This reminds me of my grandfather's house in Missouri
I've lived in, let's see, 15 places in 31 years. The only place that has been in my life, for my entire life, is my grandfather's house, in central Missouri.
When I was little, it was way out in the country. But the city limit has crept closer, and closer, and closer. The only things in sight were the neighbors' tiny house, the barn, and the water tower. All gone now, replaced by McMansions. Even the pond across the road was filled in when I was about 12, although 10 years later some doctor dug a new pond next to the driveway of his new house, thus about 200 feet from where the old pond was. What's the point in all that? The single-track dirt road is now two lanes of concrete. There were woods and open fields, persimmons, gooseberries, blackberries, tarzan vines, and a creek that my cousins and I could play in (and our parents before us). All of this was on land that my family didn't own, but that nobody objected to our using for play and berry-gathering. Most of these things are physically gone now, and those that remain are in the process of being removed, surrounded by No Trespassing signs, or both.
Every time we would drive into town, my grandfather would point at the woods and fields along the way, "that's Mrs. So-and-so's land" and "Old Mr. Such-and-such owns that area". Now that it's all covered in subdivisions, my grandfather says on the way into town, "Boy, what would Mrs. So-and-so say if she were around to see this?".
It makes me wonder who mourns the fact that my own neighborhood hundreds of miles away exists.
(chase, Fri 9 May 2008, 16:58, Reply)