Our Town Meeting

THANKFUL we are, up here in the hills, that our town, with its two thousand voters, is still small enough to stage a real New England town meeting. To be sure, all the two thousand can’t begin to get into the ‘opera house,’ but enough are on hand when the Moderator’s gavel calls the meeting to order to fill every seat and to crowd all standing room. We are having an important session this year.

It is an interesting lot of people that fills the little hall: farmers with their boots on (and mud on the boots), tradesmen, gentlemen of leisure, college professors, artisans; Irish and French Canadians and Italians, maybe a Pole or two, but mostly AngloSaxons of the old stock of New England.

The Moderator, an admirable official who, outside of town meeting, is professor of English in our college, bangs down his gavel promptly at 2 P.M., and the meeting starts off with Article 1 on the warrant. Up in the front seats are a group of ‘leading citizens’ who introduce most of the business and argue on the motions — Selectmen, members of the Finance and School Committees, and officials of the college. Our Selectmen have a spokesman of force and suavity, and our Finance Committee a representative full of ginger. Debate never lags when either of these gentlemen has the floor.

That brilliant Frenchman who has sketched the American scene in America Comes of Age tells us that without the Irish our atmosphere ’might have been too heavy to breathe.’ For all the closed windows (it is February and a snowstorm threatens outside), the atmosphere of town meeting in our opera house is never too heavy to breathe. Among our citizens of Irish blood are several who can rock the gallery with laughter. Eloquence comes natural to them, and to-day the Moderator has now and then to stop its flow.

‘Mr. Moderator, I object. Mr. O’Shaughnessy ain’t speakin’ to the motion.’

‘Mr. O’Shaughnessy, I request that you confine your remarks to the motion before the house.’

‘Well, Mr. Moderator’ (in as finished and musical a brogue as ever came over the radio), ‘may n’t I have time to round out me speech?’

‘Better square it off, John,’ retorts the Moderator, and Mr. O’Shaughnessy subsides amid gales of merriment.

Then there is Yankee wit to match the Hibernian. ‘Now, Mr. Moderator, as I was a-sayin’, they don’t hev to hev any sewer at all up to Doctor Brook. Next winter, when the snow comes agin, them smells won’t bother ’em — look, it’s rainin’ naow.’

Mr. Mooney of the Doctor Brook section, who happens also to be a town sewer commissioner, vigorously demurs to this line of argument, and a general and somewhat heated discussion ensues, finally terminated by a vote to let the Doctor Brook matter lie over until next year.

So article after article comes up, withi a chance for every citizen present to take a hand. ‘To see if the town’ will add some two hundred acres to the Town Forest (favorable action is modestly urged by one of the owners of the land). Voted ‘No,’ for this is economy year. ‘To see if the towrn’ will allow its cemetery commissioners to buy, with the commission’s own reserve funds, an attractive property next to Cedar Grove. Voted ‘Yes,’ for this won’t add a penny to the taxes. Somebody thinks of the New England villager who explained to a visitor that the new cemetery would ‘look better when there’s more in it,’ but this does n’t get to the floor.

Finally, with most of the appropriations out of the way, discussion returns to Article 21, ‘to see if the towrn will raise and appropriate a sum of money to be used for repairs to the high-school building.’ And here the trouble begins, and lasts until supper time, for the Finance Committee recommends the sum of $2500, while the School Committee asks for $125,000!

It seems that our old high-school building is deficient in fire escapes, and that its third floor in particular is a dangerous place for the scholars. Somebody gets up to state that there is n’t nearly enough fire insurance on the high-school building, anyway, whereat an irate mother jumps up and asks, ‘How about fire insurance on the children?’

Finally, the elaborate plans for alterations are snowed under, and a committee is appointed to see how the really essential work can be accomplished at a minimum cost, and report later on. Good practical people, these New Englanders!

Twilight is gathering when the session has ended, and people file out on the street to pile into their waiting cars. Now the tellers will get to work, counting the 1600-odd ballots that have been cast at the polls on the opera-house ground floor, and by ten o’clock we shall know all about the elections — who has won the contests for Town Clerk, for Selectman, and for the School Committee. Telephones will buzz all over town, and tomorrow a new year of town government will be begun.

It was well that our Moderator, in opening this year’s meeting, called attention to the historic significance of the institution. Long ago the foundations of our town government were laid at a meeting of ‘proprietors’ held in the blockhouse of our local fort, put up as a refuge from the enemy in the French and Indian Wars; and ever since the citizens of our hill town have practised here those principles of self-government in the home, in the church, and in the town which have ‘made’ not only New England, but those great communities across the breadth of the continent whose spiritual traditions trace back to our old colonies by the Atlantic.

TALCOTT MINER BANKS