Cityside Countryside!

Our book today is a delightful little oddity from 1980: Cityside Countryside, subtitled “A Journey to Two Places.” It’s a collection of columns by two talented journalists: Nathan Cobb, then a features writer for The Boston Globe, and John Cole, the co-founder and then-editor of the Maine Times, and the columns act in dialogue with each other telling the old familiar ‘town mouse/country mouse’ story that was old long before the Roman poet Horace immortalized it. Cobb was born in the country and left it to live in the heart of Boston, and Cole was born in the heart of the city and left it to live outside of Brunswick, Maine – and that juxtaposition, that each left the other’s chosen world, turned into the kernel of this book. It’s an eternal divide, of course – some people prefer the peace and quiet of the country, others can’t do without the buzzy activity of the city. I myself side with the city (I chuckle at Law & Order‘s Lennie Briscoe commenting on New Hampshire: “I spent a year there one weekend”), but only half-heartedly – Boston has tall buildings and a scary subway, but it also turns into a pumpkin every night at 12:01 (and has been electing the same mush-mouthed yokel mayor for the last hundred years, just like Mayberry). And I’ve enjoyed more bucolic country intervals than I can count, a guest in lovely houses everywhere from Tuscany to Truro.

So I can nod with quick identification when Cole rhapsodises on the Nature-driven satisfactions of small-town rural living:

It is now that April is here that we must see that debt repaid. With the sun assured of more than twelve hours in the heavens, this Yankee latitude is assured of some April days of honest warmth. Those are the days when gardening plans dominate every thought, the times when canvas covers are peeled from boats, sandpaper is acquired along with the sudden realization that there is a host of spring chores to be completed before the joys of summer can be harvested.

New Englanders know these April mornings. As soon as the sun rises, it brings the softness of spring. As soon as you step out the door, you are overwhelmed with the evidence of gentler days. Whenever I find the most tenuous April evidence, I go bouncing around the soggy lawn, bring down a pair of oars from the barn rafters, stop at the hardware store for more marine paint (forgetting in my euphoria that there are two half-cans left from last April) and spend most of my time at the office thinking about being at home.

But at the same time, the faux hayseed-hauteur of some countrified people gets my hackles up, so I identify just as quickly with Cobb’s hilarious defensiveness, his reluctant membership in that particular phylum of city-defenders, the Urbanis apologensia. “We do not even give you a chance to slide into your routine before we shuffle into ours,” he tells us:

“Say,” someone will open, “I understand you live in Boston, and …”

My warning antennae buzz. “Yes,” I reply quickly. “Small car. Never been mugged. No kids. Red Sox. Step around the dog mess.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That’s right. Drive against the commuter traffic. Ritz bar. Your taxes are just as high. Dirty streets in other towns, too. Walking distance. Noise isn’t as bad as you think. Good restaurants.”

“But…”

“No buts. Great museums. The Public Gardens. More drugs in your kid’s school than in my whole neighborhood. Esplanade. Problem is Massachusetts drivers, not Boston drivers. It may be screwed up, but it’s the oldest subway in America.”

“Hey, I’m …”

“Give them a quarter, they’re harmless. Grocery shopping in the North End. No one forces you to go into a strip joint. You don’t think there are hookers in the suburbs? Gas lamps on Beacon Hill. I don’t like tall buildings, either.”

Hee. And the debate goes on …