I’m from Bruges. No, not that one. My Bruges is just another town taking part in the American tradition of being named after a beautiful or historic European city. There are quite a few of us. For example, there’s: London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Rome, Florence, Geneva, Prague, Edinburgh, and Athens. That of course was only a small portion, but those are some of the most major examples I could think of. Like, there’s a Manchester, New Hampshire and a Birmingham, Alabama, but those cities don’t quite have the same contrast to their namesake as London, Ohio, population 10,000. There are also, of course, places in America donning the names of great cities that have garnered something of their own identity. I’m sure you were wondering if I’d bring up Naples, Florida and Venice, California. And then there are the news. Your New Yorks and New Orleanses that seem to have reached an echelon higher than even the best examples of us attempted duplicates. But the news and the Napleses and Veniceses can’t make up very many of us because Googling these towns has become a small hobby of mine and the difference is almost always much closer to a London, Ohio than a Venice, California.
I know this comparison is not healthy. And was never really ever meant to be made. That at some point a group of Dutch settlers just stopped here for whatever reason and they named this stop something that reminded them of home. And that’s all it was. As I’ve said already, it happened all over the United States. It’ll keep happening, too. Don’t be surprised when a bunch of new towns pop up along the West Coast named Beijing or Da Nang. It makes as much sense as Moscow, Idaho. I heard of a town in Maine that took in enough Somali refugees that they became the town. Maybe someday there’ll be a Mogadishu that you drive through after Palermo to get on I-95 heading south to Boston, one of the few American cities that’s eclipsed its European parent without designating itself a new version of it.
It’s a good thing that it keeps happening, an optimistic thing anyway. It means that people still think this land can be what they wanted from their first home.
I’m the product of several generations in this country, so my feelings might be the experiment’s result. I guess if I glean any identity from the name of a place best known around here for a Colin Farrell movie, it’s that of a bastard child. This town is nothing like Bruges. The Americans I live around don’t even look vaguely Dutch and would probably change the name to Dublin or Rome if given the choice. So when I see the real Bruges in pictures, movies, or news stations there’s only disconnect from what I see out the window.
I suppose I should tell you where my Bruges is, since you may be wondering, and I’ve already sort of implied ad nauseam that it could be in any state. My Bruges is in Massachusetts, somewhat close to where the Bay State shares a border with both Vermont and New York. If you don’t know where that is, it’s the upper western portion of Mass, about three hours to New York City, closer to two and a half hours to Boston, but only a little over an hour to Albany, and just thirty minutes to Pittsfield.
Our proximity to the New York border causes people to support the Yankees and Giants in the same numbers as the Red Sox and Patriots. However, as a town, we agree that the Bruins are in, while the Rangers and Islanders are out. That goes for the Jets and Mets too. But identity clashes with sports aside, it’s an unremarkable town. It’s small too. So maybe I shouldn’t give London Ohio such a hard time.

We’re a town almost completely enveloped in woods, with Main Street cutting through on its way to meet up with the Mass Pike. The town itself is a variety of roads jutting off that main street into little hamlets of colonials hidden by the thick pines and maples. There is a center of town where Main Street forks with Main Road, running about a mile parallel of one another with maybe half that distance in between. Cross-streets cut through Main Road before it merges back onto Main Street, first passing over the Mohican River that flows between them. This is where almost all our town and commercial buildings live. They’re lined in twos along each side of the lanes with the exception of the old Union Church, which takes up both spaces. Or did, since it’s now closed. Which is a shame. Not because I’m particularly religious or that my more pious parents find themselves without a place of worship. It’s a shame because that church was the last building in the center that looked like it was built to be part of the town. I’m nearing my thirties, so I’m still thought of as young by many, but I am old enough to remember when every building looked like the church. Not literally as in the post office had stained glass and a spire. But in the sense that when I looked at the church or police station or fire house, I saw those buildings as opposed to the same basic outline slap-dashed up.
