New Britain herald., 1927-12-03
OLD TIME TOWN
 MEETING ECHO Wooster Street Residents ill h.
 teresting Session

In these days or hurry una HuS,le and hustle the average person has little time for sentiment, and it often happens that some of the finer cus- toms Of a generation or two ago have been sacrificed in the interests of so-called modern efficiency,
 New Britain has a group of men, probably q dozen or more who an nually take a trip to Nova Scotia or Newfoundland where they hire guides and proceed through virgin woods to isolated places where tele- phones, telegraph, railroad trains, trolley cars, electric lights, mail car rers, plumbing, streets, houses or any of the modern conveniences are missing. They sever for the time being all contact with the world. They spend their time fishing, hunt ing, walking through the dense woods, inhaling the fragrant per fume of the evergreen trees and realizing in it's literal truth such trite remarks as 'Getting back 10 nature" They return refreshed in mind, and body, feeling, as one man puts it "as though my soul had had a bath" They entertain for week or more afterwards feelings of some distaste for the dust and smoke, noise confusion and other signs incident to what humans like to call "civil- ization.'
 Some such feeling as this was ex- rerienced recently when Herald representative, himself new mem- Der of the organization. attended meeting of the Wooster Street Con- munity society. True, he found no isolation such as is experienced III the wilderness. True. also, modern conyeniences, or the need of them and their advantages. rather than being unknown subjects, seemed to be subjects Of paramount issue.
 Yet, with all there was Gense of the purer great outdoors One St emed taken back. not to the days when the savage Red Man contest ed with the early settlers for hunting grounds, but to the days of suc- ceeding generation when descend ants Of those early settlers built their homes, titled their farms and reared their families and met in town meeting" to discuss mutual problems: where the women could exchange samples of homemade bread while the men discussed crops or possibly swapped horses. But, back of all that was the great funda- mental instinctive element-that Of cementing friendship.
 Such was the impression from the Wooster Street Community meeting. that ii was the town meeting brought back to life. The motion pictures were forgotten, modern 'ln- conyeniences" seemed to diminish in their importance. Here was q gath cring of home builders, citizens. tax payers, property owners. patriots. Thoro was no atmosphere of politi- cal ambition. No one seemed 10 have any personal desire to step into the limelight. Their problems were community problems and their thinking was exclusively along in the lines of the general good for the most concerned.
 But they knew what they wanted. If they were not blufting, neither were they going to be blutfed. The same spirit which caused the farm CTS of generations ago 10 create in Wooster street q roadway over the mountain 10 avoid the toll gate, caused the present Wooster street residents to demand in terms which brook no political evasion or equivo- cation, that for which they are paying taxes and which they declar- ed 10 be their lawful rights.
 Families Attend
 Whole families attended the meet ing. Fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters participated in civic discus sions while the children played out side or in adjoining rooms.
 There was no formality. There wcre no speeches. No laid out rules of order except those simple rules of putting 9 motion, seemed ncces- sary. The meeting was in simple club house set back iE the woods, several hundred feet from the street. Heat was furnish by an old fashion { 7d wood burning stove. New Britain seemed q thousand miles away.
 T. was community within a Icommunity. Neighborliness was
 ( t1,,,