Something I never gave much thought to as a youngster: the older you get, the more places from your past begin to disappear.
Having grown up in and around Yukon, I haven’t experienced this too often — living less than five miles away from the house you grew up in has its privileges, I suppose. The house is still there, as is my old high school, junior high, mid high, and both elementary schools I attended. (In fact, as I’ve mentioned on occasion, both of my kids attend the same elementary school I went to.) The skating rink is still the skating rink. The bowling alley is still the bowling alley. The Mill is still the Mill.
That’s not to say things haven’t changed. What used to be Taco Mayo is now Bad Brad’s BBQ. Dairy Queen is now City Bites. Ken’s Pizza is now Mae’s Diner. There’s been lots and lots of new construction in Yukon over the past ten years, but for some reason seeing something new pop up seems less jarring than missing something old disappear.
Mason has started a new Karate class. It’s taught in the old mid-high, and last week was my first night to attend the class with him. Susan told me where his class was, and once I got to the school I realized that his Karate class takes place in my old journalism classroom.
Except, it doesn’t. When we got there I realized, my old classroom is gone. That end of the school has been remodeled, and my old journalism classroom has been replaced with a pom pom/cheerleading practice room. And they didn’t just re-purpose the old room; walls were removed and doors were relocated to the point where I simply couldn’t grasp exactly where my old classroom used to be — a room that I spent four years in. I walked around a bit, trying to get my head around where things used to be, but without an old frame of reference (the old hallway was gone, too) it was tough to do.
While Mason was preoccupied with learning stances and reverse punches, I sniffed around the old room like a dog, trying to remember its surroundings. Nothing.
Getting old is weird.
you are still a very young man.
Even with all my drs visits, I still feel wonderful most of the time.
you are blessed with a very nice family.
lovely wife Susan , Mason and Morgan.and yourself is wonderful
love you all a bushel and a peck
Granny O’Hara
When I turned 25 I realized i was a quarter century old. At a certain point it is pretty much “yeah you guys get flying cars and lasers…. but we had trees and shit”
I have driven through my old high school town after leaving and it had changed so much, I got lost! So, it wasn’t just a classroom, it was a whole town. Things change and they say change is good, but ….
Worse than having things disappear is watching them be abandoned and slowly disintegrate! My old Dairy Boy I lunched at during high school just fell into the tall grass eventually. Somehow it hurts. My teenage hangout got sold, turned into a barbecue joint and then leveled to make room for a shopping mall. But the memories remain, so I guess that’s good enough. Even better is having others around that remember also; makes for good stories at family and class reunions!
I’ll sometimes stop at the old Central Elementary (now an Administrative building) and walk around reliving all of the old memories of the sand box, big toy, stage coach, tetherballs, jungle gym, kickball. Everything is gone now. I remember when it got really icy, we would slide down the wheelchair ramp..it went forever. Everything seems so much smaller now. I actually walked around in the building for about half an hour before a school faculty asked me to leave. I found Mrs. Knox’s and Mrs. Hendricks my old 6th grade teachers rooms. I was a little misty eyed. Don’t know why. Nothing lasts, but nothing is lost.
As the Moody Blues once sang, “You can never go home anymore.”
It’s very difficult (read: “woeful”) for me to visit my hometown of Santa Fe just 50 miles up the road because I can’t help but impose my “memory map” of the city and feel resentful that “they” are not even trying to keep everything exactly as I left it in 1988. I’ve come to realize that this mindset, while strong, isn’t exactly fair to younger generations who have just as much right to nostalgia as I do.
“…for some reason seeing something new pop up seems less jarring than missing something old disappear.”
That’s the thing that gets to me most about the erosion of “my” Santa Fe: the infill. Fields of sand and desert plants where I used to freely ride motorcycles, shoot guns, ditch school, etc, are continually being plugged up with apartment complexes and strip malls.
In the suburb where I lived from 1988-95, the roads aren’t even the same anymore. They widened and moved two of the main roads sometime in the late 90s, so I have a hard time finding the old neighborhood without getting lost. Most of the places I remember are gone too. Back then it seemed like the far edge of civilization, but urban sprawl overran it. It seems like I blinked and it went from one extreme to the other.
Where I live now, further east, it’s surprising how much has changed even in 10 years. We’ll drive past something and I’ll point and say what it used to be. The inner-ring suburbs are worse. The booming, sprawling strip mall where I bought my first Amiga stuff? Empty except for a thrift store and a store that sells cheap knockoff tools. The mall where I used to do all my Christmas shopping? Empty except for Sears and a couple of restaurants, basically waiting to be demolished.
The one that pains me the most is the giant creek behind my house was plowed and paved. I have so many great memories of playing down there as a kid.