Like a lot of small towns in America, my little village of Nowell-by-the-Sea was a poorly planned accident. The only difference is that the buildings average about eight inches in height.
The accident started when my wife sent me to a department store in November and I happened to find that they had their Christmas decorations marked half off. (They wanted to clear the stuff out to make room for the Valentine’s candy.)
On the display of tiny ceramic buildings, electric bulbs glowed warmly through plastic windows, casting light across the cotton-wool snow. Miniature plaster people stood in their winter best admiring a spiky Christmas tree festooned with over-sized gold garland. My breath caught in my throat and the guy part of my brain said, “This is just like being mayor of your very own town.”
That was completely untrue, of course, but when I got home I showed my wife the beginnings of a brand new holiday tradition.
I’d chosen four buildings; a church (the spiritual center of the town and the season), a house (so there would be people to go to the church), a lighthouse (because it was cool) and a train station (so I’d have an excuse to buy a train).
My bride was skeptical about her new role as the mayor’s wife and even more doubtful about my abilities in the area of civic planning.
“Where are you going to put it?” she asked.
“Um…” I looked around for likely real estate and exercised my right of eminent domain. “Here, on the back of the piano. We’ll just store your parent’s picture away for the next few weeks.”
“Uh-huh.” She didn’t try to stop me (at the point neither a citizen’s petition or a court order would have done any good).
Now my problem was population…or rather lack of it. The only people in my village were permanently glued inside the little buildings and could only be glimpsed in passing through the windows. So I did what most mayors do. I bought more people. Except I didn’t have to fuss with tax incentives, I just went back to the store and plucked packages of plaster figures from the half-off rack.
My village had three major population groups – sailors, children and nuns. Where did the kids all come from? My best guess was that the nuns operate an orphanage somewhere else in the living room; maybe near the grandfather clock. The kids needed some parents, darn it! So I bought more people.
In less than four hours my village went from non-existence to a booming metropolis of twenty-three souls. And yet they had no where to eat. A restaurant of some kind seemed to be in order. I settled on a coffee shop.
While I was buying and building, my wife elected herself as the entire City Council and drafted bylaws which granted her final approval on all new buildings. After a brief and energetic discussion in the Council Chambers (a.k.a. our kitchen) it was decided that Nowell-by-the-Sea wasn’t going to get any larger that year.
The next Fall I embarked on a campaign of urban renewal and expansion. In the real world you can’t make more land, but in my little village that was no problem. A sheet of plywood allowed me to double the available real estate. (This had a negative impact on the existing property values and lowered my imaginary tax base, but sometimes you gotta break a few eggs.)
When the City Council was distracted with other decorating, I authorized the construction of four new nautically-themed buildings. The existence of a lighthouse implied that the village must be near the water. The only way to grow the economy of Nowell-by-the-Sea was to capitalize its location. My new buildings included a boat manufacturer, a yacht club, a maritime supply store, and a chowder stand. My bold experiment in civic planning worked and I attracted two dozen more residents…who ate more than the coffee shop could provide and needed somewhere to live. I added a bakery/tea shop and a hotel. Things were booming!
The City Manager (my wife had disbanded the Council and assigned herself a new role) pointed out that my efforts had exhausted the city treasury, but who cared! My city was growing!
There was one small tragedy. I’d been careless in getting the chowder stand. The photo on the package showed a patron standing beside the stand, playing with a comical stray cat that clearly wanted to steal his food. My chowder stand lacked the the patron. Some horrible accident had ripped him from the scene, leaving only the cat and the stumps of his feet. What had been a heart-warming holiday vignette was now more Norman Bates than Normal Rockwell. A call to the manufacturer yielded a new, intact chowder stand complete with patron. The old one remains in my basement. It seems somehow disrespectful to throw it out.
Each year when they release the new buildings I identify the five or six (or seven or eight or nine) that count as “must have” and meet with the Governor (my wife has gotten another promotion) to settle on which will be added and which passed by. I’m pleased to report we now have two bookstores, a pub, an acting studio, a pet shop, a carousel, a second lighthouse, a sailing academy, a boat, a seaside bed-and-breakfast, and (the newest addition) a live theater. Counting all of the sailors, nuns, children, parents, and random other folks the population is approaching one hundred. There’s still only one house, but property values are through the roof so all of my little citizens have to live somewhere else and commute to work. And, somehow, I’ve never gotten around to adding the train.
Maybe next year … if I can get the president to agree.
