First of all, I need to apologize. It’s late and I’m in a rambly, slightly melancholy mood tonight – but this has been churning inside me and I need to get it out. Remembering that I am but a “pilgrim” and “this world is not my home” helps a little, but the melancholy sadness for things lost is still there. Barbara Streisand’s song Memory, is a haunting reminder of what we’ve left behind…
Another milestone achieved last week: my 20th high school reunion. In the weeks leading up to it, I have felt strangely old for some reason. I didn’t feel old until I realized that 2007 marked 20 years since I graduated from Wallenpaupack Area High School.
I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on the past – most recently by writing a Sentimental Ice Cream Journey of sorts. But the trip back in time started before then. On Saturday, after finishing up at an open house I manned in Masthope, I was on my way back to the office when I took a detour down Williams Road – where I grew up.
I stopped at the long, dusty driveway of my old home, unable to see much beyond the “POSTED: TRESPASSING FORBIDDEN” sign. It hurt to think that where I grew up was now off limits to me, and were I to enter, I would be a trespasser. I wondered…did the new owners visit the pet cemetery my family had in the little clearing near the old orchard? Would the new owners find those graves, marked now only with some circles of stones; the crayon names of Misty, Bridget, Carla, and Junior long washed away? Nobody would know about Tawny and how sweet she was, or how fresh and fiesty Pebbles was.
Would someone find the time capsule I buried in an old Tang jar? I still remember the pictures I included…a Polaroid (from my 1982 Christmas camera..) of my mom, holding the mixer, smiling for the camera (very rare; she hated to have her picture taken.). There was a blurry picture from a Kodak 126 InstaMatic of my dad – sitting on the couch with his cigarette, probably in his green Dickies pants and ratty old flannel shirt, looking annoyed at the photographer. I probably included pictures of the dogs we had at the time, (Midnight, Peaches, Casey, Phoebe…good grief we had a lot of dogs) and some biography of sorts typed on lined yellow paper with my dad’s 1930′s Smith Corona Typewriter that didn’t have the #1, I had to use a lower case L.
No. Probably not. The new owners tore down all that remained of us and started fresh – the past is not their past. I was no longer welcome to walk along the pond and hear the alarmed frogs hop into the water, nor could I breathe in the damp, earthy smell among the white birches up in the woods.
I moved on – followed Williams Road, noting how neglected and haunted Teresa M’s old house looks now…on down to the Towpath – where my grandfather’s old house stood, and where my
brother used to push me on my tricycle from room to room in that big old farm house. I envisioned Morfar (grandfather) sitting on the bluestone porch with his old radio by his side, listening to the news. This was not my home any longer, either.
The old swing bridge – spanning the lazy Lackawaxen River is another memory – it was destroyed in the flood of 2006. That bridge was almost 100 years old, and in a heartbeat, it was gone with the rushing water.
The water rushes on. Time goes on, things change. The good, the bad, the indifferent.
Following the Towpath back up toward the Tink Wig Fire Department, I noticed that some houses remained oddly the same these 20 years, and others changed slightly – some changed so much I didn’t recognize them. Amy’s old house…wow, I never would have guessed it would look like that now..it’s bigger! Good grief…this is where old Orville Rose had his trailer before he died 28 or so years ago…now all that’s left is the porch! There’s Lisa’s house…it’s yellow now. It used to be green!
I remembered being at a birthday party at that house…when it was green…Lisa recently told me her mother used her special, fine china for that birthday party. “I can’t ever sell this house,” Lisa told me. “I need it to be here…”
Thinking back to the NO TRESPASSING sign, I totally understand. Lisa, I need it to be there too.
Filed under: The Rambling Realtor Misc. Category
