BRAD MCEWEN: Taking pride in my adopted hometown

Roughly 20 years ago, while earning an associate’s degree in English from Darton, I had the good fortune to land a part-time job at the now defunct Albany Journal.

While at the Journal, which was during the good old days when Bill Davis was still alive and running the show, I did several jobs — running ad slicks around town, picking up the mail, fetching lunch for the office, walking Davis’ dogs, and preparing the dummy sheets for each week’s edition.

But as someone who wanted to be a writer, the real thrill of that year came when Davis pulled me aside and told me he wanted me to write a column, twice a month, about anything that was on my mind. He told me no subject was off limits, but insisted that the first one I wrote had to be about why I, as a 19 year old, was intent on leaving Albany behind as soon as humanly possible.

See, Davis loved to stir up things and he had a deep-seeded hate for what he felt was a good ol’ boy community here that had kept Albany insular and stifled its growth. I don’t remember much about that first column, other than I unleashed a scathing missive about everything that was wrong with my adopted hometown, and why I couldn’t graduate from Darton soon enough and leave this po-dunk town in my rear-view mirror.

In fact, the most vivid memory I have about that column was the phone call I got the day after it ran from a man who told me he that if he wasn’t 80 years old he’d call me out and kick my butt all the way back to New Jersey. He told me that instead he’d start saving his money to buy me a bus ticket out of town.

I eventually did graduate from Darton and move away, but during my time in the wilderness, my hardened rebel heart softened and when the time came to return to the Good Life City to marry the girl of my dreams, I did so with little regret.

I’ve been back in Albany since 2002 and during that time, in addition to conning that beautiful girl into getting hitched, I’ve buried my dad, welcomed two children, and built a great life for myself.

Over the years, I’ve grown increasingly fond of where I came from, developed relationships a slew of wonderful people, and now the shoe is on the other foot as I have had to listen to a seemingly endless parade of hateful people who tell me how bad Albany is every chance they get.

Now, I’m not naïve so I’m not going to sit here and tell you that Albany is not without its faults. There are any number of issues impacting this community and we have a long way to go before we can turn this place into the town of our dreams (or at least of my dreams).

That said, this past weekend I caught a glimpse of a possible future for those of us who call this town home and are proud to be known as Albanians. And that future is a good one.

That future is filled with positive energy and citizens who take great pride in their community and are ready and willing to show anyone who crosses into our borders that this truly is the Good Life City.

As I stood in front of my home and cheered on the thousand-plus runners who cruised through the our streets in the Snickers Marathon and Half Marathon, I was nearly blinded by all the smiles and the love I felt warmed my heart.

Whether it was my wife and children, my equally excited neighbors, the dozens of volunteers operating the refueling station on my block, or the runners themselves, those smiles were as big and bright as the Springtime sunshine that covered this town like a warm blanket all weekend long.

After the runners passed that feeling of happiness and excitement continued as my family and I rode our bikes to the opening day of the Tift Community Market, where we met even more of our happy neighbors strolling beneath the oaks, checking out the impressive variety of vendors that had set up shop.

At every turn we were met by jubilant children and cheerful faces of all shapes and colors, faces that put the emphasis on “community” market.

That joyous feeling of excitement and possibility followed us down to the Mardi Gras Saturday afternoon where we I was met by Tommy Gregors and Phil Cannon who both gleefully told me the street festival was shaping up to be one of the best in its 15-year history.

It was a glorious afternoon strolling the 100 block of Pine Avenue, listening to my fellow Albanians laugh and watching them groove to some great music.

Literally every person I ran into told me they were having a ball and that it was one of the best events they’d been to in quite some time.

I was almost taken aback, when Marathon head honcho Rashelle Beasley, who should have been home getting some much needed rest after spending the bulk of the prior week working to make sure the Snickers run went off without a hitch, stopped me on the street some three hours after the marathon had ended and gave me a big bear hug and said, “Today has been awesome!”

Like Gregors and Cannon, Beasley said the day had gone splendidly and that many of the out-of-town guests had told her it was one of the best marathons they’d ever run.

Beasley said one such runner, Gregory Brown, whom I had actually met the day before at the Hilton Garden, gave her a huge hug and told her that out of the 243 marathons he’d run, this was one of the best ever.

Brown’s good friend, Runnin’ Rob, who had traveled all the way from Hawaii, agreed and also shared with Beasley the reason for that assessment—the people.

In the weeks leading up to the race, Beasley, and others involved in race planning, shared on numerous occasions that the most important thing about hosting the marathon was that it us a chance to show off our community.

And in doing that it would take the efforts of what organizers consider to be the community’s best resource—its citizens.

And sure enough, the 1,700-plus volunteers that gave up their Saturday to hand out water and keep close watch on intersections throughout the community, and the hundreds more who braved a chilly morning to line the streets of the course and cheer on complete strangers, proved to be our best asset.

So, now that everything has been packed up and life has returned to normal, I hope this vision I had, of a connected and welcoming community of hope, will remain.

I hope, too, that the next time somebody gets ready to tell someone what an awful place Albany is, that they remember that day, when families from every possible background and circumstance, joined forces to show the world what Albany was really all about.

Lastly, although I can’t take back what I wrote all those years ago, I hope that my hateful screed against the place where I’m raising my children to be strong, proud and concerned citizens remains lost to time and that any copy of that edition of the Journal withers to dust.

Email Brad McEwen at [email protected]. Follow @ABH_BradMcEwen on Twitter.