Saturday, September 10, 2011

The best line I ever wrote.


Larchmont is a beautiful suburban community about 34 minutes by Metro North from New York's Grand Central Terminal. As its name indicates, on the lawns and open spaces are beautiful, old larch trees. There are lovely, large homes and rolling hills that meet the shimmering, if slightly polluted, waters of the Long Island Sound.

Somehow, for some reason (perhaps it was the private school tuition we had to pay for our two daughters) my wife got it in her head, her intransigent head, that we should find a house and move to Larchmont.

The very thought sickened me.

Nevertheless, I found myself in a realtor's BMW sedan and looking at homes within walking distance of the Larchmont train station. We stopped in front of one beautiful home built in the 1920s. "This is a four-bedroom," the realtor said, "with a finished basement and a detached garage."

And that's when my line came:

Larchmont. Where the garages are detached and so are the husbands.

Somehow, that line alone broke my wife.

We remained in the city.

2 comments:

bob hoffman said...

My wife once had a similarly great line for another town:

Berkeley. The world's ugliest men, the world's craziest women.

Tore Claesson said...

I can't match either of the lines. But Maplewood, where I live, (or die) covers both.