LIVING IN MARSHALL
I decided to move to Marshall from Swannanoa where I had lived for 60 years mainly to live closer to my daughter, Susie. I am now lhalf way between my daughter and my son. But the other reason I moved was that I sensed that community life would be richer in Marshall than in Swannanoa. For sixty years my wife Kathe was my companion and as a couple we were linked to a number of other couples, good friends. But when she died I was alone, living in suburbia, with people I liked all around me but with whom I wasn’t connected daily. I was living in suburbia with a wide lawn that separated me from friends. Most of us stayed in our own houses most of the time though we would occasionally meet on the street. It is the American suburban way of life.
I could have moved to the nearby retirement home, Highland Farms, where a number of my friends have moved. But there all my connections would have been with people in their 70’s and 80’s, often widowed or widowered just like me. So I decided to make the leap to Marshall where I live in a converted textile mill and then glove factory where there are 18 apartments and people of all ages, almost all of whom are younger than I am. Here I see my daughter Susie, whose social life revolves around Marshall, almost daily. I live with a view that starts with a rock face with all kinds of vegetation 20 feet from my window but then shifts to a view of the long bridge arching the French Broad River which is lovely when not flooding and then includes half of the town of Marshall with the white dome of the courthouse rising above the town with wooded hills rising above it.
In Marshall I can walk across the river and sit for an hour or two in Zuma’s Coffee nursing a $3.15 cup of coffee with one refill allowed surrounded by chatter and people of all ages and even talk with a person or two that I know.
The fact that I went to Rob Amberg, the photographer’s birthday party in Sicily just for the fun of it two years ago and then met a large number of movers and shakers in Marshall who were there for the party helps make me feel at home. And an even better introduction to Marshall was taking the photographs of 100 Helene clean up volunteers back in October, just after the flood, many of whom live in or around Marshall. I took the photographs because it was an excuse to take portraits of people, which I like to do, and because it seemed that this made me also a volunteer. Now I have printed up 100 of those photographs which are mounted on lightweight foam tiles with a backing that sticks to the wall without nail holes and without pulling off the paint so that they can be mounted easily anywhere. This weekend is Marshall’s grand opening six months after the flood, the first step back to normal, although many businesses are still gutted. And my photographs will be pasted to the walls of bars so that the volunteers can be honored and even buy their photo, if they like them, for the $15 cost of printing and mounting and shipping. But it turns out that this will also be a way of connecting with some of the people of Marshall, a way of sharing that makes an elderly newcomer feel good.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 