Main Street & the Mayberry Lifestyle

The television show Seinfeld, featuring the comedy of Jerry Seinfeld, has cemented its place in American Culture, with its iconic characters, usually involved something trivial (or as Jerry Seinfeld would say “A show about nothing”) but that usually happens to us at sometime in our lives. 

One of the later and I think most colorful, secondary characters added to the show was J. Peterman, the owner of his namesake business, where the main female character, Elaine Benish, is employed.  Peterman is portrayed as a verbose entrepreneur that sells high end clothes.  Portrayed by John O’Hurley, whose distinctive voice and diction made his portrait of the character, I assumed Peterman was just a figment of the screen writer's imagination.  But J. Peterman exists as does a company bearing his name and his wonderful essays are very much in character with ultra descriptive, somewhat approaching the verbose, almost catalog sales pitch descriptions O'Hurley's character gives on the show.

The real life J. Peterman has mastered writing and the art of description in a way that could be best described as the way an old school radio personality (e.g. Paul Harvey) could.  Using words, he paints a picture that even a blind person could recognize.  It takes someone with a VERY GOOD GRASP of words, to describe a scene in such a way that you don't need any visual interpretation "to see" what they are describing.

Here's a perfect example of the descriptive capabilities of Peterman (and maybe his staff) from the "Peterman's Eye" page of the J. Peterman website, simply entitled Main Street.

A 200-mile trip might take the average person six or seven hours. I’ve been known to do it in three days. That’s because I always take the alternate route, otherwise known as Main Street, USA.

With the collection of Home Depots, Wal-Marts and Targets lining the highways, you could be anywhere. But you always know where you are when you’re on Main Street, whatever the actual name of the street may be. I’ve also found that the nice thing about traveling on Main Street is that one seems to leads to another.

Unfortunately, some aren’t what they used to be.  But some are. In many towns, “the diner” is still on the corner where it has been for 30 years. There’s Sal’s Barber Shop, and now Sal Jr. has the first chair. The hardware store is a good place to talk about plaster screws for a few hours. There’s the local version of Starbucks, where you don’t have to pay $6 for a latte. And if you forget your wallet anywhere on Main Street, someone will send out an APB looking for you.

For more of the local color, you can look at those ubiquitous corkboards, with notes tacked to them announcing important things. Like the all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast at the firehouse. Or a church rummage sale. Or one man’s crusade to save the American Elm. That hardy breed of statuesque trees lined many Main Streets with a graceful, arching beauty – until urban development and a sudden epidemic took care of them.

If you dally too long on Main Street, you end up talking to strangers – who now feel like friends – and lose all track of time. Don’t worry. Just consider the $15 parking ticket as a contribution to an American way of life well worth preserving.

Some Main Streets are quite resilient. They’ve survived Sinclair Lewis’s “Main Street,” Grace Metalious’s “Peyton Place,” and Frank Capra’s “Bedford Falls.” People gossip everywhere. The only difference in a small town is that everyone knows whom you’re gossiping about – and that kind of makes it more intimate.

What really makes Main Street special is its intimacy. Even if you never lived near one, you feel it right away. And there’s a certain comfort in knowing that this is a place that hasn’t changed much.

For my next excursion, I have my eyes on the Lincoln Highway. About 3,400 miles, coast to coast. It has been called “The Main Street Across America.”

I’ve taken parts of it, but have never made the entire trip. Is there anyone out there who has?

The description of this non-specific place reminds me of the towns in which my parents grew up, that I visited to see my grand-parents.  There was the main drag.  It would have drug stores, banks, the county courthouse, gas stations at each end, a Liquor Store, Pharmacies and Grocery Stores on it.  Some even had the local Doctor's office on it.  There were usually Railroad Tracks parallel to the Main Street.  The towns weren't very "wide," with 5 or six streets paralleling each side of the main drag, before you got to the city limits.  They tended to be "long," stretching a couple of miles down that main drag, slowly fading into the rural surroundings.  Everyone knows everyone else.  Life seems to move at a slower pace.  And like my wife's family, when they moved across the mountain into western Pennsylvania, they were the "new folks in town" even when they had moved there 10 years ago.  

It seems magical, even mythical.  This was life for most of Americans many years ago.  Like the Legendary town of Mayberry, NC, there were the "characters" that made the town complete.  In my Dad's town, there was a World War II veteran, who'd get drunk and race his Twin-H Carbureted Hudson Hornet through the town.  There was the town Doctor, one of those medical geniuses, who decided NOT to be a surgeon, but Instead a general practitioner., His Nurse, was a single Mom, when it was scandalous to be one.  There were Successful Farmers, Mechanical Geniuses, and there was even the kid that thought he'd outrun the local Sheriff, only to find him in his driveway, nonchalantly talking with his Daddy on the side porch, as he pulled into his driveway.  There were revival preachers who held Camp Meetings to include the late James Brown (!!!) and friends and family who worked in the local Mill.  

It was a slice of America, served up with all of its goodness and hard times.  This seems like a good place to live and a place to which I'd want to retire.  And it will be, in the future.