Usually there would be thousands of students in the area but each school has significantly
scaled back or basically gone fully Zoom for pandemic academics. Amherst feels like a sleepy
college town with the iconic brew-pub (temporarily closed), art-house cinema (temporarily closed),
quirky restaurant-Judie's popovers (temporarily closed), artisanal ice cream shop (permanently
closed), university museums https://www.carlemuseum.org (temporarily closed) and 14 Asian
restaurants within a 3 block radius. We have no idea if it really is sleepy or if it is just because there
are essentially no students here yet. Can't imagine what it will be like when the 27,000 students
return (who knows when). Not sure if we are consistent with the town slogan yet, but we have no idea what it means.
A month ago, it was uncertain what was going to happen with the return of the students. Even
with that uncertainty, housing is limited and expensive in Amherst and very hard to find anything
without a year's lease. From Oregon, we briefly FaceTimed with a potential landlord, felt
former-Californian connection and basically jumped in blind. We rarely learn from our past
experiences, we did buy our house in Eugene from the internet.
So our basement "garden studio", is located in a corner of a basement of a house (promising path to our
entrance)
Immediately outside our room door, which doesn't fully close, are the stairs to the rest of the house.
Our room came with a futon and a college-dorm-style mini fridge. Patricia thought it was
fine except for the bed and fridge, which is all it had.
No kitchen, there is a sink but it is on the other side of the basement, next to the bathroom.
We get there by traversing your typical basement décor of dust, spiders, unidentifiable bugs that
may or may not bite, boxes, dusty unwanted furniture, forgotten tools, paint cans, rugs, mattresses, water
heater, roll of left over insulation, fuse box, an extremely large oil heating tank and fireplace accessories.
As with all traditional New England houses the washer and dryer are in the basement and for us,
they are right outside our bathroom. Everyone upstairs comes downstairs to do their laundry.
So we mask up to go wash ourselves or our dishes. It's all rather awkward, even for us.
We have called upon our experiences; our own and daughters' time in college combined with our
Eastern European Air BnB stays to create our home. Added madras-like bedspreads on the wall,
a microwave, electric teapot updated the dorm fridge (they now come with separate freezer!)
and an insta-pot (we are trying to learn new things).
So we plugged in the yogurt maker and tortilla press and it now feels (almost) like home. Our hovel. Our buried treasure.
Didn't think we would ever long for some of our more challenging accommodations in Europe,
but this basement has been able to do so. The ambience is further enhanced by the 24 hour background
buzz of three fans, an air purifier and a de-humidfier (which almost drowns out the cicada) as they fight
and lose the daily battle against the heat and humidity. .
The air is so thick, it feels like you are covered with double stick tape collecting sweat and bugs,
bugs significantly larger then our west coast ones. The ants are the size of dachshunds and the
sow bugs are clad in Viking armor.
The humidity also boosts the growth of trees, vines and grass and this verdant growth would be
be really beautiful if the fear of ticks and Lyme disease had not redefined our definition of an
attractive landscape.We look forward to summer storms to ease the heat and have been
rewarded with one tropical storm and two tornado warnings.
Fortunately, we did not need to run to the basement since that is where we are living.
Eastern Standard Time is not just a terrible weather time zone, it is terrible for the start of baseball
games and catching up on news. We have a new respect for anyone who has lived on the
East Coast.
Our days, though, are full and make us happy to be here.
We have made a lot of day trips to the Target and Whole Foods parking lots for curbside pick-ups,
and have explored a new Trader Joe's (consistently handling COVID well). We’ve walked past the
Emily Dickinson house, and her grave, both of which are the crown tourist jewels of Amherst.
We learned about the town's rich history through the mural at Emily's cemetery.
We sat with Emily and Robert Frost (another long time resident).
We strolled through many neighborhoods, one consistent with the town's emphasis on poetry (not just Emily and Robert but
Edward Field author of Winken, Blinken and Nod was another Amherstian).
We walked through the historic neighborhood of Holyoke (birthplace of volleyball), but missed the
canals there (we missed Italy and Venice canals too) There was a trip to the DMV (called RMV here for Registry
of Motor Vehicles) in Springfield (birthplace of basketball) for Alivia to renew her license plus a stop and see
dinosaur footprints.
We went to a Covid drive-by quilt show in cute Easthampton, or maybe it was laundry day.
A trip along a little river (why does everyone pile rocks in the universal Girl Scout sign for
led to Puffer Pond.
We have seen groundhogs (unfortunately one ate all our unripe tomatoes), chipmunks, bunnies,
squirrels, a ton of really beautiful birds. No bears yet but others have reported sightings in town.
What's next? More sweating and waiting until we can complain about the cold.
We are effectively trapped in Massachusetts. Canada is closed. With our Oregon car plates, surrounding
states are off limits. So we are (desperately) pretending that we are in Europe still as this old town, first
documented in 1658 and incorporated in 1759, shares many characteristics with some of our
favorite places in Europe.
The classic town hall with clock tower
and in parking lots.
A busy town square, not as picturesque as a German "Platz", but consistent with the Yiddish "plotz" which makes
sense as the Yiddish Book Center is located here https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org
Churches with beautiful stained windows, punctuate the sunset
But reality sets in. Tornado warnings, tropical storms, toll roads, Target pick ups, terrible time zone, no right turns
on red, thousands of college students potentially ready to descend on the town constantly remind us that
we are here in New England, USA.
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