The Smallening

On Monday mornings on my way to work, I listen to Scott McKay’s political commentary, which is just about the best thing about our local NPR station. Yesterday he pointed out how Rhode Island takes “small government” to the extreme, using the kind of numbers that still give me pause, even though I’ve been aware of them for years: that we have 155 separate pension systems, 77 fire departments, 36 school superintendants, and over 100 water systems (with only a handful of actual water sources). Almost every town has its own school system, along with its own board and its own teachers’ union. It’s always seemed to me that while Rhode Island is small, it’s never small enough for Rhode Islanders.

It’s like this: if you are not from Rhode Island, I will tell you I live in Rhode Island. If you are from Rhode Island, I’ll tell you I live in Cumberland. If you’re from Cumberland, I’ll tell you I live in Ashton, the particular village of Cumberland in which I live. If you live in Ashton, we’ll start getting into street addresses. I lived in Ashton for two years before I knew that I did; I was informed of the fact by a lifelong resident of Woonsocket (a neighboring town) who wasn’t satisfied to learn that I “just” lived in Cumberland. No one does, apparently. Wherever you live, there is a smaller, more specific area to narrow it down to, until you’re giving out your GPS coordinates.

When crotchety old coots write their Dagnabbit letters to the Valley Breeze, they sign them with their name and their village: Mr. Angry McMissesthepast, Albion, or Mrs. Wanda Unionstodie, Manville. The first time I saw those villages in print I had to consult Wikipedia to find out just where the hell those places were (they’re both in Lincoln, another neighboring town).  When those people die and their obituaries appear in the Breeze, they were not residents of Cumberland, but of Berkeley or Diamond Hill.

About once a month, I’ll be driving with my husband and we’ll pass a truck or a van with the name and place of its business – the village, not the city or town – painted on the side, and we’ll have a conversation like this:

Me: Hey, where’s Greenville?Him: I have no idea.

Because, you see, even though he grew up in Rhode Island, he never learned the names of those villages, because he never had to, which is in keeping with the state’s unofficial motto: If You Don’t Know, You Don’t Need to Know. I grew up in Maryland, another pretty small state, but by the fifth grade I was expected to know the names of all 23 counties, even though I’d only ever visit about six. Do the  names of the other seventeen take up valuable space in my brain? Probabossibly.

McKay points out in today’s essay that 77 separate fire departments made sense at one time because each corresponded to a different mill town, and the volunteer firefighters from each had to be able to hear the siren from wherever they were in the village. But today, that number lingers on due to that one great truth: Change Sucks.