Fun is fun, once again joining Beth on an appraisal ramble. She
needs pictures of recently-sold comparatives of subject appraisals.
Destination: Natick, Mass. Have heard on radio ads: na-TICK.
Pronounce it NAY-tick, like the locals do. Locals are always right.
Back in the good old days, Natick was, according to peerless
Wikipedia, an early praying Indian settlement. As in, Our munificent
God says Stay here, don't make waves. Colonialism = bulldozer,
but gee, opiates are great!
We engaged Rt 3 to I-95 South, thence to Rt 20, aka Boston Post
Rd. In elder days, the artery to the city, now the busy pass thru to
all the yonders we learn to imagine. We slid thru Weston first. It is
the moneyest town in the state and Boston bedroom community supreme.
It is green and populated by houses of this and that extent. We were
just passing thru.
Wayland next. More of the same, perhaps with rolling-er landscape.
I mean the crust is lovely almost as the dirt. You can see the bones
of farms, but farming is such an antique idea. Lawns = imagination,
since I am so math-oriented. No McMansions, tho.
Thence to Natick. My aunt and uncle lived there, until they
winterized and expanded the Cape Cod cottage and shifted there. Lake
Cochituate was within walking distance of their Natick house, and
Carling had a brewery nearby (assuming memory works). File under auld
lang syne.
So much of New England is green, a fact I often forget. Big
deciduous trees are our neighbours and friends. Beth grew up in the
desert spareness of Nevada.
Natick centre is a fine bustle this side of gentrification. It has
some lovely brick factories now housing emporia for the rising crest.
I saw what must have been a retired brick school or municipal
building now yceplt Cochituate Village. An apartment building. O
marketing, you make the people weep. Village is now an
embracing term for all that we no longer have. Developers of condos
and developments love such comforting words as village
or farm. “Come out
from the grove my love & care,” wrote Childe William.
But anyway. At one house, the
owner noted the suspicious car. Beth explained the wherefore and
whereof of her enterprise. He was not nonplussed, and Beth says she
has yet to encounter anyone fussed
by her picture taking.
The final comp was
on Pumpkin Pine Rd. Let that sink in: it makes no sense. Perhaps as a
new craft beer. We live in
dreams.
