On a Friday when I should be dressed down, I am actually dressed
up to attend a visitation after work. Damned death-related
activities keeping me from wearing my Levi's. Ugh.
Ms. Nancy died peacefully in a nursing home at ninety-one. Except
for the nursing home part, we should all be so lucky.
Like so many others from tiny towns like Waddy, she wont end up
in any history books. But she was something of a revered scholar
in our hometown. Ms. Nancy wasn't like a lot of the other little
old mild-mannered ladies who contributed to bake sales and made
blankets and whatnot. She was an opinionated, worldly educator,
who taught at the local high school for well over thirty years--
and spent many of those years traveling just about everywhere.
The significance of her passing, however, has less to do with who
she was, and more to do with what it means for the community. For
Ms. Nancy was the last of the 'old guard'--a group of elderly
Waddy ladies devoted to their God, their community and those less-
fortunate. Their quiet influence in the town was remarkable; their
impressions on its history, undeniable. They kept Waddy beautiful.
For years, I made the assertion that Waddy, with its population
well under 500 people, would never really change. But now, after
taking off the 'rose-colored glasses', I see that my small town
is no different than any other place of any other size. Slowly but
surely, Waddy is becoming a bedroom community. Its "downtown" has
been eroding for years. The only bank in town left years ago. One
of the groceries closed. The other grocery took out its gas pumps.
The houses in town which were occupied and kept tidy for over forty
years by widows and/or couples now belong to younger unknowns who
have less time to appreciate their wooden relics. A good many of
those houses are abandoned; their fates left to time or a grim real
estate market. And although the town's bedrock of four churches
still remain, their attendance is less-than-thriving. If it weren't
for the interstate and Waddy's relative proximity to Kentucky's
major economic centers, the downturn would have been more drastic.
No, Virginia, Waddy is not immune to change.
When the townspeople say their final goodbyes to Ms. Nancy today
or tomorrow, they also symbolically resign themselves to the fact
that Waddy is no longer what it use to be; it held itself to its
early 1900s heyday for as long as it could. Waddy's natives will,
of course, age. A few will stay. But the nostalgia for many will
be too great. It will make no sense to some that doors need to be
locked now; that the drivers of nine out of ten cars passing by
aren't familiar.
As for my family, we are content to sit on the side porch,
remembering all of it, holding on to the moments and delaying any
real thoughts toward the not-always-sunny-looking future.
I am lucky that I grew up where I did. I am also lucky to have
gotten out.
It hurts less that way.
