Why I Chose Mechanicville

Why I Chose Mechanicville

I was born in Washington, D.C., raised in Troy, and undertook graduate study and received my first professional job in New York City. I choose to live in Mechanicville as a matter of conscious choice, not because of an accident of birth or lack of ambition. Like many others, I willingly paid a "transportation tax," having commuted to work over 50 miles a day for thirty years when economic common sense dictated that I move to another community.

I live in Mechanicville because it offers the things modern, disaffected, alienated Americans are searching for: a sense of community, connectedness, and of being part of something larger than yourself. If I hadn’t known already, I came to appreciate this fact when I was part of the committee which organized the first "Family Day" in 1976, a celebration which captured the essence of the community. My wife is helping to organize the 40th year reunion of her MHS class. Within shouting distance of my front porch, she can hale ten of her 1961 classmates; cousins too innumerable to count; and my son and his wife live upstairs from her best friend across the street. Volunteers from New York City who helped with the post-tornado clean up were literally stupefied by the fact that everybody knew everybody else here. Part of their strength came from the kinesthetic energy they sensed between so many people who cared about each other.

There is a scene in "Field of Dreams" where a central character asks: "Is this heaven?" Mechanicville is far from heaven, but it has all the possibilities of being a unique community. As of next year, we will have four religious communities (Methodist, Episcopal, Baptist, and Roman Catholic) which have a combined 600 years of service to area residents. In this post-industrial malaise which we are suffering, we need to display a faith commitment in ourselves which our ancestors displayed when they first arrived. When Connecticut Yankees came here in the 1760s, they confronted a "howling wilderness" populated mostly by beavers and bears. Ninety years later, starving Irish immigrants crowded themselves into hovels along the Tenendehowa Creek, hiring themselves and their children out as textile laborers for meager wages. Their daughters were hired out as "domestic servants" because their parents couldn’t afford to feed one more hungry mouth at home. Only a few decades later, Italian and Lithuanian immigrants fled disease, poverty, and wars to find economic refuge here, often securing low-level status as "day laborers" which guaranteed them nothing more than a few days work at pathetic wages – and often in dangerous circumstances, to boot. We should be embarrassed to consider our own situation desperate.

We may appear to be bereft of many of the assets which caught media attention during the booming 90s. However, we have assets which are priceless: people willing to work hard for an honest days’ wage; housing stock averaging nearly a century old which was built by master-craftsmen who obviously took pride their work. Compare their brick, plaster, and lathe construction with today’s over-priced particleboard matchboxes. We have an undeveloped waterfront which, once the PCB issue is resolved, will become prime real estate coveted by people looking for homes with character. If our Main Street school is eventually abandoned, it presents a unique opportunity to create a museum celebrating the ethnic, transportation, and industrial history, not only of our area and our state, but of our nation.

The Mechanicville area was once the site of the only settlement in which colonial governors encouraged the development of Native American communities; our rail yards were the third largest of their kind in the nation at one time; and our paper mill was the largest producer of book paper in the world. These are things which should be celebrated, not forgotten, and it is our responsibility to make it happen.

World-renowned historian John Keegan has pointed out that he who controlled the axis between Albany and Montreal, controlled the North American Continent; in time, he who controlled that axis, controlled the world. The first significant stopping point the modern traveler comes to as he or she traverses this historic gateway is Mechanicville. Nowhere else along this gateway can we find such immediate access to friendly people eager to greet them, restaurants, and markets to feed them, a "walking city" which quickly conveys a sense of hometown and place, and religious communities of diverse background which welcome people of many backgrounds. And, if Saratoga is "the August place to be," no community on the Hudson has the combination of waterfront amenities and proximity to the recreation, sporting, and tourist attractions of the area than Mechanicville.

Lastly, Mechanicville possesses one vast resource which has remained untapped: its school system. Throughout the nation, we have read and heard of the failures of education on an intellectual as well as a social level. Too often in our community, we hear primarily of the confrontation of conflicting interests within that institution which seek their own benefit at the possible expense of others. Given our manageable size, the energy and spirit displayed our student athletes and scholars, and a commitment from professionals willing to build a stellar system, we could build a school community which would be the envy of our neighbors. How much vision would all of this take? Nothing more than commitment from each and every one of us that "I’ll do my part." When that happens, it will reconfirm why I chose Mechanicville.