Been out in the hinterlands of the old home town, breathing the once-clean air and taking in the previously-open spaces. What used to be a lovely area of rolling hills, moutain creeks, and farmland, has been hardened into a writhing coating of roads and highways, and inexorably overtaken by developers with obstreporous half million dollar "houses" and strip malls, until the only way to get from one township to the next is sometimes through a Byzantine wormway of mall roads, and the main economic base for the county appears to have become big box stores and McMansion support services.
From one kind of Appalachian poverty (after the loss of mining, steel and factory jobs in the 80s) to another (the burgeoning job market in part-time, benefitless retail and fast-food work). And for as far as the eye can see, nothing but lookalike housing tracts whose poverty of the imagination simply has to be seen to be believed, being built for wealthy communters who move into the area to enjoy "country life", and then travel miles to work at jobs the locals can only dream about.
More about that later. I'm back in the big city, and realizing that the old life I used to long for so when I first moved here is no more, and except for visiting with friends and family, there's really nothing left for me to return to.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment