Middletown, the Movie
A little while ago I wrote a longish short story about a small town in Connecticut where as a punishment for the mistreatment of a black man enrolled at the local college, God relocated Purgatory; a place where for over a hundred and fifty years the dead returned to spend the rest of their existence until the Angel Gabriel is scheduled to announce the End Times.
The name of the town was Middletown and meant to serve as a metaphor for small town life everywhere, but in reality was a paen to the small Connecticut city where I spent my undergraduate years.
Proud and self-sufficient, it was always this odd mixture of old Yankee business acumen and Mediterranean working class locked like two scorpions in a bottle, neither party able or willing to vacate the premises. The college doubled in size due to the admission of women soon after I arrived, but would wait another forty years before it could elect its first Jewish president, by which time the old Sicilian neighborhoods that at once seemed secure and ever vigilant lest the stray beer bottle find its way on the wrong lawn had changed hands many times over.
The result is a town that has arrived at a peaceful - and, some would say, prosperous - detente with its hilltop neighbor. And, I detected a bit of sadness last week at the abrupt cancellation of the remaining semester as the usually bustling campus closed-down due to Covid-19 pandemic.
Of course, I am here for the same reason, having escaped Brooklyn, hopefuly one step ahead of the same virus. I guess wil know more as this latest plot twist plays out over the next few months. I arrived just a little over 10 days ago with a load of dirty laudry and three frozen chickens purchased on the run from the Trader Joes across the street from me in Brooklyn. I would have carried more but the chickens had doubled in weight overnight as their moisture turned into solid ice.
But, I was also one step ahead of anything resembling accurate information as the Trump admnistration fumbled its way through a series of hastily arranged press conferences designed to give Americans the false idea that there was a coherent strategy to combatting the pandemic. It would be several days before it became obvious that the worst was yet to come and that I was woefully unprepared for an extended seige away from Brooklyn: I had only a two weeks supply of prescribed medications and woud soon have to make decisions about how long I could exist comfortably without my anti-shingles (herpes simplex) pills.
Social distancing has closed down about half the restaurants on Main Street. Even Nickie and Pete, the Vietnamese couple next door, taped a handwritten sign inside their window expressing sadness at having to shut down "for the safety of the community".
A few days into my stay, our Building Manager announced that our key fobs would no longer work on the doors to the gym and lounge. I escaped with the last of the lime seltzer in the fridge and a bag of grapes just in the nick of time.
The name of the town was Middletown and meant to serve as a metaphor for small town life everywhere, but in reality was a paen to the small Connecticut city where I spent my undergraduate years.
Proud and self-sufficient, it was always this odd mixture of old Yankee business acumen and Mediterranean working class locked like two scorpions in a bottle, neither party able or willing to vacate the premises. The college doubled in size due to the admission of women soon after I arrived, but would wait another forty years before it could elect its first Jewish president, by which time the old Sicilian neighborhoods that at once seemed secure and ever vigilant lest the stray beer bottle find its way on the wrong lawn had changed hands many times over.
The result is a town that has arrived at a peaceful - and, some would say, prosperous - detente with its hilltop neighbor. And, I detected a bit of sadness last week at the abrupt cancellation of the remaining semester as the usually bustling campus closed-down due to Covid-19 pandemic.
Of course, I am here for the same reason, having escaped Brooklyn, hopefuly one step ahead of the same virus. I guess wil know more as this latest plot twist plays out over the next few months. I arrived just a little over 10 days ago with a load of dirty laudry and three frozen chickens purchased on the run from the Trader Joes across the street from me in Brooklyn. I would have carried more but the chickens had doubled in weight overnight as their moisture turned into solid ice.
But, I was also one step ahead of anything resembling accurate information as the Trump admnistration fumbled its way through a series of hastily arranged press conferences designed to give Americans the false idea that there was a coherent strategy to combatting the pandemic. It would be several days before it became obvious that the worst was yet to come and that I was woefully unprepared for an extended seige away from Brooklyn: I had only a two weeks supply of prescribed medications and woud soon have to make decisions about how long I could exist comfortably without my anti-shingles (herpes simplex) pills.
Social distancing has closed down about half the restaurants on Main Street. Even Nickie and Pete, the Vietnamese couple next door, taped a handwritten sign inside their window expressing sadness at having to shut down "for the safety of the community".
A few days into my stay, our Building Manager announced that our key fobs would no longer work on the doors to the gym and lounge. I escaped with the last of the lime seltzer in the fridge and a bag of grapes just in the nick of time.