I met an old friend today.
Every year, my city holds a Drive In, a meet of classic cars. They close off the main street and fill it with classic American and international cars. We’ve been a couple of times now, and being British, usually spend our time drooling over the MG’s and the Triumphs. But this year there was something different. This year they had a Morgan.
As soon as I saw it, I was nine years old again and standing on one of the old benches my granddad appropriated from the crematorium. I peered through the blue cast iron railings at the parade of old motorcars making a pilgrimage to their birthplace, the tiny Morgan factory in Malvern, Worcestershire.
It isn’t a large town. It’s barely six miles long and two miles wide — a conglomeration of a dozen villages that grew up on granite hills so ancient they don’t contain fossils.
Malvern is famous for four things: the water, the Victorian spa, Edward Elgar and Morgan cars. And apart from all that, it’s my spiritual home — the one place that grounds me — or it was.
I remember the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. 1977. My dad was the local neighbourhood co-ordinator. We had pens and pencils and tiny Union Flags. They sat in a jar in our kitchen for a week. Then on the big day, my dad handed them out to the community as they gathered on the plateau behind the North Malvern clock tower. We had a bonfire in the car park and ate burgers and sausages. I was five years old, but I still remember it clearly.
And I went back to Malvern again and again. After I left university, and again after I married.
But that last time, something was missing. I don’t know whether it was me, or whether the place I knew, the community I loved, had grown old and faded.
Then I moved to Scotland, and my gran — my last link to Malvern — moved away. But I didn’t miss it.
And you know what? I still don’t.
That car reminded me of my past. A past where I lived in a community which cared about it’s neighbours. A past where the community shared events and came together to celebrate.
And tonight, I’m drinking a strawberry margarita — made with a huge bag of strawberries my neighbour brought me because she thought I might like them — and wondering whether I haven’t found that community right here in America, four and a half thousand miles away.
Nice stuff Cath. I think, over time, we can have more than one home.
I wanted to be abusive, but I liked the post too much. I’m big on real communities. And I used to have an MGB, bought from a local politician’s daughter who used to babysit me.
Good stuff, Cath.
Finding a community is a precious thing. It’s especially hard when you move around a lot. My husband and I haven’t lived in one place for more than 5 years at a time and it always feels like we’re starting from scratch. Our friends are spread out across north America, so it often seems like our community is virtual.
Everyone round me is so full of memories, some harsh, some bitter-sweet. Yours made the perfect conclusion to reading other’s memories – so much happiness stored that you don’t need to miss the place or the time: you carry it with you.
There is certainly something to be said about small town living…I live in a small town on the east coast of the US and I believe that it lacks all the small town qualities you’ve discussed because of its proximity to a major city…I only hope that secluded small towns still have that magic…
It’s so interesting. My husband and I grew up in the same town, only a few miles apart, and yet his neighborhood and mine were so different. He remembers a childhood of people who all knew each other, and watched out for each other. I remember a childhood of no trespassing signs and calling the sheriff. I think that’s probably why he doesn’t like where we live now. We don’t know our neighbors, and I’m sure deep down, he would like to.
Sense of community is important for us and often under appreciated. I never heard of a Morgan car, they didn’t populate rural New Mexico in my younger days. Margaritas made with fresh strawberries sound awesome, send me one!
Oh I do love classic cars. Maybe I’ll do a drabble story about ‘em.
.
Eric
(www.thedrabbledude.com)
Interesting to know.