Scope for Imagination

Isn't it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive--it's such an interesting world. It wouldn't be half so interesting if we knew all about everything, would it? There'd be no scope for imagination then, would there?

-Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery




Sunday, July 26, 2009

Main Street

Weeks and weeks ago, Wendy asked me this,

"In your imaginary town, would you have a street named 'Main Street'?"



I of course didn't have an imaginary town. I didn't think I needed one. Has it ever occurred to you you needed an imaginary town?



Dream House--yes. But I just can't go there now.



Dream Town? A whole town?



Holey Toledo...what a mind virus it has become. A good one though. At first I resisted, knowing it would become an obsession. And how many obsessions can one brain handle?



So it starts with a Main Street running east/west. Parallel to Broadway where the movie theaters (2) and the community theater and the restaurants and the art galleries are. And the art supply store...which has the widest array of paintbrushes...fitches and filberts and flats and rounds and sables a person could imagine. Pinstriping brushes, Japanese sumi brushes, woodgraining brushes. Brushes for gold leaf. Pots and jars of brushes. I can't even get started on the paint and the canvas and papers.

The County Courthouse would be on the corner of Main St. and Finch Ave.

All the north/south streets are named for birds and trees, actually. They are not all "streets" though, They could be avenues, lanes, ways, drives or places. It just matters how they sound.

There is no Elm St., since Adam's allergic. Also no Mulberry. Pity since they are nice names.

Of course Sycamore Drive has sycamores planted in the parkway. All the tree streets are graced with their named trees.

At the far north of town...wandering off east into the hills where the bird sanctuary is would be Thoreau Place. Below it, Emerson, and Alcott and Hawthorne, and Fuller and the other transcendental friends.

Mid town east/west would be Jefferson, Adams, Priestly, Paine, Franklin and Washington...

Somewhere, I haven't found it yet, is Bradbury Street.

Near the community College we have Tesla, Einstein, Newton, Leonardo...

At the south end of town, by the hospital is Nightingale, Blackwell, and Barton. The mental health center is at the corner of Dix Lane and Sequoia Drive.

Ten years ago, I would have set my town in Western Massachusetts. But I really believe now it is in So. California. A ten minute drive to the beach...a State beach for 50 miles, no houses or stores or nothing along the coast. Okay, it's mythic.

There is so much to consider. Are we a two high school town with a cross town rivalry? Or do we only have enough teenagers for the one?

I don't know the town's name yet. I do know the center of town has been around since the 1900s. The neighborhoods are all different 20th century revival styles...Tudor and Spanish and adobe and Norman and craftsman. 50's ranch and modern out at the edges of town...not much built after that.

Where's the city park?

Kristin thinks it's time I draw a map.

I can't wait to see her town.

Tell me about your town.

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