I missed the recent Town Meeting, again. I regret that but they are held at night and since I became old, I no longer drive at night. I’ve tried going with friends, but I am a stay-until-the-end kind of guy, and they often want to leave early. Also, because I am old, I have to take a half-dozen pills every night precisely at 9:00 pm, and I don’t want anyone to see gulping down my stash in the men’s room for fear they might think I was some kind of a secret addict. So, I stay at home.
Prior to the driving thing, I had not missed a town meeting in any town I lived in that held them. Town meetings go back to colonial times (I’m old but not that old) and are the purest form of democracy. Everyone gets to say their piece, trying to convince the opposition to vote for or against one viewpoint or another.
Town meetings were once held in our upper Town Hall. I can remember attending one with my father. As the story goes, because there was no elevator in the building, Bill Suzan, a big, strapping, prominent citizen, was charged with carrying an important town official, who was incapacitated, up the stairs to attend a meeting. One night after a late meeting, Suzan went home, forgetting to retrieve the official who remained stranded in the upper hall.
Whether that story is true is lost to history, but not long after, our town meetings moved to the Congregational Church Hall. (If that were today, no doubt someone would complain about separation of church and state. I guess we were more tolerant of those things back then.)
In 1961, when Old Rochester High was completed, meetings were moved to the school’s auditorium where they reside still, too far to walk for village dwellers like me.
Strange things can happen at town meetings. At one I attended elsewhere, an old timer, who everyone knew and who was familiar with the open end of a bottle, stood up to comment on some issue. He proceeded to rant about – shall I say – a minority “hiding in a wood pile.”
I was shocked. Despite their political differences, every one of the 200 people in the hall stood up in protest. The moderator ruled the fellow out of order and had the police escort him out. I was proud to witness a group of Americans of differing opinions recognize that a rude, disgusting, racial slur was inappropriate. That was nearly 50 years ago! Today name calling seems to have become a bad habit in some government forums. But I digress.
Everyone knew what a newcomer was going to ask when they got up to speak. The newbie would always ask why the town rented hydrants. The Water Department was an enterprise fund, which allowed them to be self-sufficient by renting the hydrants back to the town. It was sort of an initiation to be laughed at by the regulars.
Everyone would sit in the same seats year after year. There was an older couple who sat on the aisle across from me. The first time I got up to speak I overheard the woman whisper to her husband, “bet he’ll ask why the town rents hydrants.” She was right. The next year as I returned to my seat after speaking about something or other, I overheard her say, “that young man sure asks good questions.” The following year after I made my way back from the lectern she muttered (rather loudly), “I wish he’d stop asking such dumb questions.” And so, it goes.
My favorite experience at a town meeting was right here in our fair hamlet. A proposal was presented to allow a business that would be quite profitable to the owner and to the town, promising thousands of dollars to town coffers for virtually little effort. Such a deal! After much discussion back and forth, it looked as though it would pass overwhelmingly. And then someone asked who the business owner was. When the entrepreneur was revealed, an audible gasp was heard throughout the auditorium. Apparently, the citizens felt the town was rich enough without contributing to the person’s already significant assets. Oh well.
I wish town meetings were held on Saturdays during the day. I miss the excitement.
Editor’s note: Mattapoisett resident Dick Morgado is an artist and retired newspaper columnist whose musings are, after some years, back in The Wanderer under the subtitle “Thoughts on ….” Morgado’s opinions have also appeared for many years in daily newspapers around Boston.
Thoughts on…
By Dick Morgado