THE VILLAGE OF ROCKVILLE is bustling. Kids pile into the one-room schoolhouse every morning while their parents chat at the general store next door. They gather for knitting groups and chapel services, weddings and funerals. They built the post office together, and picked up the pieces after a fire destroyed the big dairy farm up on Overlook Road. They’ve known each other for generations.

It’s easy to lament what we’re missing, but there are more productive pathways to community.

Or at least they did, circa 1950. That picture emerged at the Rockport Select Board’s Listening Tour Sept. 12, as a dozen or so old-timers traded stories and newcomers like me shook our heads, nostalgic for a community we’ve never known.

The Select Board has embarked on a tour of the five villages, beginning with Rockville, and continuing with Glen Cove, Simonton Corner, West Rockport, and Rockport Village, to uncover these stories and explore how to support, protect, and revitalize our town. Years ago, the Select Board had a sort of “gentleman’s agreement” to include representatives from each village, but as that tradition fell away, so did some of the history of each pocket community.

Today, even Rockville’s residents don’t necessarily know what the village used to be like. The Chapel is still standing, and it’s starting to bustle again, thanks to the tireless efforts of the Rockville Community Chapel Association; but, every other public building has disappeared. There is no school, no post office, no store, no place to gather with neighbors. Once the hub of a community, the village has become a place that people roar through on their way to somewhere else. (Excessive speeding and the litter that seems to go with it was one of the concerns the Select Board heard about Wednesday night.)

When my family moved to Rockville almost three years ago, we didn’t know a thing about the village. It felt like a secret, with a bedraggled-but-still-elegant Chapel and a hidden brook winding its way from Mace’s Pond to Chickawaukie. We fell in love, and we listened carefully whenever our neighbors volunteered their stories. We baked pies for the Chapel Association’s fundraising suppers and watched as the chapel was lovingly restored. We tracked down the 1949 (?) Life Magazine with a “Maine country boy” on the cover and a feature on Rockville inside. We realized that our instincts were right about Rockville, but that we’d come several decades late to the party.

It’s easy to lament what we’re missing, but there are more productive pathways to community. Faces lit up when the Select Board suggested adding a few “Historical Village of Rockville” signs, and maybe a few “outdoor museum” historical markers. We’ll take maintenance of the mostly-overgrown sidewalk to the pathways committee, and see about lowering, or at least posting, the speed limit. There’s talk of a Celebrate Rockport day, with each of the Villages featured in some way. There’s a feeling that the Lost Village of Rockville might be found after all.

Kathleen Meil and her family moved to Rockville two and half years ago and are making the small village of Rockport their home.