♫ music ♪ from time to time all over new england, we gather at our town hall, to hammer out the public opinion in meetings like this. ♫ music ♫ sometimes, the meetings get out of hand. and we argue back when the moderator wraps for order. but we like it that way. because we figure we elected him to the job in the first place.
this particular meeting was pretty much like all the rest. except that the moderator called on joseph. joseph was self-conscious, and i had to persuade him to speak. this was joseph's first town meeting. his first, and his last. six months before, joseph had been a stranger to cummington. as joseph's minister, i felt i had come to know him a little better than others had in those six
months. and watching him speak, as a neighbor and friend, i was remembering the day joseph arrived with his wife anna and the others. i had heard of these refugees at a conference of ministers. they needed a place to live. my church had a house standing vacant. and i had an idea. perhaps the refugees could have found another place to live. and undoubtedly, the good people of cummington would have preferred it that way.
but then, that's what gave me the idea. the first night. what will people do their first night in a strange house? ♪ (woman singing a lullaby to her baby) ♪ ♪ music ♪ certainly, you don't wanna talk to anyone. so i said good night, and went home to work on my sermon for sunday. sunday was clear. a good day for church. because we like to make a social event out of it. it's a close community feeling we have about our churches.
we like to stand around and chat before the service. that's me with the blind organist. sometimes i think it's too close, almost parochial, but maybe that's because originally, hundreds of years ago, our communities were built around the church. first church in cummington: 1780. first house seven years later: 1787. almost before i had begun my sermon, i heard a commotion in the balcony, and looked down to see the refugees filling in. late of course, as the widow susannah archer said.
i was moved, because i knew they came from many different churches and denominations: catholic, jewish, protestant, and i took it as a gesture to me. so i began again, taking my text from leviticus: "the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself". i was sure to help the lonely feeling of the refugees. i wasn't so sure about the townspeople of cummington. only time will tell. ♫ organ music playing ♫
toward the end of the service, i noticed one incident that gave me some hope. ♪ organ music and choir and congregation singing ♪ i guess with the music and all, it was too much for anna. but when i heard about joseph's visit to the grocery store, i began to realize sermons take awhile to sink in. it seems he ran smack into the old stove league, most exclusive club in america. and another place where the boys carve out public opinion.
everyone went right on doing what he was doing. and joseph felt at first like no one knew he was there. but that wasn't true. because the minute his back was turned, they looked up, curious as kittens...and joseph knew it. i've given a lot of thought to that day. and i'm sure the boys were just as self-conscious as joseph. the trouble was, no one knew how to begin. how to make the first move. so i realized i'd have to make the first move myself. take people by the arm and lead them together.
peter, one of the refugees, had been a printer of fine books. art editions, back in austria. so i took him out to the cummington press to meet jim orchard. i knew jim could understand the old man's desire to get back to his craft. it wasn't hard to tell that he'd been away from his work for a long, long time. for all his politeness, he couldn't keep his hands off the presses. so jim agreed to take peter under his wing. and as i left, jim was already promising to take peter over to see the collection of books at the bryant memorial library, across the meadow
from the press. the great american poet's house has been kept as it was the day he died. with his own collection of fine editions and manuscript(s). here were the things peter loved most. things he had been away from too long. he must have remembered how many of these same books he'd seen burned in the streets of his own hometown. and he must have recalled that emerson, thoreau, whitman sat in this same room a hundred years ago.
planning, arguing, writing against slavery, with their friend bryant. and a plan for the work he was going to do began to form in peter's mind. then, max went to work helping out on the widow susannah archer's farm. susannah's boy had just been drafted, and she needed a man who could handle the farm machinery. max had been a mechanic in czechoslovakia. and over at the sawmill, the workmen got to know sasha, and understand his shyness in the best practical way: over the workbench. during the summer, joseph and anna opened a nick-nack shop. and the local girls got into the habit of dropping around to help out.
i used to come by myself on a saturday afternoon, to enjoy a little music with joseph and the ?? hall girl. frankly, i think joseph and anna were a little surprised to find mozart in cummington. surprised and pleased. i think in many different ways, while we were getting to know the refugees, better, they were learning about the new england countryside and its people. ♫ flute music ♫ ♫ violin music and piano music ♫ our land is similar to their own. chopped into small one-man, two-man farms.
the soil is difficult, and the weather is cruel sometimes. we're not the bread basket of america, but if you work hard, the autumn harvest will give you back enough for your family, and a little left over to take to market. and of course, we set aside one of the best of everything to exhibit at the fair. it's a hard life, and often a lonely life. and maybe that accounts for the way we act sometimes. and with the fall there was a harvest in human relations, too. one day, the boy from down the street came bearing gifts.
he had a speech all prepared, which he promptly forgot like his mother knew he would. but it made me feel that perhaps my idea had taken root, too. out at the press, peter was having a harvest of his own. he was finishing his woodcut of bryant, to be displayed in the art exhibit at the fair. and the title page he designed for emerson's essay on self-reliance was coming off the press. he was back at work in his craft. a part of a shop.
then there was the night joseph was taken to sit with the old stove league. that was a good night. i don't say all the self-consciousness was gone, but there was a new kind of respect on both sides. ♫ county fair music ♫ i think the excitement of the fair must be the same all over the world. to me, it's a celebration. putting the exclamation point to the end of a good harvest. it brings people together to show off the results of the
year's work to their neighbors. to learn from each other, in good, friendly competition. ♫ fair music continues ♫ ♫ music like a heavy weight is being pulled behind you ♫ and at the end of the day, you know a little more about yourself and your neighbor. and you have a picture taken, so you won't forget a good day in your life. i was thinking of all these things as i watched joseph speak. he was telling the town meeting that he would be
leaving soon to go home and help rebuild his own country. but he'd take with him many things he had learned from his neighbors in cummington. picture of a land and people, very much like his own. that's about all there was to my idea in the first place. that the strangeness between people breaks down, when they live, and work, and meet together as neighbors. i think the idea worked. at least, if the boys on the post office porch had been reluctant to welcome strangers,
they were also reluctant to say good-bye to friends.
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