BLOCK PARTY
Every fall our street has a block party, an outdoor potluck on the street, where everyone on our street gathers to sit around a fire pit and then to sit around a long table and eat together. Anna Martin and Tom Showalter organize it. They set up the tables and chairs and send out notices. Everyone brings food to share. Until recently everyone living on the street had one member at least who worked at the college meaning that the other spouse often worked outside the college. Now with the change in the way houses are are offered we have one family who work down the road at the Asheville Christian Academy. This means that most of us, even the retired people, know each other through work, but it isn’t work that brings us together, it is being neighbors.
And for me this is just the opposite of travel, just the opposite of sitting by myself in a fifth floor apartment in Montevideo. It is probably the reason that many people don’t travel. There is something very good about living among neighbors who care about you and are happy to see you and they don’t feel a need to get away. We drank beer together and listened to each other’s stories and caught up with with each others adventures, but mostly we just enjoyed being together on a fall afternoon.
Travel is a way to be dislocated and to break out of the constraints and the routine of everyday life. The block party is a way do enjoy those same constraints and the way we are connected together. But I couldn’t help thinking that for those of us who had been traveling, and a number of us had, the good feeling of community was a little more special than for those who were always here and took community for granted. You have to be outside to know what it is to be inside.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 