If you’re familiar with my columns, then you know I live in Clear Spring, MD – a very small town in Western Maryland.  How small, you ask?  Well, as of 2016, we were at a whopping 350 residents (for those of you keeping score, that’s pretty small).  As a matter of fact, we’re the smallest incorporated town in the county.

It’s a quaint little village, with a main street, two stop lights, three schools (elementary, middle, and high) at the west end of town, and a post office.  Out by the highway, there are a few gas stations, a fast food restaurant, and a hotel.  There’s also a volunteer fire company, a county park, four churches, a liquor store, tea room, tavern, and a pharmacy.  It’s very walkable (only about a mile around the two alleys that encircle the town), and it’s hard to beat sitting on the front porch on a cool evening, watching people taking an evening stroll with their dogs or families making their way to the ball fields for a little league game .

We also have a hardware store – Clear Spring Hardware.  As a matter of fact, it is one of the oldest surviving businesses in Clear Spring, with some sort of enterprise operating out of their historic location in the center of town since around 1877.  Sadly, it will be closing its doors this week, ending its long and memorable run.

I’ll miss the place.  They had everything.  If you needed some sort of hardware bit or bobble, chances are they had it.

Paint?  Check.

Assorted screws or nuts and bolts?  Check.

Garden seeds?  Check.

Mouse traps? Check.

Need a screen repaired?  Check.

Replacement wheel for a Model-T?  I’d say there’s a 50-50 chance they might have it in there somewhere.

It sure beat traveling the extra fifteen miles and twenty minutes to the county seat (Hagerstown) to find what one needed.  It was also a gathering place, for chances are if you stopped in for something, you’d run into someone you knew, which would result in some conversations and catching up, even if it was just to chat with the owners, Teddy and Carol Hovermale (who live right across the street from the store).  They knew what was going on in town, all the latest gossip, and if you needed something and they didn’t have it (which was rare), they would tell you where to find it locally.  If the school band or softball team needed a donation, the hardware store would gladly help out where they could.  It was part of the lifeblood of the town – a beloved square in the fabric of the community quilt.

Sadly, after this Tuesday, it will all be gone.  Another nail in the small town coffin.

It’s a strange world we live in.  Folks who live in the Washington, D.C./Baltimore metropolitan corridor continue to move further and further away from those city centers in order to get a taste of country life (as evidenced by the continued an explosive growth of towns in the eastern part of the county like Smithsburg and Boonsboro), but somehow, that small town living they crave continues to go extinct as smaller shops and services within those towns close or go out of business.  Urban planners design modern and new neighborhoods that mimic the “feel” of a small town, while the real things can’t get investment or support to utilize what’s already there.

Trust me, it’s hard to beat being able to easily amble down to the post office to mail a letter, stop at the pharmacy to get a prescription filled (from a pharmacist who knows you by name), or walking to church on a Sunday morning, waving to folks or saying “hello” to someone sitting on their porch.  I’ll certainly miss being able to mosey down the street to buy a hose nozzle or extra clothes pins.

I know, I know – it’s sappy.

It’s very “Norman Rockwell”-esque or shades of “Mayberry”, but maybe – just maybe, it’s what we could all use a little bit more of these days.

I hope Clear Spring can survive.