The population in the village of Cambridge, NY is about 1900 people. There is one traffic light. There is one school building that houses all students from K-12. From the western edge of the village to the eastern edge is not much more than a mile.
I live in the village of Cambridge. On most weekend mornings my wife and I take our dog for a long walk through town. The village is very walker-friendly. There are plenty of sidewalks, little traffic and the streets are laid out in a grid that lets us take different routes if we want to get a change of scenery on a particular morning.
On a recent morning we went for a walk and took Main St all the way from a block past our house to the traffic light in the middle of town and back. During our walk we saw about a dozen people that we know. These are people who live in town that we know in one form or another. They could be neighbors, friends, or people we coached with in Little League. If these folks were in cars we gave them a wave. If they were also walking we had a brief conversation or just gave them a big hello from across the street as we passed.
None of this is unusual when we walk through town. In the past couple of months we have had many different conversations. We had a conversation with a friend of ours who was talking to us through the window over her kitchen sink while we stood in her yard. We have been stopped on the road by an electrician with whom we were trying to coordinate some work to be done. He saw us walking and figured it was easier to stop there than to try and call us on the phone. One morning we saw a suspicious looking van parked by the side of the road. We were thinking about reporting it until we got closer and saw that the guy on the phone in the front seat was our friend Dave. We didn’t recognize the van because he just got a new roof rack.
I don’t know if this stuff happens when other people walk their dog through their town that may have more than one traffic light. I hope it does. The places where we live feel much better if we are able to connect with our neighbors. If I’m not feeling great when I first start out on my walk with my wife and my dog, once I get a couple of waves returned and some hearty good mornings from my neighbors, I tend to forget all about my worries. So if you see me walking my dog down the street in Cambridge, please give me a wave or call to me out your window. I bet it helps you feel good and you will help put a smile on my face.
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