Next Stop, New Englandville

Three Rhode Island locations – all from South County - were chosen for Yankee Magazine’s 2013 January/February cover story, “New Englandville: The Town of Our Dreams.” In this Norman Rockwellian view of New England utopia, Dave’s Coffee of Charlestown, Allie’s Donuts of North Kingstown and the Alternative Food Co-op of Wakefield all make the cut. So where’s Daddy’s Bread (Matunuck), the self-serve bakery stand where people pay by the honor system, sometimes leaving IOUs to be squared during a later visit? Or Jim’s Dock (Jerusalem), a restaurant on a dock overlooking Salt Pond where customers park behind one another and leave their keys in their cars, in case departing diners need to move them? Or the Middle of Nowhere Diner (Exeter), which really is in the middle of nowhere? (The only way I ever find it is by getting lost.)

Today’s fog-shrouded morning would qualify for a day in New Englandville, along with those accompanying scenes of mute swans drifting in the mist, winter hawks visiting a newspaper building parking lot and wild turkeys sleeping off their dewy hangovers in front of a Portsmouth funeral home.

Let’s face it, here in New Englandville we enjoy our self-congratulatory excursions in idealizing and nostalgia. The continued existence of Yankee Magazine during an age when many glossy periodicals – Newsweek included – have gone the way of the carrier pigeon is proof of that. But the underlying truth of these kinds of stories is that we may over-celebrate what we believe is authentic about New England because we fear what we are losing, or perhaps what we are becoming. Throughout the six-state region, strip malls and tacky developments are replacing horse farms. Vermont country stores are as rare as Vermont covered bridges. Closer to home, Main Street in Wakefield – like Main Streets throughout New England – lost its fish market and village butcher shop. The former became a trendy wood-fired pizzeria. The latter has sat empty for over a year.

New developments try to create their own sense of New Englandville, turning open space into planned communities of shops and homes made of shingle or white clapboard, sprinkled with stonewalls and steeples, and intersected by roads named for the habitat, wildlife and landscape features they replaced. In my neighborhood, Lavin’s Marina (now Lighthouse Marina) is being developed into a small community called Lighthouse Cove. There is a lighthouse, way out there in Narragansett Bay, but you won’t be able to see it from the houses, which are blocked by other houses. But the marketing version of New England will always choose a lighthouse over a Lavin. Advertising will always go for the aura of authenticity rather than the real thing. There should be a word for that. Let’s call it fauxthentic.

What Rhode Island destination belongs in New Englandville?