Goodbye

April 21, 2015
By Mickey Friedman

We’re supposed to just get on with it. Embrace the future. Forsake sadness. As the past vanishes before our eyes. Exalt the instrument of transformation, the chainsaw.

But during a moment of daydream one almost killed me. And chainsaws attacking trees have claimed others I know.

Some trees resist the metal that tears through them. The wood not content with the often arbitrary and man-made determination to end its day.

Those of us who came to care for the Bradford Pear trees have lost. And of course those who were convinced they had to go will always celebrate their decision. Because they had to go. That’s the way it goes. Like our old Firehouse had to go for a pittance.

So I am very used to losing. But what I am not willing to surrender is my appreciation for the past. It is so very easy to invoke the future. To talk of better days. To promise better trees. A neater, nicer downtown.

Remember our Downtown Redevelopment environmental engineers and their cute animations. Their little imaginary cartoon cars zipping up and down Main. It will be better without that old-fashioned right lane turn up to Taconic and our hospital. Because very well-paid consultants and little imaginary cars know best. And the future will automatically be better than the past.

Which is why I always laugh when town officials challenge the people they don’t really represent to offer specific suggestions about town policy, about budgets and school renovations. As if they really listen. How many people testified for the right turn to Taconic, for the right turn onto East? Person after person. So please politicians, journalists, take a moment to remember how often people around here speak up loud and clear and are then ignored.

How many people stood up at the packed listening sessions at Town Hall to tell the planners how they cherished the quirky nature of downtown, the unpredictable and the unique?

Maybe I’ve had enough change, lost too many people along my way. My parents and the dear friends I went to school with, played ball with, loved. I’ve learned that death is always a black hole. You don’t recover from a death. Your universe is always, every time diminished. There was never any chance of replacing my dear friend Jim. He was irreplaceable. My friend Artie who so very generously took me in when the house I was renting in Woodstock burned down, whose guitar playing transported me to other worlds. Or bright, brilliant Elaine who captured my heart at City College, her one-of-a-kind poetry luminescent.

So I want to mourn the loss of my trees, the oh so many hours I sat beneath them, the hours I admired the European-like boulevard of Bradfords in bloom. A sight that could literally take the breath away. A gift we were so often given. So they smelled. So do babies’ diapers and dairy farms.

To mourn what will never be again. What others will never see.

So yes promise me all you want. How much better it will be. Ninety-three new trees. A multitude of breeds. Variety where once was similarity.

We have little patience these days with inconvenience, with infirmity. We replace knees with impunity. Hips. And that’s a blessing for those in pain. We’ve replaced records with eight tracks with cassettes with iPods and CD players until now CDs are worth a pittance of the thirteen bucks we spent on them. Not a thousand years. Not a hundred. For me, in less than half a lifetime my music collection mutated several times. One man-made dinosaur after another.

Planned obsolescence. How is it that this is an understandable business strategy and not a crime? How is it some amongst us build things that will be break just a bit after the warranty evaporates? That salespeople can say without embarrassment that it will cost more to repair your toaster oven than it will to buy a new one.

When I was a kid there were folks in every city neighborhood, in every small town business district who would fix what was broken.

What does it say about us that they are as gone as the passenger pigeon?

What’s done is done. How many times have you heard this. Trumpeted with pride. The call to a new tomorrow. Look forward, not back. Embrace what’s to come.

Well I don’t want a new toaster oven. I want my old one to work again.

So just maybe if we had taken better care of our Bradford pears, pruned them, gave their roots more room, maybe we all could have grown together into tomorrow. Patched all those sidewalk cracks rather than document them for a grant. Had we taken better care of the firehouse we’d still have a safe affordable space for town employees.

So goodbye dear Bradfords. I miss you more than you know.