Today a most delightful surprise gift arrived. I don't always pick up my mail every day so this very, very thoughtful person was probably wondering if the delightful surprise gift had gotten lost in the mail. The surprise gift was a CD with some of the finest Hillbilly music to ever land in my ears. My toes jumped to life with tapping and a smile grew big upon hearing the first uproarious note. I am going to enjoy this so much. The music and kindness blend with perfect pitch.

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After Bex's story about whelks, I got to thinking about the town where I grew up. (There are photos below.) I'm a Yankee by birth from Northport, Long Island, New York. It's a small villagey type of town. I believe the population stabilized at around 7,500 about the time I was in elementary school - 60 years ago.

When I was growing up, Northport was a veritable melting pot of ethnicities. George Jenson, the Swede, had a butcher shop. The Greeks owned the Sweet Shop where hamburgers were flipped and candy sold from a long glass case, which was always smudgy from hands and pressed noses. It was a BIG deal just about every Saturday to walk to town and stand in front of the candy case at The Greeks. Lou Loggia, of Italian descent, had a small market with fruit and vegetable baskets out front when weather permitted. My family was hard scrapple Irish. My daddy and his daddy and his daddy's daddy plumbed for a living. My dad is now 86 and still one of the most beloved people of Northport. His house calls were as important as the house calls doctors used to make back then. While growing up it never occurred to me the privileged window of time I experienced. I now realize it was idyllic. It was still an era when children went trick or treating with wild and joyful abandon and Girl Scouts went door to door and the milkman delivered glass bottles to a metal case on our front stoop and the bread man came by twice each week and the Fuller Brush man wooed all the housewives with his wares and the mailman walked and delivered mail twice each day! It was such a different time, wasn't it?

The Northport I knew was a small town, but it was close enough to NYC to be a bedroom community for a very few. I'm not certain, but I think most of the residents are now commuters. Northport now pretends to be a small town, but it's an extremely pricey, somewhat elite destination - nothing like the Hamptons, mind you, but pricey and extraordinarily beautiful.

Main Street still has the original trolley tracks and the storefronts have been meticulously maintained with historical integrity. The Victorian styled mansions that run along the water have been lavishly restored to the grandeur of their origins when Northport was a shipbuilding village with shipbuilding tycoons. For all of this I'm glad. I'm so grateful that the community has sought to retain as much of the original, honest charm. Quite a few of the shops and markets of my childhood are still on Main Street. I know for certain that The Greeks are still in business, but many of the shops have succumbed to our Big Box culture and Main Street is now home to cute boutiques and such for the tourist trade which I've heard is brisk.

I have so much I could write about Northport and perhaps will periodically. I'm tired tonight - I think I've worn myself out with all the hilarity and toe-tapping with Kasey Chambers. *smiles*