nothing more in life than to take over the farm and follow in his father's footsteps. Their farm is now growing nothing but McMansions.

What every happened to Dave? I guess he's now working in a Burger King or something.

Anyway, I started to recount how cool New Hope was in the 1970s. My young colleagues, who weren't alive during that particular decade, and barely made the scene for the '80s, were rapt with attention.

"It was all freaks," I said, "hippies, queers, bikers. Everybody got along and knew everybody else. it was beautiful." I wondered--really wondered, actually, as in, I'd be seriously interested in knowing this--if there was such a haven anywhere in the world today. Y'see, New Hope was done in by economics. The rich people moved in and took over. Up went property values. Up went rents. Out went the hippies, queers, and bikers.

Adieu, freaks.

Here was the significant thing, I think. That formula I used: "hippies, queers, bikers." I think it's kinda paving the way for the Big Announcement, whenever it comes.

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