…long-lost life

I grew up with a perfect sense of direction. My little hometown didn’t even have street signs, and unlike now, I never got lost; I always knew right where I was.

Dear Me,
That's a new twist. From now on, I am not lost, I have temporarily misplace the rest of the world. T.

Mom turned us loose in the mornings after chores, and we would run all day long. We caught minnows and frogs in the irrigation ditches across town, and kept our catch in baby food jars with nail holes we poked in the tops, sometimes impaling our specimens in the process. We ran free from one end of town to the other and if I had trouble finding my way back home before dark, it wasn’t because I was lost.

When our new ambulance driver moved in and she was given directions like, “so and so lives by such and such,” it became her life calling to bring the town into the 20th century with house numbers and street signs.

That became a defining moment for the little town. Up until then, people lived in relation to the post office or the bank or the grocery store, which all occupied the same block downtown, but shortly thereafter, the town began to change. Somehow, defining our spot on the map, seemed to lead to discovery by everyone else and the town began to grow.

The post office moved around the corner, the bank moved across the street, and finally the grocery store, down to the corner; all of these serving to redefine the outskirts of town. It was now a block bigger in every direction.

When a new highway raced over the hill, connecting us to a dying mining/resort mecca, our town became the fledgling community’s affordable housing for the rich and famous’ service people.

The culturally diverse folk moved in and we joined them and became fiscally dependent on the independently rich. They required condominiums, ate fish eggs and ordered champagne, and we cleaned their homes, their fish and catered to their other feckless requirements.

There was never any doubt that we were headed in a new direction and it wasn’t long before we plotted our fiscal path; and it led to the bathrooms of the upper-class elite.

Reality Bite: And I mourn again what is lost.