From time to time I have a look at old neighborhoods I once lived in on Google Maps utility Google Earth. It's a telling bit of nostalgia. Telling because, as always, nothing stays the same. The old gas station where I used to push Dad's lawnmower with a quarter in my pocket to buy gas (a gallon was 35 cents, the mower took less than 1 gallon.)
The grade school I went to is not only closed, but has been since before I left. The time capsule we buried seems to have been dug up and a memorial of some kind left in it's place. Nobody seems to have written about it as google shows no hits within the first 10 pages of results. A look at the house I lived in then shows the nicely blacktopped tarmacadam driveway now has a strip of untended grass in it and hasn't been re-sealed in decades -- probably since I last lived in the state in question. The beautiful railroad tie retaining wall that terraced the front yard is gone, replaced with an eroded and overgrown earthen bank. The front yard looks overgrown and poorly kept. I suppose I shouldn't resent that, but consider please that I, at my father's loud and sometimes violent insistence, was responsible for maintaining that front yard in immaculate "you could play golf on it" shape. I mowed it each week, weeded around the trees and used old fashioned edging shears to trim the edge along the driveway. Of course, now trees have grown up that were saplings when I lived there, or have been planted de novo from that time. The place is still a nice brick psuedo-colonial, with the attached garage entrance tastefully behind the place -- A thing you could only do on a lot the size that this one sits on, which is by today's standards a ridiculous 1 acre or so. (Google Earth puts it as about 350x 115ft , slightly less than an acre, but I'm eyeballing it from 100m up and so who knows how big it is. Further web research could probably tell me, but my interest in knowing wanes and I move on.
Another neighborhood. A large, close to 3000 sq ft modern gabled structure designed by my father. It was, in the time I lived there, one of the largest homes in the neighborhood. Now, it's slightly below average in size compared to the others. I wouldn't mind it except for the fact that the big, new ones are horrid McMansions with no soul, and no flair in design.
The technical college I attended, and later worked at, is still there, but doesn't have the same name anymore. It merged with another local college and so changed the name accordingly. I remember one day, I had an AM class to work (I was a lab tech. ) I got up, it'd snowed heavily overnight, but I heard of no closure on the radio (this was before the internet was popular and widely available), so I got bundled up and got in my car -- a 1976 Pontiac Le Mans with 2 tires, 2 bags of sand, a tow chain and a couple cinderblocks in the trunk for weight -- and I motored on. Freezing my hands off because the car's radiator had been replaced with one for a GMC 1500 pickup truck (hey it was cheap) and the heater core took more time to heat up than my trip to work. I drove like A man on a mission, and got there, with five minutes to spare before class. Only to see that the parking lot was empty and drifted over with snow. They had announced the closure while I was driving, and I had shut the radio off because I didn't want to be distracted by it. I did the only thing I could: "I'll be Tee Totally Fuckin Damned!" I raged, and then I laughed. And then I put the car in gear again and drove the hell home. At least the heater was working by then. Ahh nostalgia. you're a trap for a man. No more reminiscing tonight. Tomorrow, things get done. and I do not have skin cancer.
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