College students get a bad rap in Boston for not understanding that they are part of a broader community (see Boston City Council, clods serving on, for more information). I won’t delve into the merits of this debate now, save that I would think that a sane person would question how a city can house thousands and thousands of college students who frequent local businesses but still find a way not to play a role in the community at large.
While I clearly disagree with some of the rationale behind the case against students, I do agree that many students — especially here at Boston University, where, despite being called a city campus, we aren’t really downtown like Emerson is — are familiar with Boston only in a limited and surprisingly homogenous way.
This past weekend, I found out that I had been limiting my own view of Boston. There is a reason, though, that I and probably many others do not tend to adopt a more expansive view of the city: lack of a car. Cars are expensive, often intentionally so, to maintain in cities. I generally don’t disagree with this state of affairs, for reasons practical, aesthetic and environmental.
Still, I couldn’t help but be reminded on Saturday that there exists a world beyond public transportation — a world not dependent on departure times and transfers and seat puddles that smell like urine and look like urine but somehow turn out to be a mixture of hobo blood and Colt 45 beer. (Name That Stain is actually a fun game you can play with your friends when you’re on the T; you get extra points for creating your own and then challenging other riders.)
Over the semester, I had even started to get used to thinking of places on the commuter rail as just another extension of the city. If the MBTA gets me to a place from Boston, then from the place back into the city, and all in a relatively reliable, efficient manner, then by golly that place must somehow be a part of Boston. Or so went the chain of thoughts in my head. Not the most sensible thinking, I know, but I’m still one up on whoever designed the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
I had some errands to run, not the least of which is to write about the delights of traveling just outside of Boston, encumbered by nothing but exorbitant gas prices. The other major errand I was on was to head to Stoughton to pick up a duvet and cover for the winter. I won’t say which of the gargantuan furniture chains I ended up buying from — Bob’s, Jordan’s — but you’re more than welcome to take a guess. My duvet is named the Mysa MOLN, and the duvet cover apparently likes to be called KILAN. Also, I picked up a package of Fliegastórnja light bulbs, or whatever the heck it was called. I don’t know if that helps narrow it down for you; really, it could still be any place.
The destination wasn’t nearly as important, though, as how we got there. My driver friend and I were going south along I-93 when he pointed out some cattails off the passenger side. He’d been on the road a lot, but never really been able to check out the scenery.
This was a shame for him because I found the scenery to be striking, almost breathtaking, and not at all what I was expecting to see. The golden field of cattails and scattered houses erased any expectations I’d had of seeing nothing but scattered industrial outposts.
Another five minutes passed, and we noticed a bridge that looked like it had been left sitting there quietly untouched since the early 20th century. I wish I could give more specific directions on how to find these sights, but our 70 mph transit speed precluded me from keeping any serious track of various locations.
But more importantly, it shouldn’t matter where you go. If you ever have the opportunity to get a car for a few days, go anywhere, as long as it’s away from downtown. There are probably a lot of interesting old bridges within an hour or so of the city, if that’s your thing.
Over the past month, I traveled to places that made me consider or reconsider the “city experience”: Boston by tour; New York by foot; the suburbs by car. Whether I unconsciously realized it at the time or not, I think each week has evolved my overall outlook. I never knew that driving around Stoughton, Natick, Framingham and Newton could be so formative, but I no longer think of excursions away from the city as means for a time out rather than ends in and of themselves.
Once, when my parents visited me at college, we drove out to Norwood, where they lived for a good amount of time and, for whatever reasons, I might possibly have ended up spending my childhood (they ended up returning to Philadelphia, lots of other stuff happened and last year I found myself offering futile support for the Eagles instead of the Patriots; this is pretty much the extent of my life so far).
We stopped in a small store my mom used to work at so they could visit the owners, a husband and wife. The husband was in, and remembered my parents from decades ago with a clarity that belied his hoary appearance.
We live and go to school not only in Boston, but also in New England. If you have the means, you owe it to yourself and to those idiot councilors to try broadening your definition of community to something beyond “Oh yeah, I get lost around off-campus west all the time when I’m drunk.”
And if intercommunity relationship-building sounds too hokey for you, then at the very least you might consider picking up an efficiently designed, mass-produced Flytta kitchen cart.