I’ve been thinking a lot about Stars Hollow, the fictional town from TV’s “Gilmore Girls.”
The show is best known for its witty rapid-fire repartee between the actors playing mother and daughter, but I believe that relationship pales in comparison to the beauty of the town. Stars Hollow is what I imagine to be if Thomas Kinkade and Jimmy Stewart collaborated on a living-community concept. Throw in Walt Disney and you’ve got the happiest place on earth.
But it’s a television show, people. There is no such place in real life.
Or is there?
True confession: I also watch the Hallmark Channel Christmas shows, totally for their intricate and surprising plots. NOT!
I’m in it for the schmaltz. I’m all about the schmaltz. And I’ve discovered the older I get, the schmaltzier I become. In my 20s, I was opining on the cerebral brilliancy of Pedro Almodovar films while swishing my wine glass of Cabernet. Now? Give me a comfy couch, blanket, a steaming mug of hot chocolate with too many marshmallows and a TV show with a kitschy downtown diner. Nirvana! Sorry, Pedro.
There’s a connection between Hallmark and Gilmore says my armchair therapist, which is, actually, my armchair.
Escapism? Perhaps a little. But, mostly, it’s about that lovely construct of a sense of place where, yes, everybody knows your name but it’s not in a friendly bar or maybe it is. It’s also found in a local restaurant whose owner knows your order by heart. Or the general store that is part commerce/part support group raising funds for a family in need. And the mayor who leads the charge to save the town square’s gazebo from commercial development!
In the past month, I went to an Ocala Symphony concert at the Reilly Arts Center, walked under a gazillion sparkling lights in downtown’s Light Up Ocala, oooohed and ahhhed over Fine Arts For Ocala’s art show and sat by the water at the revitalized Tuscawilla Park. I shopped with local vendors who knew my name, knew my daughter’s name, knew my son’s name and inquired about my 91-year-old mother. She’s doing well, thank you for asking. Yes, she has met someone special. That’s another column for another time.
Just today at the grocery store, a friend holding her bag of produce stopped me in the check-out line to ask me if I had remembered to buy dog food for my puppies. “I heard about the new additions,” she said smiling.
Starving puppies averted!
And last week, I sent a colleague – who lives out of town but found himself in Ocala for a meeting – to my beloved Hungry Bear Drive-Thru for a Baby Bear burger, spicy fries and peanut butter milkshake. He put it on my tab.
Many a time, more than I dare admit, I’ve tried to leave Ocala, the place of my birth. And each time I left, I returned. Probably not for the best reasons – a guy who didn’t pan out, a job that wasn’t meant to be – but I came back. And, boy, am I ever glad I did.
Is Ocala my Stars Hollow? Maybe, but it’s not perfect. It is real in all its glorious, quirky small-town-growing-into-a-big-city ways.
And I love Ocala because of this. I really, really do. Ocala, you’re the Gilmore to my Hallmark heart. You’re a wonderful little city and I’m lucky to live here.