The town was a normal sized town, with normal people. People who went about their days doing normal things. They ate normal food and had normal conversations with each other. The climate wasn’t too hot or too cold, but rather… normal.

 

No, no, no. That’s not how the story begins, it was different…

 

It was a dark, cold place, where friends were hard to find. The city seemed to have a wall around it, though those things were rather uncommon in those days. Yes, the wall was imaginary, but one that was very real to its inhabitants and to those who entered. For people in our town did not like outsiders. They did not even really like themselves. This was an uncommon place indeed.

 

No! Too dark! Somewhere in between… What was the name of it again? Meadowviewville! Yes, that’s it. Let’s begin.

 

Meadowviewville was a city once. It lies on the coast of Lake Ontario, which as you might recall, is one of the Great Lakes. This fact gave comfort to the residents of our fair city. I will be using town and city interchangeably, by the way. For in some residents’ minds it’s a city, while others affectionately describe it as “provincial.”

 

In order to reach our town, you must travel far away. The road winds through trees and mountains. Past valleys cut by long shallow lakes that resembled the icicles that grow in the winter. It was a good distance from any town in New York State, though I know that is hard to believe as an outsider. You see, New York State is much larger and more vast than to encompass only the city which bears its namesake. There are a great number of little metropolises beyond the reach of “The City”. The City shall not be named, because in these parts it is not relevant. No, around Meadowviewville the important names were Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Binghamton, among others. Names that reflected an earlier part of this nation’s glory, but presently were greatly diminished.

To start the city center is located just east of a small river called Oak Orchard River. The latitude is 43 degrees, 20 minutes and 22 seconds, with a longitude of -78 degrees, 11 minutes and 25 seconds to be precise. North Meadowviewville is, as the name suggests, the northern part of Meadowviewville and is about a mile north of the city center. Meadowviewville is the name of our fair city, and indeed, should you travel throughout the city limits all quadrants, or boroughs you could say, share the same police, fire, and emergency services. All are governed by the same Mayor, the Honorable Adolfus T Dinwiddy VI, whose family can trace their heritage back to the founding fathers of Meadowviewville back in 1795. However each section of the city has their own elementary, middle and high schools, as well as their own little versions of a town center. Each is also bisected by a boulevard named after its quadrant, which in turn has become almost like a main street. So for example, the main road in North Meadowviewville is North Meadowviewville Boulevard, in South Meadowviewville it is South Meadowviewville Boulevard, and so on.

As I alluded to earlier, this city seemed normal. At least, normal to the residents of Meadowviewville. To start, there were five quadrants. Again I must reinforce that this is normal to the residents of Meadowviewville, even though the very definition of a quadrant is a quarter. I digress. The five quadrants of Meadowviewville were North Meadowviewville, South Meadoviewville, East Meadowviewville, West Meadowviewville, and Delhi. Apparently when the city was created, an appropriate number of four quadrants was proposed. However at that time, there was a fad among growing cities to name themselves after places of interest in the Old World. Since the consensus had already been given that the town was to be named Meadowviewville, no one was in the mind to change it. But some convincing founding father spoke up, and said that he had read in a book of a wonderful city in India called Delhi, which, as he proposed, was rich and powerful and that it would be a strong addition to the township should the council deliberating its naming endorse it.

The council did not endorse naming their city Delhi, however, since the nameless founding father who proposed the measure was the owner of the tavern in which they were all meeting, they agreed to a fifth quadrant called “Delhi”. There is one thing that the reader should note that the accent of Meadowviewville is quite unique, and since no one actually knew how to pronounce Delhi, it was, and forever has been, spoken as del-high.

 

Odd views on basic mathematical and grammatical concepts aside, the people of Meadowsviewville were fairly diverse for being in the hinterlands of the New York countryside. This was a result of a view in Meadowsviewville that large and important cities should have ethnic neighborhoods. So throughout it’s history it encouraged immigrants to reside within it’s borders and enticed them with jobs and economic opportunity, neither of which ended up materializing right away. But regardless, it worked, and as each immigrant group came, was disappointed, and integrated, so they played the joke on the next group. The freed slaves from the south were encouraged to stay on their way to Canada via the underground rail road. They in turn, convinced the Irish to come and set up camp. Once the Irish were played, they fooled the Italians. The Italians conned the Jews. The Jews, ironically, fooled the Germans and Russians, who in turn continued the joke with the Vietnamese and Chinese. All the way until today where we find the many ethnic groups of Central and South America making their pilgrimage for the promise of prosperity.

 

Yes, Meadowviewvile would be an ethnic melting pot. But those stories are for another time. You see, in this town, there are many stories, as there are bound to be in a town so large. I could start by telling you about the young man in West Meadowviewville, who was so dead set on joining the Navy that he walked into the Marines office instead and found himself in a very different position that he anticipated when he arrived in Parris Island. Or we could start with Jorge Rodriquez, and his family of four boys. That family in and of itself might be a book. We will get to those and more, all in due time. I think it is appropriate to start us on our journey with an inspirational and humorous chronicle. People like those the best, regardless of what they say. So let’s begin.