Heritage

Tonight, with all the tongue in cheek talk of Ruston's doom, I am stuck with the memories of some of our town's strong personalities. Tall, lanky, outspoken Owen Gallagher with his 'Tiny Tim' by his side, equally as outspoken Mary Joyce who ran for mayor long before it was acceptable for a woman to lead this small town, Leo Wingard and his ever-present tape recorder at council meetings.

We have new strong personalities now - ones who have not been seeped in our history, who look at our past with amusement and maybe a sense of shame and relief that we are not the dirty, roughnecked, blue-collar town we once were. They are the ones that will lead us to a new golden era of clean dirt, upper class utopia that this village with such nice water views deserve. But without any appreciation for who we once were, it seems the only way they can achieve this utopia is to destroy any reminder of the past. Maybe that's why disbanding the fire department is so important.

It's the memory of Owen and Tim, of Leo and even of Mary that makes me want to fight to preserve this town. The latest battle is the fire department, next they want to change the very structure of the town's government and strip the mayor of any authority. The contributors to this blog understand what we have to loose - if only in hard dollars and safety. We understand the deeper sense of identity, of home and heritage we had hoped to pass on to our grandchildren. That memory of Tiny Tim, along with a desire for my granddaughter to know the same Ruston, are the reason I will somehow find the energy to keep fighting. And the reason I want to share more of our heritage with all the new faces in town.

What are your memories? What part of our hertitage is important to pass on?