A Working Antique

I work in an antique building situated on our town common, at least until we move to a shiny, spanking new building a quarter of a mile away, which is slated to happen after the first of the year. 

Our current office used to be a house, and it’s got to be at least two hundred years old, complete with heat you can’t turn off, occasional mice infestations, and the staccato cadence of the apartment dwellers who live overhead.  But it sure is pretty. The common itself is a historic district.  If you live in one of the homes there, you can’t modify it without permission, you can only paint the exterior with certain colors.  Every day I park my car in front of Meeting House Pond, and on mornings when the wind is still, I catch reflections of First Parish Church (the old Meeting House), or the town hall rippling top of the water. 

I’m a little like Cinderella most mornings, the clock on the common is chiming the hour when I pull up, and I scamper across the street trying to get through the door before it stops.  But there are days the clock finishes before I cross the street, because I have to fish in my purse for my I-phone and take yet another a picture of a scene that’s been the same for hundreds of years. I know I've posted similar photos here before, so please bear with me.  No matter how many times I capture it, it hits me every time.

Stunning a view as it is, working in the historical district means there’s no cell tower near, which guarantees lousy phone service.  When we need to take or make personal calls with our cells, we have to walk outside, plug one ear against the traffic rumbling by and shout into the phone.  I was doing that one morning last week when I looked out to something unexpected.  Usually the pond is populated with ducks.  

A photo op for me, but bad news for the goldfish.  Gosh, I’m going to miss this when we move.