Every summer is different. Traffic is worse. Prices are higher. It is so much more crowded than, take your pick, “last year,” “when I first came out here,” and the classic, “when I was a kid. . . .” From where I sit with a view of Main Street, two things about the summer of 2024 strike me. For one, there are as many car and truck backups westbound as east. The other thing is the surprising number of people peering in The Star’s front windows.
They cup their hands around their eyes to shield out the glare and stare. From my desk on the first floor I can almost make out what they are saying, or at least I think I can, some version of, “Look! It’s a real newspaper office.” But it is at times as if we were on exhibit at Colonial Williamsburg, an archaic reminder of time gone by.
Beginning in March, when The Star’s oil burner filled the building with smoke, we have been clearing space under my sister’s keen eye. The downstairs office on the street is now welcomingly wide open, and we have been thinking hard about what to do with it.
One of the ideas I have had for years is to host a cocktail party for The Star’s letters-to-the-editor writers. Imagine Bea Derrico and the late Neil Hausig in a one-on-one conversation! But Mr. Hausig is gone and organizing that kind of gathering now, without him, would be too soon. Another idea is an open-mike night of poetry and music. But would anyone come, I wonder. Would street noise be too much?
For the time being, we sit there, Russell Bennett and I, keeping an eye on Main Street in case anything interesting happens — and feeling like fish in a bowl for others to view with apparent delight.