And Then What Happened?: Marking two decades in Ashfield

NAN PARATI

NAN PARATI

By NAN PARATI

For the Recorder

Published: 07-13-2025 11:00 AM

I still have the calendar. An old-school paper design, it still sits on July 9, 2005.

It was 20 years ago that I loaded up my truck to head to a place I’d never been before: western Massachusetts.

Born in North Carolina, I’d moved in 1980 to New Orleans, and 25 years later I identified to my core with the culture of that city. My 18-year-old godson had come from Texas with his girlfriend to visit me in the weeks leading up to my Massachusetts departure, and then, enjoying themselves so much, they decided to stay longer, delaying my leaving until Gregory’s grandmother called him to say, “Child, you have got to go. How is Nan ever supposed to find a husband with y’all living with her like that?” While that wasn’t exactly my worry, I appreciated her concern — and its effectiveness. The two left the next morning to go back west and I hit the road.

Having worked for 20 years as the sign writer for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, I had been invited by the organizers of the Green River Festival to come up and make signs for them. That sounded like fun, so I sorted through what I would need for my two weeks there.

A year earlier, someone had broken into my house and stolen my bicycle. Aware that it could happen again, I loaded a few extra things in the truck — my great-grandmother’s hand-sewn quilt, my photo album, the calendar my dad had given me and a few other beloved items no one would likely steal, but you never know, do you?

Coincidentally, my friend Anna lived right up the road from Greenfield, and invited me to stay with her in Ashfield, a town that made me say, “Wow!” Having spent 20 years in the exceptionally fun world of festival design, I found it was also a world in which all things were thought up, designed, fabricated and then thrown into the dumpster of, “Next!” Nothing was permanent, and enough production money could make anything happen. The work was fun, but nothing was real. And suddenly, here I was in a town so real that people grew their own food, something I thought was a thing of the past. Since the nearest real grocery store was in Shelburne Falls and didn’t even stay open all night, one had to think and plan before going shopping. Why, you might even need to go all the way to Greenfield to buy something more elaborate, so life in the hilltowns was something that demanded real-time involvement, which was something I’d been missing.

Two weeks later, the festival was done. And yet, I stayed, just because there was so much to imagine there. Ashfield Hardware looked as though no one recognized the world had moved beyond 1953. The Ashfield Lake House was a restaurant as friendly as an episode of “The Andy Griffith Show.” And then there was this empty, closed-up store called Elmer’s that called my name every time I passed it. I stood on its porch and dreamed. What would it be like to live in Ashfield … and own a little place like that?

Twenty years ago, I thought I would live in New Orleans for life. But, no. The Fates heard my projected dreams and called in Hurricane Katrina to drown my house and everything I owned so that the dream could become reality when I suddenly had no place to live in the South — but there was a house for sale right there in Ashfield…

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Twenty years later, I thank the Gods and everyone else who had a hand in constructing the next chapter in my life. I thank the thief who stole my bicycle, prompting me to bring my most important keepsakes to Ashfield with me. I thank Fate for directing me to an area that, while hotter than it used to be, ain’t nothin’ like the hot afternoons of present-day Louisiana that top 100 degrees. I thank State Farm for actually paying out my claim so that I could buy that little store called Elmer’s and start my brand-new life as an Ashfield restaurant owner. Insurance companies don’t pay out in New Orleans much anymore, though continuing disasters there have raised premiums to monthly payments that are often higher than many people’s mortgages. Who would have thought that I could be as grateful as I am, every single day, that it turned out the way it did and that I, in fact, am happy I escaped life in a city that has changed so much in the last 20 years that I no longer feel comfortable there?

Who could have thought I’d love all of you so much, for all the goodness you’ve shown me these last 20 years?

I still don’t have a husband, but really, that worked out just fine, too.

Nan Parati lives and works in Ashfield, where she found home and community following Hurricane Katrina. She can be reached at NanParati@aol.com.