“I’m going to the store, can I get anyone anything?” That’s how most Mrs. Gravocks visits to our house started when I was younger. It seems that even though we think of our youth as a “simpler time in life”, people were always on the run. The difference however was that they announced it ahead of time. Every trip that was taken, whether to the corner store or into the next town, was broadcast along our little row of neighbors before anyone even thought of leaving. Sometimes it was foretold of the day before such as “I’m running into Hamburg tomorrow morning, do you need anything?”

Even though gasoline was cheap, it didn’t get wasted on quick trips without reason. Just like everything else, it was used sparingly when needed. Half of Mrs. Gravocks visits ended with the trip to the store cancelled in favor of a cup of coffee and long conversation. If no one else needed anything from the store, her needs could wait until tomorrow. Perhaps then someone would be out of coffee, milk or whatever and decide to ride along. A trip to the store, albeit only a few miles down the road, was more a social experience than it was an expedition.

I was reminded of this 1970’s mindset yesterday when I stopped at the store to pick up some milk and eggs on the way home from dropping my kids off at school. I saw one neighbor in the frozen foods department, another in the deli lne and yet a third at the check-out counter. All three live within a few hundred feet of me and all three had come separately, making special trips to the store to pick up ten or twenty dollars worth of goods. “Wow” I thought, what a colossal waste!

Why don’t we carpool?

On the trip home I couldn’t help ask myself that very question, Why don’t we carpool? My answers will probably ring true to most of my fellow readers… One of the neighbors I don’t really know all that well, One I know pretty well but hadn’t talked to in a week or so and the third I haven’t talked to in a month or more. It’s not that I don’t like my neighbors, or don’t get along with them, it’s that I am just not close with my neighbors the way we used to be. There is no daily interaction, only occasional or social contact.

This lack of daily contact with our neighbors has been replaced with daily contact by those people who we work with. With most families now valuing the employment of both spouses outside the home, nobody is around on a daily basis to nurture these relationships. The social structure of the neighborhood has been usurped by the org chart.

You’ve lost that loving feeling.

The downside to this new structuring of our social networks is that we are drawn to work not only as a source of income, but as a source of social nurturing. Corporations reap the benefits of this and try to encourage it to whatever extent that they can. Happy employees are better employees. People with little or no neighborhood social contact have a tendency to work longer hours (generally for FREE!) as they feel a misplaced sense of being toward their company.

Neighborhoods on the other hand have largely been the losers in this shift in social admiration. People return home from their jobs only to lock themselves inside their homes until the next opportunity to return to their true social nest, the drab gray cubicle that they really consider home. Venturing outside is limited to performing outside chores like yardwork and home repairs.

Fight the good fight.

If you want to strengthen your neighborhood and build a more open and caring community you need to understand that getting to know your neighbors means more than just making friends with those around you, it means shifting those social bonds away from your neighbors jobs and back into their community. Getting to know all of your nearby neighbors is a good start, but be prepared for the fact that you may have to drag them kicking and screaming back into their own neighborhood.

Social events such as the Sunday afternoon football game or the weekend picnic are great beginnings, but how about weekday dinners? Give your neighbor something to look forward to on a Wednesday evening and you will truly begin to help them make this shift. How often have you turned down a mid-week invitation because it was a work day, or do the same for the kids because it was a school night? In doing so we are saying that school and work are more important than our neighborhood connections. I challenge that.

Building a better community can be difficults, but it is a good fight. Fight it.

I welcome your comments.