Mr Bill's Neighborhood

IT’S ONE OF THE FEW PLACES LEFT TO HARBOR A TRUE SENSE OF COMMUNITY.

- Capt. Bill Pike

 When I was a kid, I lived in a little town in the Adirondacks that qualified as a community in most senses of the word. Everybody knew everybody else. And if you needed something, like advice, a tool, a disinterested party to listen to you, a small loan, or maybe just supper, you could bet there’d be somebody who’d step up to the plate. These days things are different. People are often standoffish, tending to keep to themselves. You might live next to a guy for a decade and never know his last name. Or even his first. Or you might work alongside somebody for years and never know his kids’ names. Or even if he has kids. Unfortunately, this state of affairs holds sway almost everywhere today, although there’s at least one group that abjures— the boating crowd. Think about it. Joe Blow maybe doesn’t give you the time of day, may scowl at you while you water your lawn, and may cut you off in traffic without compunction. But let him become the proud owner of a little express cruiser in a dry-stack storage facility somewhere, or an old trawler at a backwater