| Lost In Time
She's right.....as usual.
But still, as I get older,
Well, no, maybe that's not quite right. It's not that everything's different, although there have been some changes, homes where once there were pastures, old buildings gone, replaced by new ones or parking lots. The roads are different too, with lots of new intersections and stop signs.
But I don't think it's these changes that really bother me. No I think what really gets to me, what really sends me on a sentimental journey, is the faces I don't see around any more. Those friendly familiar faces that I remember from my past.
In their place I see the cold faces of strangers. Strangers who don't know me. Strangers who won't speak to me, nor even nod their heads in acknowledgment. I'm bothered by their rudeness, wondering why their mothers never taught them any manners.
And then it occurs to me that I too have become a stranger. A stranger in a community that I called home for nearly forty years. This sad revelation makes me nostalgic. I begin to think about the old days.
I recall driving along Tampico Road, or Ahtanum Boulevard, waving to my friends as they pass by in their own cars. I realize how much I miss being greeted by their loud voices as I enter the Ahtanum Cafe. I miss seeing them at Smitty's Grocery Store and Floyd Willard's gas station in Wiley City, or the Phillips 66 station in Ahtanum. Where has everybody gone? Where are the laughing, happy-go-lucky kids I knew in my youth?
And when I watch the new cars drive by, generic cars, each looking identical to the next one, I yearn for the days when each of us drove our own unique vehicle. Days when we travelled along these very same roads and were recognized from a far distance....just by our cars. Cars like '57 Chevy's and '63 Oldsmobile's. Fast cars like GTO's and Corvette's and 409's, and older cars made into hot rods like '49 Merc's and '51 Fords.
And where are all the young faces that sat behind those old steering wheels? Faces with names like Record and Hammermeister and Ashbaugh. Or Richartz and Heironimous, Bohannon and Carson and Clow. And what happened to the boys with names like Kingsboro and Rogers, Wieler and Neumeister? Where are the Drury boys, the Glen's, and the Goldsmith's? Are they still around?
If they are still around somewhere, and I'm sure many of them are, I wonder if they have ever closed their eyes on a quiet summer evening, recalling those bygone days, remembering with a small smile upon their lips those bygone years of youth. Do they too occasionally wish they could go back to when their lives stretched out before them like an endless highway? Do they think fondly about a time when life was simpler, and friends were really friends.....or is it just me?
Perhaps it is just me. Perhaps I'm the only one who never grew up. Perhaps I'm the only one who feels like a kid trapped inside of some aging mans body, wishing I could somehow escape, but knowing the impossibility of it. A kid who still believes that the past was somehow better than the present. That life was indeed simpler then, and happier, too. A past that held more laughter.....and less worry about what tomorrow would bring.
It saddens me me when I realize that 50 years from now there will be no one left who remembers how it felt to be a kid growing up in the Ahtanum Valley during those days. The days before Viet-Nam, before Watergate, before computers, before hard drugs.....and before television taught us that violence was okay.
The world will keep spinning though, time will march on, and whether I like it or not these memories will be forgotten. The sounds of laughter, the shouts of recognition as friends gather on a Saturday night, conversations shared around an old wood stove in somebody's garage, and the roar of loud cars on a summer evening will be lost.....lost forever in the new and modern world of my grandchildren's children.
Maybe someday though, before I get too much older, I'll recognize a familiar face on one of my visit's to the Ahtanum Valley, a face I haven't seen for many years, an older face like mine for sure, but friendly and warm nonetheless. A face whose eyes say they have shared the past with me.
In the meantime I'll try hard not to be as rude to strangers as they are to me. And I'll make a serious effort to enjoy the present, and make the best of it, as my wife suggests.
And who knows? Maybe one of those strangers will stop me one day and shake my hand, then ask....."What was it like around here when you were a kid?"
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Each time I go back to the Ahtanum Valley, the valley of my youth, it gets harder and harder to accept the changes I see. Everything's different than it was when I was a kid.