Politics and Weird Weather

The picture above is in the morning after an interesting night of weather, one that K and I have never experienced before. K and I were warming ourselves by our woodstove watching some TV, when I heard that familiar sound of the plow crackling down our sandy road. A few minutes later, I heard it again, then again. I turned to K and said, “Is that the plow?” She turned, looked out the window and the sky lit up reflecting on all the snow on the ground and the snow flurries that had been coming down all day and night long. We couldn’t believe it.

We were having a thunder and lightning show while it was snowing. That is the first time in our lives that we have ever experienced thunder and lightning in February and when it’s snowing outside. Is it just us, or is that really unusual?

In other news, we were both mentioned on TV. That’s right, we are famous. Of course, our names were omitted. We were referred to as “The young couple who moved to town from Boston.”

Here’s the full story of why and in what context we were mentioned on TV.
Once upon a time, Bridgton used to be an economic powerhouse (slight exaggeration — this means they had a few mills and some other manufacturing plants and people had jobs). Anyway, the mills all closed, and the town has never recovered. So the town is trying to get businesses to come here, and this is where it gets interesting.

The town did get a business to bite, and that business is McDonald’s. Ya baby, that’s right, we might get a McDonald’s. Man oh man…think about all those delicous JOBS we all can get now that the mills have closed and McDonald’s is coming to town. Awesome. I bet you get a free meal when you work a full day. Of course, not everyone is that excited about McDonald’s coming to town. The townsfolk were ready for a fight, they got petitions signed, wrote to the local newspaper, and finally got some town ordinances to be voted on in March.

And Tuesday was the day that Bridgtonites showed up to a public hearing to say their piece on the subject and it was televised on our local cable channel. We watched for four hours as people got up and spoke for or against big-box retail and chain restaurants coming to the town. The arguments for it is that if we pass laws against chains like McDonald’s then no businesses will want to come here and that we need jobs. The arguments against it are that our town needs to remain unique to attract visitors, that McDonald’s and other big chains would hurt the small privately owned businesses in town and, in general, would hurt the image of our quaint little town.

And why we were mentioned. We happened to be in a local store browsing some things last weekend, and the owner talked to us about the meeting and urged us to show up. We did not, but honestly, we wish we had. At any rate, she quoted us saying that if big-box stores come to this town, then we might be moving farther north.

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