Our Town
You can’t erase someone’s memories. Even when someone decries your right to remember. I dislike using the word ‘right’ but silly objections come to the forefront and center themselves, like a dog guarding a big, fat bone.
I remember the shape of my area. I am intrinsically linked, her outlines cradling a town that you could hold your breath the entire way through. I can still feel the wind on my face as I rode my pink Huffy bike through her back alleys and main thoroughfares, a bottle of RC Cola and a Marathon bar rattling in my white plastic bike basket.
But when your pockets jingle, the contents of your lucid daydreams look different than those who aren’t sure whether they should pay the electric bill or buy bread. They hold different opportunity. That decision is incomprehensible to most, and that it exists in our own area unfathomable, an embarrassment.
The exterior of what we display seems more important most days than what we’re hiding, the innards of a town we must raze and tuck away for no one to see. Every single spot scraped clean of residue.
Someone said, “If you like that building so much, why don’t you just buy it? Put your money into it and fix it?” and it looks like reminiscing is now off limits.
I like the curves of corbels and the clean lines of a mid-century building that maintains what it is without succumbing to current trends, or worse, the wrecking ball. Beautiful bones that stacked just right, make something worth taking up space. The price to publicly lament now the cost of the entire property, because how dare there be any thoughtful discourse?
My husband and I have spent millions of miles and minutes gawking, pining, and dreaming over old homes in need of a Band-Aid. Do what you will with our intricately knitted tapestry of acreage, because progress is good, but only if progress is attempted through a thoughtfully wise lens.
Most often, I lament what was once considered an appreciation for architecture and historical preservation. How my lamentation is observed, without capital, is as an invitation for ridicule.
We have shed our small-town, leaving in place a trail of things to sell and places to stay. As a voice who loves her town, I wish we had incorporated years ago, putting in place guardrails for what could and would happen inside her.
I believe we should care if enrollment in our schools is thriving or stagnant and look at whether what we build and tear down, gearing our money-making towards tourism only, is helping the decline of folks who can afford to live here. If we cannot hear or see the people who live here, ever inching towards the outskirts, the edges, then what is left? Those of us who only come to town in the mornings to avoid traffic and use the bank, the post office, put some gas in the car, and gather some groceries before the crowds get thick?
Many will disagree with me because without fault capital speaks. For those of us without capital, it’s buy it or shut up. But a town is more than what buildings stand inside of her. It’s also more than who we can draw in to shop here, it’s her people. Without them there is no town, and if there are no houses for them to live in, let alone afford to live in, what’s left?
