lives unlived
Jul. 29th, 2010 04:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
merHaving been mildly thwarted in my plan to order up a furnace today--who closes their office at 10 to 4?!--I thought I'd share this brief interlude I had while driving home from the lake this weekend.
My preferred route to the cottage--and I think we each have our own, everyone in the family--involves driving through a nowhere town called Hickory Corners, down West Hickory Road from the Gilmore Car Museum. Lest you think proximity to the car museum makes Hickory Corners a thriving metropolis--let me disabuse of that notion very quickly. There is a gas station. I can't even remember if it's out of business or not. (I think it's in business. It might have been out briefly.) There is a four-way stop. And there are some abandoned storefronts.
I had the brief, mad notion of what it would be like to buy one of the abandoned storefronts and open a bookstore and private lending library. Combo, of course. Wherein the residents of Hickory Corners could borrow books at will, and non-residents could pay a fee to join, and anyone who happened buy could also just buy any of the books. Like, if Powell's had a rental service as well.
It's an endeavor designed not to make money, of course; it's a public service, a way to house a lot of books in a place without a lot of books. You'd be a curiosity, a place people might stop on the way to the car museum--or not. But, it's just--I had a vision, a life I'll never live, delivered to me in a flash while I drove past the abandoned storefront. It'd be so very quiet in my store/library. I could get a lot of writing done.
Rationality usually takes hold whenever I think of moving someplace rural in Michigan, however; I am not meant for rurality. I'd go stir-crazy in four days. And arguing politics would be a nightmare. And let's not even get into what the diversity situation is like in no-town Michigan.
My preferred route to the cottage--and I think we each have our own, everyone in the family--involves driving through a nowhere town called Hickory Corners, down West Hickory Road from the Gilmore Car Museum. Lest you think proximity to the car museum makes Hickory Corners a thriving metropolis--let me disabuse of that notion very quickly. There is a gas station. I can't even remember if it's out of business or not. (I think it's in business. It might have been out briefly.) There is a four-way stop. And there are some abandoned storefronts.
I had the brief, mad notion of what it would be like to buy one of the abandoned storefronts and open a bookstore and private lending library. Combo, of course. Wherein the residents of Hickory Corners could borrow books at will, and non-residents could pay a fee to join, and anyone who happened buy could also just buy any of the books. Like, if Powell's had a rental service as well.
It's an endeavor designed not to make money, of course; it's a public service, a way to house a lot of books in a place without a lot of books. You'd be a curiosity, a place people might stop on the way to the car museum--or not. But, it's just--I had a vision, a life I'll never live, delivered to me in a flash while I drove past the abandoned storefront. It'd be so very quiet in my store/library. I could get a lot of writing done.
Rationality usually takes hold whenever I think of moving someplace rural in Michigan, however; I am not meant for rurality. I'd go stir-crazy in four days. And arguing politics would be a nightmare. And let's not even get into what the diversity situation is like in no-town Michigan.
painter 11
Date: 2011-01-17 07:35 am (UTC)