Reflections:

When I built this Web site in 2003, I had no intention of understanding what it meant. I had no frame of reference and no audience. No mission, no agenda. Just a dash of anger mixed with a sprig of melancholy and a pinch of sadness.

As I age, I realize that someday I will no longer be here to update, upgrade or even entertain changes on this Web site, and I wonder who will carry on that duty. I’d like a volunteer to step forward. Necessary qualifications are not specific. Just care enough about it to sustain it.

I don’t even know who I’d want it sustained for, other than that vague shadowy “person who just wants to know” what the town of Fairfield was like.

The message has been fairly clear: Simple times, wonderful memories, the good, the bad, the unfortunate. Times were not simple. We just had fewer choices. Memories are what we make them, and we leave out the parts that don’t fit in favor of the ones that do.

At the 2008 reunion, we shared still more anecdotes about the past, and I heard still another about myself that I scarcely remember. If it was true, it was true. If not, just as well.

But I post this rather disjointed essay as a way of measuring where I am and where I have been in relation to the newfound appreciation for Fairfield, one I hope is holistic and not a superficial swipe of the hand. The history of the town cannot be captured in a moment, or on a Web site, or in the dozens of images and stories that appear here. Fairfield, as a community, doesn’t matter. Not really. It never did.

Only the people who have endured the years will understand that.

We do not come together to dwell on the past. We can’t go there now.

We come together because of the future.

Pass it on.

Thanks, John