Spending Precious Time in Plainville, Massachusetts
by
Eric Hurwitz. Page created on 3/30/17. All photos by Eric.
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With eyeglasses broken, I headed to Hilco Vision Headquarters
in Plainville, Massachusetts and returned home, a few hours later, with
a new vision of this small town located about 40 miles southwest of Boston.
Nothing fancy, mind you, happens in Plainville but the absence of
emerging suburban trendiness and pretentiousness -- along with a
peaceful, quiet aura in the air -- felt so right. Sure, weathered
factory buildings dot the central district and some older homes are in
need of repair, but, to me, imperfections suit me quite perfectly. I'd
rather see honesty than a facade in a person, so why would a town be
any different? That's where peope live, after all.
I passed the old-time drug store that reminded me of the old Dale
Pharmacy in Burlington where my dad and I walked from our home in the 1960s
to buy some Sky Bars...
Don's Diner -- family-owned since 1936 -- brought me back to those
wonderful small town restaurants we ate at during family fall trips to
rural Vermont...
And the type of comfort food we loved so much from childhood, and still
enjoy, to this very day...
The small, old-time church looked like something I remembered during
summer vacations in some Adirondack Mountains of New York town that I
can't remember during the rides between Old Forge and Lake Placid...
The local park brought me back to the special memories at Menontomy
Rocks Park in Arlington where I gained a great appreciation, at a young
age, for the outdoors, and a place where friends could gather for a
game of baseball, walk around the pond, or maybe eat a snack at the
picnic tables...
Even the old factories in the back part of town created an emotional
response. This is where America worked an honest day of work to provide
a good life for family, and still does, albeit to a lesser extent in
the towns we reside. I was happy to see some parts of the factory
buildings housing businesses and saddened that others showed
abandonment.
You might be asking, at this point, do small downtown districts like
this in modern day, gentrified suburbia truly still exist so close to Boston? Where the development?
Well, to be perfectly honest, downtown Plainville did undergo some
major development. The difference is that they did it right. Jeff
Kinney, a Plainville resident and author of the wildly popular Diary of a Wimpy Kids book series
-- with his wife, Julie -- created An Unlikely Story bookstore in
mid-2015. An Unlikely Story updated this corner downtown space,
beautifully restoring the old Falk's Market building -- originally
built in the mid-1800s and serving as a cornerstone in downtown
Plainville for generations as a general store, pharmacy, tea room and
restaurant before falling into shuttered, blighted disrepair. The new
business, with a respect to the grand old architecture of the past,
features a wonderful bookstore, cafe, and event space. It is,
ultimately, a community gathering space and a New England family travel
attraction, and a beautiful one, at that...
Let's face it, our great country is a more complex place today, far
more divided socially, politically and economically. No place is
Camelot, and, truthfully, never really was in our imperfect strive for
perfection in the Great American Experiment. The treasures along
the way, however, create the special memories that can never be taken
away and should always be the focus.
I found special memories on this day in Plainville, and the sights
experienced also connected to some beautiful moments of the past.
There's somewhat of an ironic analogy here that a broken pair of
eyeglasses opened my eyes to the given moment. No, Plainville is not
your place for an all-inclusive New England vacation -- far from it.
It's just that the journey could very well be more important than the
destination, and in this case, the time was well spent in a nice,
small New England town with a bright future.
Related article:
What is downtown Walpole like?
How to find the
best diners in New England
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