I just started writing about Placerville one day––personal essays. Here I am living in New York, the biggest and most exciting city in American and I am feeling nostalgic for small town life. I'm not sure if I would actually survive living in a small town again. I mean, I need the theatre, ballet, international restaurants, concerts, art house cinemas and all the rest that comes with metropolitan life. And yet, I do like to visit the small towns and my hometown of Placerville, California was a great example of what it means to live and grow up in small town America. So, I started writing about Main Street and went on from there and then didn't know what to do with these essays. Perhaps after about twenty chapters I'll do a nice little book. Maybe some of the stories will be attractive to certain magazines. Maybe they'll just sit here on this blog, but at least they'll be in the universe. Most of us that grew up in a small town wanted to get out and here I am 3000 miles away in New York––I really got out. At my last high school reunion I won the award for traveling the longest distance to be at the reunion.
My parents are still in the same old house in Placerville, so I do go back from time to time and both enjoy and mourn all the changes. There seems to be a lot more people in the area and signs of growth, but a lot of Placerville retains the same small town world, embracing its Gold Rush history and keeping up the traditions of Main Street parades, Christmas decorations, county fairs and apple pie (literally).
Read on and go back, just for a little while.
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