Celebration!

Last night, I started to watch a TV documentary about Celebration.

For those of you who don’t know what Celebration is let me tell you it appears to be everything anyone would want in a town. There are white picket fences; the houses are close by each other; there are sidewalks outside and it’s only a short walk to the center of town.

For some, that’s the kind of world most people miss from their past. It conjures up visions of rocking out on the front porch; neighbors coming over for a sing in; sharing a jello mold; listening to Fred Alan or The Great Gildersleeve (if you’re old enough!)

But I hate to shatter the illusion: Folks, you just can’t go home again.

The fact of the matter is that these cute little towns are not always what they seem.

I live in a town like that.

Everyone moved here because it communicated the idea of an old-fashioned town that you didn’t need a car to get around in…

But the reality turns out to be quite different.

I’ve discovered this is much more of “my home is my castle” feel with lovely little homes for very big prices where people barely stop to pass the time of the day. Where people exist side by side as virtual strangers.

I understand the reason for that. Most of the folks are attracted here by the bay and the ocean and the golf courses; it is a retirement area anyway they try to spell it.

And most people have accumulated their money and want to live behind big fences with nobody out there trying to take it away. And there is a lot of money sequestered out here…

Mostly, people don’t want to be troubled with fund raising events, bashes, town events, or community efforts.

They just want to be left alone…

And I guess when you get to a certain age, that’s understandable.

So, people who buy the area for the memories are going to find that while it’s still great, they’ve come up short-changed….

It’s like buying a book because it has a great cover and then discovering that the story leaves a lot to be desired.

Celebration on the other hand is quite different. Yes, most of the folks are rich enough to afford the big homes and the high prices…. They are either retired or mostly work from home and they sing Celebration’s benefits as they see them.

In case you didn’t know, this is the town that Disney built.

But even here, it reminds me of that movie about this guy trying to make his way in the town only later discovering he’s living in an elaborate set where the sun is turned on and night means turning the switches off.

I get the same kind of feeling from Celebration. Things are too pat; too predictable to give it any real zest.

Moreover, the producers made a big mistake. They produced a documentary which featured citizens who talk about the town and what they do.

They shouldn’t have.

I found it exceedingly depressing.

It seemed that all of the people in town reminded me of those folks who live along the Yellow Brick road. They all remind me of munchkins.

They are sadly preoccupied with one thing: themselves, the mark they want to leave on society, their pedestrian and boring jobs and a host of other things that would give most of us the yawns.

The sad wrap up could be expressed in one word: Caricature.

I would really hate to live in Celebration; it characterizes all of the things I hate about small towns; the people who have nothing to do but talk about each other, who are so boring that you have to pinch yourself to stay awake.

In New York, where I lived most of my life, I start learning about the city when I was eight. There was no crime to speak of and my mother worked, leaving me to embark on a voyage of discovery whenever I finished school. It allowed me the freedom to discover new things every day and meet people I never would have met otherwise. I always looked at the simple act of walking down the street as an adventure. And I was curious about everything. In that respect, I feel sorry today for my grand-children living in a world where everything is closely programmed and kids where helmets when they ride a bike. In the olden days, nobody had a helmet and if you wore one, you were likely to get beaten up; nevertheless, it was the best that life could be.

Knowing what I know, I can only express my deepest sorry for the kind of world where there are cameras watching what you are doing, computers that are tapped into by government agencies to learn the habits of citizens, and Google that can keep track of all your misadventures.

Yes, I long for the good old days when I could disappear for the day and nobody would miss me til around dinner time.

It was a time you could explore new vistas, learn about the insects if you were so inclined, watch a flower grow, go to the museum and learn something about a frog, or go to a museum and read about Alice having lunch with a rabit.

Those were times you not only got to learn about the world, you got to also learn about yourself.

Too bad the kids will never know about it.

Les Aaron