It's time to celebrate Main Street.

Main Street. That simple phrase symbolizes so many things American. We hold the idea of Main Street as close to us as flag-raisings and Fourth of July fireworks and the seventh-inning stretch. There's an old-fashioned American festival going on this Friday at 4 p.m. celebrating Cooperstown's grand thoroughfare.

Americans draw part of their identity from the concept of Main Street. The corner drugstore and the dry goods store, the diner and the bakery, the bank and the post office is an image we cling to, even if it rarely reflects contemporary reality.

We need Main Street because the community wholeness it represents fills the soul. It's the strolling from shop to shop, the pleasant conversation, the chance meetings and the dozens of human interchanges that are possible only on a pedestrian, economically healthy thoroughfare.

Friends and neighbors conducting trade or plying their craft makes people feel connected to their community and to each other.

Somehow a shopping mall, with that awful unnatural lighting and those tedious chain stores falls way short of supplying that contentment.

If you have doubts, look at the most popular attraction at Disney World. It's not Space Mountain or Pirates of the Caribbean; it's Main Street. The Disneyesque version of what Main Street should be anyway. The general store, the movie house, the ice cream parlor and the rest of what makes the fictional downtown is what Disney patrons frequent most.

Cooperstown's very genuine Main Street is a jewel by any estimation. Now that it's all gussied-up, with newly paved streets and an upgraded infrastructure, it's time to have a party. This Friday at 4 p.m. is the official ribbon cutting, officially re-opening Main Street for even more pleasant walks and far-less bumpy rides. Balloons, face-painting, street entertainment, merchant coupons, refreshments and the interment of a bicentennial time capsule are the ingredients of a great spring party.

Capping the merriment will be The Walking Example Group's (WE-GO) spring stroll, "The Darling Buds of May" flower tour, leaving Pioneer Park at 5:30 p.m. Pat Thorpe will be on hand to guide us through some of Cooperstown's best blossoms. The tour is free to WE-GO members. A $5 donation is asked of all guests. Membership in WE-GO is $15 per year and includes all walking tours.

Everyone come downtown, enjoy the spring we thought might never come and take a new look and our new Main Street.

Brenda Berstler is the founder of the Walking Example Group (WE-GO) a non-profit organization encouraging walking and walkable communities. Visit their website at www.we-go.org.