OK, just to show that I am not completely a homer, I'll start right off by saying we dropped the ball big time this weekend on the big downtown fire in Fonda.

While it may not have been as big a fire as the one that took down three old mills and a fourth building in Johnstown more than a week ago, it was every bit as big in terms of the effect of the character of the community. Actually, it may have been more true in this case because the building was a very active and central part of the village's downtown, while the Johnstown buildings were mainly abandoned and not in the heart of downtown.

Just as a bit of background, I did live in Fonda for about a year before returning to Schoharie County this winter. And while I won't mince words about the fact that there are several houses farther east on West Main Street whose demolition would improve the character of the community, the commercial buildings along that block are true links to the village's past.

The facades of those few remaining commercial buildings certainly should leave more of a lasting impression than the dilapidated homes just a few doors up the street or the convenience stores sandwiched at either end of the commercial strip. But as each of these old buildings come down, it contributes to more and more of a hodge-podge look that makes Fonda appear less and less like a village and more and more like every other nameless commercial district.

It's bad enough that Fonda's downtown suffers from the traffic woes brought on by scores of tractor-trailers passing through on their runs from the Thruway exit in Fultonville to the Johnstown Industrial Park. But when that area looks just like downtown anyplace else, it becomes just anyplace else, a place to avoid unless you have no choice but to have to stop at one of the convenience stores.

I joked in the newsroom during the Johnstown fire that many people would call a disaster like that "urban renewal," just as some did when the old Mohasco mills burned in Amsterdam, and in some ways they may be right. If you look around many of the towns in the area, there are a bunch of buildings whose destruction would only be an improvement; yet, demolishing these buildings are just too expensive for communities already struggling to pay for just the most basic of services.

It all comes back to the same thing: identity. Dilapidated buildings like the Chalmers Building in Amsterdam and all the abandoned tanneries in Johnstown and Gloversville are a huge factor in the identities of these communities as depressed, while well-maintained storefronts like those in downtown Canajoharie creates a more-positive identity (although I wonder how positive that identity will be once Beech-Nut moves out of the village).