They Heard It Through the Grapevine, or This Old Merryweather

But a change in the fortunes of moribund little Merryweaher came about ten or twenty years ago, from the too-predictable phenomenon which afflicts locales with any natural beauty, temperate weather, and a charming downtown district of old Progressive-era brick-and-mortar structures.  That is to say, over a nice Pinot picked up on her last winery-tour weekend, some chatterbox with plenty of money from undetermined sources ended up rhapsodizing to her friends about getting away from the rat-race through blissful self-exile to “the country.” 

En masse her nip-and-tuck friends (in the main generic specimens from the swirl-swish-and-swallow crowd) in turn convince their mates (who are too busy funding winery-tour weekends to think straight) that a migration to pastures new (or at least to property taxes lower) would be a Good Idea.

Thus came the gentrifying invasion of the chatterbox and her fellow semi-menopausal friends.  In their fresh-off-the-lot jacked-up SUVs, these grandmotherly barbarians charged into town like archers atop war elephants, armed with Sunset, Southern Living, Country Living, Country Home, French Country Style, Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, and/or Martha Stewart Living, not to mention the platinum edition DVD boxed-set of This Old House (complete with the Bob Vila action figures for the grandkids). 

In those exciting days of yore, those wildcatting hell-for-leather matriarchs—when not on weekend treasure hunts for vintage fixtures and period stained glass, or berry-picking to make that perfect Amish cobbler, followed up by a drumming circle at Barb’s—pushed through all that local legislation establishing strict noise and vagrancy laws, as well as founding both the Farmers and Saturday Markets, turning the local swamp into a wetland, establishing the Berryweather High Summer Fruit Festival, and requiring all of the parks to post informational signs about the prehistory of the long-gone native peoples. 

Due to their efforts, within ten years our Merryweather was sporting those neo-Arcadian necessities of a yoga studio, a Saab dealership, flower baskets hanging at every downtown intersection, and an organic bakery selling creations with no calories.  Meanwhile, the formerly dark and meditative hillsides ‘round about were scattered-o’er with housing developments like fast-food boxes dropped from the sky. 

That magical age of confusion and creation, however, ended about five years back when all the vineyards hereabouts were struck with bud blight, the winery-tour weekends slowed, and the real estate market flattened.  By then, however, Merryweather had settled into its current status as an upscale rural enclave.