What happened was – around the time I graduated High School the wear on the old, neglected buildings and the underfunding of their upkeep came to a head and they all needed immediate attention. Several towns around us were experiencing the same problem and luckily there was an out-of-state, or at least out-of-county, construction company who somehow knew of our plight and offered everyone a cheap estimate to quickly tear down our old and put up their new. Unable to resist the price or compete with the speed, every town voted yes and the dark, wind-weathered-wooden-town offices were replaced with material that I know can’t actually be plastic, but my mind has convinced itself is. Now the only way I know which building I’m looking at is the sign above the door. And the only way I know it is mine is if the first word is Bruges.
That was the most dramatic change of both my life and the town’s. The change to the commercial buildings was more gradual. Fast-food franchises bought out our pizza places and burger joints one by one, then chain restaurants came for our pubs and old Italian eatery. They kept the old buildings up at first, metaphorically putting ‘under new management’ signs above the door, trying to simulate the charm of what they had replaced. But old buildings have problems new ones don’t and it didn’t take long before retaining vestiges of what used to be didn’t matter, making food that had once been the town’s became truly indistinguishable from what I’ve seen in Pittsfield and Boston.
So I hope whatever takes over the church has a reason to keep it standing.
But it’s not like I spend much time in the center. Unless the reason I don’t spend time there is the way it looks, but I suppose that’s a chicken and egg thing. I drive up to Pittsfield for work, so really I’m only home to sleep. And maybe you’ve guessed, home hasn’t changed from the house I grew up in. I ultimately would like to move out, but the situation involving the mortgage and my loans has made the idea of buying my own home not only impractical, but terrifying.
I could rent, but again, my loans and what I chip in with the house are rent enough.
I don’t gripe about this. Since I came home from college, time has gone by too fast for me to think too much about what I should be doing with it.
My parents do for me through self-deprecation whenever I give them money. They’re both sober and have been since around the time I graduated High School. They blame their past for the pit we’ve found ourselves in with this house we’ve once owned. And while I know they’ve saved some money throughout their abstinence from vice, they were never bad drunks. The worst they ever did was leave it around for me to nab up under their noses, which probably was irresponsible. But I would’ve gotten a hold of the stuff back then anyway, so I don’t agree at all that any personal failings caused our predicament.
If I had to comment on their drinking it would’ve fallen closer to just having too much fun. Life just got more complicated in 08’. Though none of those complications have slowed the blame upon their character. What I call extenuating circumstances are to them examples of what they should have planned for. They should have been ready. They shouldn’t have been screwing around. They could have saved more. And so, it’s all their fault.
They’ve gotten better at living cheaply, sure. I’d say they’ve tightened their belts but never out loud because they’ve both gained a lot of weight in ten years with the big daily money saver being food. Meals are cheaper and faster now than when I was growing up. My parents often tell me about the coupon money they save on these items that already weren’t much. It tastes cheap too. Cooking has become more like chemistry in a lab than art in a kitchen. The stuff stays stuck to your bones as squishy gobs of preserved goop like it’s mocking the speed with which you cooked it. I don’t enjoy much home cooking anymore.
Saving has ensnared my parents. They truly want to dig their way out. And I want to help. The thought of losing the house makes me sad. I don’t think I’ll ever consider another house, home. I may be wrong, but I grew up here and this house was there for me as much as my parents were. So I’d always like it to be. It’s not a beautiful house. All it has is a single floor with four rooms not including the mudroom in the front and the basement. And you might’ve guessed, I’m not a big fan of the town. But it’s mine, for better or worse. And like you can’t pick your family; I didn’t pick this house or town. So here I am, unable to stop calling it home.
I do have one wealthy relative. My uncle who owns a tree farm.
The farm is called Willow’s. An homage to his name and not what he grows. My uncle knows a lot about trees. When he describes the nutrients they get in the soil or from the sun to when he’s waxing poetic about their lifespans, he sounds like someone who would’ve come in for Earth Day back in Elementary School. Until the end that is, when he gets what you’d want to call blood thirsty about killing them.
