When Bad Things Happen in a Good Town

I digress from my usual rants about the War of 1812 today to talk about evil and small town life. A popular young Lambertville woman has gone missing.

I always tell people that if I want to be ignored I get on a bus and go to Manhattan. People disappear from Manhattan all the time without causing a ripple. Here in Lambertville a person can't get a haircut without its being noticed, let alone go missing.

Sarah Majoras left John and Peter's, a bar and musical venue across the Delaware River in New Hope, around two o'clock last Saturday morning and walked across the bridge, heading for her home on Union Street. She never got there. Cameras on the bridge caught her heading down Lambert Lane, taking a shortcut along the canal bank. No one appeared to be following her.

It was very, very cold that night, well below freezing, and remained so for days.

Everyone in town is upset. Helicopters, those birds of ill omen, circled overhead all day yesterday and the day before. TV news vans converged on the town. Sarah's friends formed search parties, posted leaflets, knocked on doors, and poked in the waste places by the edge of the river. Police divers broke through the ice of the canal and looked for her underwater. More police rowed up and down the canal with sonar equipment. The state police parked a forensics van by the bridge across the canal. Today it's too foggy for the helicopters to see anything.

Sarah Majoras was–is–a graduate of South Hunterdon Regional High School, the valedictorian, they say, one of many sweet, charming young people with many friends. The town is full of them.  None have any particular desire to go off to Manhattan and become hedge fund managers. They like rock 'n' roll. They know how to have fun.

Her friends hope to find her alive, though I'm thinking that even if she lay down under a bush and took a nap on the way home (and why the hell would she?) hypothermia would have got her before very long. Worst case, she fell in the canal and drowned. Very worst case, she was murdered. Rumors are rampant. People who don't know him suspect her boyfriend. Others think it was Guatemalans or Mexicans. There was a guy a couple of years ago who attacked a jogger on the canal path. People remember that, and they think maybe he's back in town.

Knowing they are suspected, perhaps expecting the attention of the immigration authorities as a result, the young Hispanic men have disappeared from their usual haunts in town, the corner where they wait for work, the library where they surf the internet.

The curious thing to me is the speed with which this story blew up. The state police were all over it at once, not waiting the usual time for a missing persons case but at once. Was it because of the uproar on Facebook and the internet, or something else? What did they think, and why did they think it?

What happened to Sarah? Reporters and strangers will offer all sorts of speculation. There is no answer until there's an answer.

When the Great Depression Began and Ended in Lambertville

For those of you who may be curious about the beginning and end of the Great Depression, in case we have to go through another one, or in case we are actually in one, as some suggest, I have a benchmark for you.

Some say the Stock Market Crash on October 29, 1929, marked the beginning of that grim period in our nation's history. It's true that when the bottom fell out of the stock market things looked mighty dark. But, the low point? That came in 1930, on the day when the Lambertville Free Public Library got a monthly bill for $4.00 from the telephone company and the board voted to remove the telephone.

Now, this was in a time when there were no cell phones. If you needed to make a call you found a pay phone and put a nickel in (first having felt in the change slot to see whether the caller before you had neglected to take his change). Was the library phone used by patrons in 1930? Was it used by the librarian to call scofflaws who kept their books out too long? Whatever use it had been, the library board considered it superfluous.

That's right, folks, there was no telephone in the Lambertville Free Public Library for another thirteen years, when the board voted to restore phone service. So 1943, at least in Lambertville, marked the end of the Great Depression.

Makes you think. What if things got so bad the libraries had to shut down their internet connections?

Winterfest

Many of you may think of Lambertville, if you think of it at all, as the home of the Shad Fest, the annual brouhaha loved by the tourists and detested by the locals for its disruption of our normal town life. But there's more than one festival a year in our little burg. Last weekend was Winterfest, a celebration of winter. Yes! It's still possible to celebrate winter, even though most folks in New Jersey are so tired of snow right about now that they wouldn't care if they never saw another flake.

But what's not to like about Winterfest? Ice sculptures pop up all over town. The Marshall House is open in the afternoon. We had a parade on Saturday! The South Hunterdon Regional High School Marching Band was in it, causing me a tug of nostalgia for the years when our son John played a trumpet in that band.

Mummers mummed. Mummers are a Philadelphia tradition, string bands in gaudy costumes to rival a Mardi Gras krewe, marching and strutting. Sometimes the locals get out there and strut with them. Veteran's organizations handed out flags to the children, who merrily waved them. Girls on floats threw candy. I ate some. I'm not sure it was a good idea.

I watched the parade and then opened up the Marshall House for tourists. It was warm in there, and many visitors came in. When the snow started to fall a great rush of people thronged into the warmth, maybe twenty souls, with pink cheeks and snow in their hair, a crowd in the front hall. Would the old floor hold them? I told them all about James Marshall, finder of the first gold in California, and all about the house where he grew up until they warmed up and went out again.

And so it goes, life on the surface of our little town, glistening and lovely. The dark underbelly is another matter. I'm at work on a new series, by the way. And that's all I'm going to say about that.