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On a breezy autumn night, a dozen members of the Wednesday Book Club gathered in the living room of Dorothy Peterson, a farm widow whose house sits behind a curtain of corn on the outskirts of town. These well-traveled women, accomplished in fields from accounting to medicine, love Wilmington and swear it hasn't lost its small-town flavor. But as they talk, their effusions give way to worry about crime, development, strangers in their midst. Each woman carries a fantasy Wilmington in her mind and sees only the problems that intrude on that ideal. They make it clear that Wilmington isn't a community anymore--it is dozens of overlapping ones.
"Remember Friday nights, when everyone came to town and leaned on their cars talking?" asks Mary Jane Fox, an octogenarian with a lively, youthful mind. "You saw your friends, got your groceries, heard the latest news. That was great fun. But that was some time ago."
That's the town Hawley thought she was moving to, but in her years here she has caught but one glimpse of the place. It happened, she tells the group, in 1992, when Columbia Pictures came to town to shoot old-time street scenes for the movie version of Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers. The film crew closed off downtown and spruced up the old buildings, turning the place into a roseate vision of itself--and attracting hundreds of Wilmingtonians to Main Street. "People were mingling, striking up conversations and laughing," says Hawley, "and suddenly they could remember what this town had been like, and see what it could be again." She pauses and shakes her head. "Then Columbia Pictures left town, and everybody forgot all about it."
A few women protest; most nod in agreement. After coffee and pie, the meeting breaks up. The ladies of the club climb into their cars and drive home on roads crowded with commuters bound for night duty at Airborne Express. Some of those long-distance commuters are no doubt thinking about moving to Wilmington. It's such a tranquil little town.
--With reporting by Daniel S. Levy/Wilmington