What 'progress' did to my town.

[TA Forbes]

I went to visit my daughter and son in law in Alabama near Fort Rucker a couple of years ago. They lived in a small town on a 2 lane highway. About half of the old storefronts in the town were empty, but NOT torn down. There were old pieces of farm equipment rusting in fields and generations of handed down cars still on the property. Everywhere there were relics of the past in a state of peaceful decay, and if you were apt to listen, you could hear whispers of days long ago.

People there were not in a mindless rush to raze and flatten everything old and unproductive and erect upon the site symbols of our fixation with what is here and now.

I very nearly stayed there for good. It was like I remembered it to be when I was a boy. Before I too became "successful." It reminded me of things that are right and good and always will be, long after we are gone and the monuments to our own sense of here and now are torn down and new monuments to a new generation's here and now are erected.