Andrew D. Blechman - Leisureville: Adventures in America’s Retirement Utopias

Leisureville

Also by Andrew D. Blechman

Pigeons:
The Fascinating Saga of the Worlds Most
Revered and Reviled Bird

Adventures in Americas Retirement Utopias

Andrew D. Blechman

Copyright 2008 by Andrew D. Blechman

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

Note: Some characters names and other identifying information have been changed to protect their anonymity, and some scenes have been compressed for narrative purposes.

Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America

eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-5558-4844-6

Atlantic Monthly Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

Distributed by Publishers Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

For Erika and Lillie

PETER: Forget them, Wendy. Forget them all. Come with me where youll never, never have to worry about grown-up things again.

WENDY: Never is an awfully long time.

Peter Pan

.

Leisureville

IT WAS A TYPICALLY COLD, BLEAK FEBRUARY MORNING WHEN I LOOKED out the kitchen window and spotted a sign across the street on Dave and Betsy Andersons front lawn: For Sale. This came as a complete surprise; I had assumed the Andersonscheerful acquaintances and active members of our small-town communitywere neighborhood lifers. Hadnt they just retired? Werent they still in Florida celebrating their new freedom with a snowbird vacation?

People like the Andersons dont just pick up and leave, do they? And why would they want to go? We live in a small, traditional New England town, one that people pay good money to visit. Tourists travel from hours away to take in our bucolic vistas, marvel at our historic architecture, dine in our sophisticated restaurants, and partake in our enviable number of cultural offerings. Its a charming place to live, like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. In fact, Norman Rockwell once lived here.

Although we lived across the street from one another for about two years, the Andersons and I werent particularly close. We didnt barbecue together in the summer, or sit around the fireplace in the winter sipping cocoa. In fact, I dont think I ever invited them inside my home. But we were friendly. When I left town for a few weeks of family vacation the summer before, it was Dave who mowed my lawn, unsolicited. I had the mower running anyway, so I figured what the heck, he modestly explained.

Dave and I frequently toured each others yard, comparing notes about gardening and lawn care. His was immaculate, the lawn cut at a perfect ninety-degree angle to the house to soften the edges of his rectangular home. If a leaf fell, Dave was out there lickety-split with his leaf blower and preposterously large headphones. The shrubs were trimmed into perfect ovals, circles, and cones. Dave even tied a rope around his large pine tree and drew a tidy circle with it to mark the boundary between an acceptable accumulation of pine needles and a green lawn.

My yard, by comparison, was a far more haphazard work in progress. Dave started to take pity on me, stopping by to give occasional fatherly pep talks. Been a rough year for crabgrass, he remarked to me one summer day. Ive seen it all over town. Must be the hot weather. Despite my best efforts, huge, gnarly clumps of it had thundered across my lawn. I found his words somewhat soothing (Its not just me!) until I glanced across the street at his dense, verdant turf.

Over the course of these two summers, I also got to know Betsy. Whether Dave was methodically detailing his van or organizing his garage so that every tool had a proper perch, he moved with precision. But Betsy was a firecracker. She drove a candy-apple-red Mazda Miata, and waved energetically whenever our eyes met across the street. She was the one who loudly cheered me on as I shakily rode my new skateboard down our street. I appreciated her for that.

We were at different stages in our lives and seemingly had little in common. As the Andersons pondered retirement, my wife and I celebrated the birth of our first child. And the Andersons obsessively played one sport we had little interest in learning: golf. But this disparity of ages was one reason we had purchased a house in this particular neighborhood. The generational span seemed to add stability and was somehow endearing.

Besides, I just plain liked the Andersons. They were great neighbors: cheerful, low-maintenance, and reassuringly normal. That is why the sudden appearance of the For Sale sign threw me for a loop.

The Andersons didnt return until early April, during another frosty spring. I ran into Dave a few days later, while I was out shoveling my driveway yet again. I asked him about the sign and he said something about moving to sunny Florida. Frankly, with my boots and mittens full of wet snow, I didnt blame him, and I wished him the best of luck selling his house.

But arent you a little sad to be going? I asked.

Dave puffed on his pipe. His face was one big warm smile, childlike in its intensity. Nope.

Given the glut of houses on the marketthree on our street alonethe Andersons didnt sell right away, and so we spent another summer trading war stories about landscaping. One day Dave found me knee-deep in my shrubs, drenched in sweat, bugs swarming around my face, and my infant daughter perched on my back crying hysterically.

Hows it going? he asked.

I had spent the morning overseeding my lawn in an unpredictable wind, and most of the seed was now in the street. Then I stepped on the sprinkler and broke it.

Oh, not bad, I managed. And you? I got up and tried to shake his hand, but I was too busy swatting at bugs.

You know, they make a product that you spread on your lawn that takes care of all these gnats and flies, he suggested, offering me the use of his lawn spreader.

What does the lawn have to do with all these bugs? I asked, perplexed.

Well, thats where they come from, where they live. Havent you noticed?

The conversation soon turned to Daves imminent move. I still felt a little let down by his decision to move away so abruptly. Didnt he feel at least some regret? Werent he and Betsy going to miss strolling into town for dinner and waving to old friends along the way?

We never intended to leave the neighborhood, Andrew, he explained. As you know, Im not someone who makes rash decisions. But then we discovered The Villages. Its not so much that were leaving here as were being drawn to another place. Our hearts are now in The Villages.

The Villages? The name was so bland it didnt even register. All I could picture was a collection of English hamlets in the Cotswolds bound together by narrow lanes and walking trails. But I thought Dave had said they were moving to Florida.

Over the course of the summer, Dave cleared up my confusion. At first, his descriptions of The Villages were so outrageous, so over the top, that I figured he must have been pulling my leg. Then he started bringing me clippings from The Villages own newspaper. As I sat and read them, I was filled with a sense of comic wonder mixed with a growing alarm.