Salem: A Place that Defines the Word “Neighbor!”

What is it that makes a place a home? Is it merely a house, a condo, an apartment where we make the choice to hang our hat and coat every day? Is it just a matter of the nice location or the scenic view? Perhaps it’s in the need to live somewhere local due to your commute to a job and or the good schools and pleasant statistics that make it attractive for your children? Then again, perhaps it all of these factors coupled with the most important factor of all, the one of course that is never really overlooked but always included into your decision to live where you choose to live. That word is:

Neighborhood!

No this isn’t going to be some foray into an off-shot Mr. Rogers analogy intended to get everyone to sing together holding hands!

What it is intended to do is to focus a little bit of attention onto several of the most critical factors we all include in our choices to live where we live and what motivates us all to move to or to remain in the locales that become deeply embraced as being a “HOME” to us all.

The one word however that seems to get passed over all too easily in this but is also a prime motivator for many of us in our choice of some place where we find ourselves really happy and is the “true glue” that holds every community together in a manner of speaking is this “glue” that is paramount in the word:

“NEIGHBOR”

If it wasn’t for the deep feelings and the harbor of those deep emotions we really do get in the safety and the gatherings of fellowship that we all experience from being neighbors for one another, there wouldn’t really ever be any common understanding of the word neighborhood for us all to embrace would there?

I remember a story involving my Grandmother on my Fathers side of the family. It was then sometime in the early 1930’s just after the horrible effects of the stock market crash that tore apart the economies of the then known world.

Many local families of that era as it was across the entire nation had their savings and their livelihoods ripped away from them leaving them with no way to feed themselves and their children. The infamous newspaper article snapshots of the day focused on the soup lines and the block-long employment lines for that one job that had been advertised. These positions just sort of chipped away at the head of the iceberg that hunkered down and continually threatened to sink the virtues that were the life mainstays of every single household adopting visions of a virtual Titanic always about to strike!

My Grandparents had a large backyard garden that added good nutrition to the family’s table staples back then, a habit that of course came with them from the old country in Sweden where every backyard had its own large vegetable garden. My Grandmother we were told had a daily habit of making large pots of vegetable soups and bountiful loaves of bread that she would package up in separate “care” bundles. Every afternoon she would get her draw carriage loaded up and off she would go to visit those neighbors along her street and those others nearby who just didn’t have any food to put on their table. This was a practice in good fellowship that she performed each and every day of her life then that continued through those hard and trying years.

As children we were told that it provided such an example of love and caring for your neighbors for our own parents as they were growing up. It gave them a true understanding of what a responsible purpose was and an understanding about what caring for one another truly meant. It was the sort of a moral lesson of life that induced a sense of the binding ties that really do exist between each other!

To them, this was a prime definition of the meaning of the word “neighbor”.

I use this example in my own mind constantly as I try to place meaning and understanding in our now modern aged world where it seems we are constantly being challenged by wars, threats of terrorism, rising instances of crime, not to forget the always challenging faces of economic tidal forces that just never seem to wane to any acceptable degree of prosperity for we common folk!

There are but several places in my current life that I’m currently forced to identify with the word “home”, but the one that I constantly have set my sights on and have for quite a while now is in the Shire that everyone knows as Salem.

One of the things that I noticed many years ago when I made one of my return visits to the city after a long period away, was that there was always a strong sense of community spirit that always rose up and shined like a beacon for me!

As time moved along and as every place has its instances of upset and discourse, as every gathering of souls have their disputes and their disagreements between one another, as personalities bond together and have their feuds and their times of passion and anger, there is always that sense of the word neighbor that rises above whatever issue it is that could be challenging against the better virtues that make such a place home for everyone!

I’d like to think that as the days bring everyone together for season and celebration, for respite and relaxation, for work, for challenge, and upset, that the one thing that is above it all and will always remain above it all is that sense of the strength that is the fellowship reality that whomsoever it is you might have a bit of discourse with in a moment of time, that soul is also your neighbor.

The reality always strikes true when faced with that new someone or that new family who moves onto your block that they are more than just some people new to get to know.

They are also now your new neighbors.

If there is someone whom you have had a problem with, for whatever the reason, the truth remains that rises above any minor disagreement that you might have that they are also, your neighbor.

Why am I writing on this today?

It’s simple really.

It’s because as I find myself wading through various life happenings and tides that challenge, the one community that I find my mind always reflecting back upon and whose news website always carries a warm feeling of always being “gathered together” when many other new sources always seem a bit colder by comparison, Salem really is one of those communities that is gathered together and always remains together! This fact always makes itself apparent and obvious to me!

When I have the opportunity to walk the streets of Salem and I continue to notice the kind relations that are passed between one another and it reminds me of the tale of my Grandmother so many years ago who cared so for her neighbors in those terrible times of such upset and need.

Salem always has some special sense of spirit working for it!

It really is a gathering of “neighbors”!

Relish in its brilliance because there are many places of the world who cannot state the same!

Have a magnificent day all!

WD Allan

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WD Allan, WDAllan.com

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