Down Memory Lane....

Yesterday I drove out to a couple of Estate Sales in the vicinity of where I grew up as a teenager. I couldn't believe the one house....only in my wildest dreams could I ever live in a house like that!...must be nice. So anyway after the sales I came back home down the road that took me to my old street to the house my dad built.

Back around 1959/1960 my parents decided to move out of the city. My dad wanted to buy himself an acre of land and build his own house and have chickens and horses. He was in the building business, so between himself and his friends he built a 3 bedroom ranch with a family room and fireplace on an acre of land. Back then the lots were selling and other homes were being built here and there. It was in a township with lots of trees and dirt roads. I distinctly remember the summer the house was ready and we moved in. I was 14. Also, just down the street lived a super good-looking guy who happened to be 15.....just my dad's luck!!...haha. Super good-looking guy ended up being my on again/off again boyfriend for the next 4 years. He had a motor scooter and he would ride down to our house, pick me up and off we'd go riding down the dirt roads. And we spent many lazy summer afternoons taking walks up and down that old dirt road. We'd walk to the end of the road, turn right and walk to the railroad tracks and then walk back.....probably did that a zillion times. School days I would walk to the corner where there was a little 2 pump gas station and get the school bus that would bus me to the high school in the main city. It was very rural, rustic and serene back in those days.

My dad built himself a small barn in the back with a corral and he bought himself his first horse, Pixie. He had a sign made up that he hung up over the barn and it read "Pixie's Ponderosa". He loved to ride his horse and he'd ride her down the road to another friend's place that owned a horse farm. Later her bought "Amber" but she was a little too fat for him, so he put her on a diet. But she still kept gaining weight. He finally began to suspect she might be pregnate...called in a vet...and sure enough, she was pregnate! She fouled a little filly soon afterwards. One morning, he went out to the barn to feed her and there she was nursing her filly.

Behind our land there was a woods and next to our lot, there was nothing but field to the main road. We were very isolated and we liked it that way. But pretty soon word came that crews were coming in and cutting down the woods behind us and apartment buildings were going to be built. And the expressway was going to be coming through on the other side of the apartments. And the nice empty field next to us was being sold and since it was also on a corner and on a main road, a theater of some type was going to be built there. Progress was coming to our little quiet piece of heaven. That's all my dad needed to hear. He sold the house, bought a few acres about 5 miles down the road and built himself another house. By that time, I was married, so it was just he and my mom who lived there. They were happy there until another more mightier intrusion interrupted their peaceful lives....cancer. My wonderful father passed away in 1979 at the young age of only 52.

Okay....so anyway....yesterday I drove down my street to see my old house. Of course, now the road is wider and paved. Apartment buildings and roads are looming over the back of the lot. A GFS store and parking lot is right next door to our house where the empty field use to be. The "Center Stage" and parking lot use to be there but they tore that down and now there are stores. Across the road where there use to be houses down to the corner, well...all the houses are torn down (including super good-looking boyfriend's house) and more parking lots and stores all the way down to the corner on the main road.....that same corner where the little 2 pump gas station stood where I and my BF would wait for the bus.

My father's house is now basically surrounded by "progress" as they call it. There is no rural rustic feeling anymore and the serenity is gone. What stands now is a symbol of the greed in this country...build more stores, spend more money, buy more crap, and the American dream has become an American nightmare. Well, I still have my dreams and my memories of those long-ago days when time seem to stand still and there was something special to remember many years later.