Saratoga News

Saratoga Stereopticon

Willys Peck

Small town facing changing millennium

'Small town' is one of those two-edged phrases that can be used in either a pejorative or a favorable sense. One can, for instance, appreciate a community's "small town" atmosphere, or condemn its insular, "small-town" approach to larger issues.

I like to think of Saratoga as a small town in the favorable sense, mainly because that's what it was, and, to a rapidly diminishing extent, still is. Underline "diminishing," the latest illustration being the cliffhanger involving the Saratoga Drug Store. As of this writing, the question of whether Ray and Francine Rossi will have to close the store still hasn't been resolved, and it is to be hoped that some resolution to the lease situation can be reached.

If that doesn't happen, closing the drugstore would leave a significant void, and not simply because it's been there as long as the building, something over 85 years. It has more to do with the idea of home-owned, hometown businesses, places where a customer not only knows the proprietor and people who work there, but also is likely to meet friends and neighbors on similar errands. There is a social dimension to hometown business that is in no way compatible with large shopping malls, discount outlets and the like.

Before World War II, when Saratoga had but a small fraction of its present population, downtown businesses included not only the drugstore but four groceries, all of which had delivery service; a bakery; three auto repair shops; a dry goods store; a candy store and fountain; three gas stations, in addition to the pumps at the garages; a blacksmith shop; three barbers; and a shoe-repair shop. After the war, the town gained a second drugstore, a variety store, a creamery and fountain, a music store, and--sorely missed today--a hardware store. And these listings are not even complete.

Today, we still have home-owned businesses, but in an entirely different context. "Trendy" is one way of putting it, which is OK too. Find a need and fill it, and all that. But I think it's too bad to lose that other element, the down-home feeling engendered by friends and neighbors providing the goods and services needed in everyday living.

Looking back, I feel fortunate in having been a participant in the best of these experiences. There was the time I was building a coaster for a race and had a difficult metalworking problem. Bert Bertelsen, the village blacksmith, solved it. Bertelsen, a laconic Dane whose four daughters were in grammar school when I was, had his shop where the Dolce Vita restaurant is today.

Watching the man work was an experience. He would extract a piece of glowing metal from the forge and test its readiness for tempering with a finely aimed stream of tobacco juice; a true artisan with a feeling for his craft. He also shod horses, and he used to give the kids rings fashioned from horseshoe nails. Every town should have a blacksmith.

Several years later I had occasion to rely on another hometown businessman, garage proprietor Harold Hansen, who let me work on my car outside his shop and even use his tools. The drugstore holds some memories, too, even apart from the soda fountain, which was a major social focal point in town. As an eighth-grader, I was hired by the druggist at the time, Ralph Stewart, to make Sunday afternoon deliveries on my bicycle. I think the pay was as much as 50 cents an afternoon, which wasn't bad 60 years ago. A later druggist, Emil Maher, had an attractive daughter whom I dated occasionally and corresponded with while in the Army.

Just up the street from the drugstore was Pat Bucaria's barbershop. Bucaria, an accomplished musician, would occasionally while away idle moments practicing the banjo, and it was pleasant, while walking by, to hear the notes wafting through the screen door.

In an earlier Stereoptican article, I expounded on the joys of driving a grocery delivery truck for Metzger's market, next to the drugstore. In terms of rural folksiness, it was right up there with Thornton Wilder's Our Town.

So here we are near the end of the millennium, with a changed economic focus and changed tastes. Are some of the old concepts worth preserving? And if so, how?

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