“They’re mighty, hard, and strong, Stephen.” He says. “And we cut em’ down. They’re nothing for our steel. They’ll survive hundreds and thousands of years and then get ended in a day. Even if it’s easy, it’s still an achievement.”
My uncle loves having his farm. He grew up on it and felt so invested throughout his whole life that when my grandfather died, he was already capable of taking it over. It truly is his place and he takes pride in the job.
“If you can’t take your work seriously then no one will put in the work to take you seriously,” Is something else he likes to say. Usually as a preamble to what he loves more than his farm. Its success.
He attributes that first statement to the reason for his wealth to the belittlement of those without it. I don’t dislike my uncle. Sometimes he gives us some of what didn’t get sold to the paper mill in Athol. They get thrown in our shed to be later made into kindling bundles by me and my dad. All I do is swing an axe. But it just feels really great to me doing work, you know? Like hard work that makes you move, ache, and sweat. Yeah, I feel like a man bringing that blade down through the soft core beneath the bark. But it’s more than masculine frontiersmen fantasies. It’s that in the end, I’ve made something. Something that’s useful. There’s a pride I really take in that. I don’t care if what I make literally burns away. It’s almost better like that. Like my work is part of a cycle, where the need to do it again means I’m still alive. It’s strange that my uncle’s so angry with such a life.
If you’re still listening, I guess I have to start talking about myself. I’ve put it off long enough. Most people start descriptions of themselves by what they do, so I’m a bartender. A waiter in a pinch too. And I’m not above washing dishes. My pub was once called Ár n-Áit and is now called something you’d probably recognize. It’s in Pittsfield, sandwiched between a Dominos and a Subway. I know it may seem odd that the child of sober parents works in a bar, but the tips are good, so after a plea to be careful they tell me I shouldn’t keep paying for their mistakes.
I’ve been working there for eight years.
My boss is named Todd. He’s a mountain of a man with big beard and bigger gut who likes to talk about his daughter. Her name is Shannon. A tall awkward girl is how I think of her. When I started, she would come in after school and do her homework at an empty booth. She left for college three years ago. Her leaving is when I started to again consider life as beyond something from day to day. I saw who I thought was a little girl starting the last chapter of my life that came before this long and uneventful one.
“She moved to the big city and now likes to spend… big,” Todd often complains lightheartedly. “Every month she’s going over what I tell her she can spend. I’m looking at the statements they’re always at bars where she’s spending $100 or something like that, but I’m sure it’s only three or four drinks. So what can I do? Tell her to not have fun? She only gets four years.”
It’s always some variant of that.
I enjoyed college. My school had a beautiful campus. So much so that that I can remember it vividly almost a decade later. It was so beautiful to me because while it had many elements typical of New England colleges, such similarities never seemed derivative, but instead shared. I felt was I living in a place like other ones whose own elements became more pronounced the longer I looked. Sort of like how my town once had similar buildings to the neighboring ones, but kept some unique charm.
At least somewhere gets to keep what we lost.
Coming back, I experienced whip-lash from how fast everything returned to what I had called normal. I found work related to my major but the bar paid more, drawing me in part-time at first before full-time just made too much financial sense. And after that, life started moving slowly by the day and quickly by the year.
And that’s it. My town, my family, and everything I can say about me. I don’t think it’s so unique or strange. I hear similar ones at work. Stories like mine creeping through every town, city and state like what replaced the buildings in my town. Instead of becoming like Bruges we became like Madrid, New Mexico and Vienna, Virginia. Or maybe they became like us. It doesn’t matter. It all lumps together.
So, what are our names? It’s far from who we are. We’re not Bruges, London, Paris, or anywhere else. I don’t know if we’re changing or revealing ourselves as what we always were. But it’s hard to see us going back. I don’t know what we’ll become. But I do suspect every town, city, and state is headed further into this shared, sallow beige. So, hello, I’m from Bruges. You know what it’s like, even if you’ve never been.