I recently returned to a town that I first saw over half a century ago as my brand-new husband and I traveled to his first duty station as a Marine. There was no Interstate 95 then so we wended our way down two-lane highways as we headed south from Washington, DC. We had started our drive early, so we stopped for breakfast at a likely looking café. There on the menu amongst the usual bacon, eggs, and toast was the specialty of the house --- grits with calf brains. Grits had not come my gustatory way before, much less with brains added to it. I stuck with the familiar, although I did look around the restaurant to see if anyone might have ordered it and was actually eating it.
As the day progressed, we drove through small towns all with the obligatory Piggly Wiggly market and drive-in restaurants with delightful names such as The Toot and Tell and The Chat and Chew. At the end of a long day, we reached our final destination, driving through the town that held the base. As far as I could see it was one huge laundromat, pawn shop and used car lot which probably befitted the age and occupation of the base residents.
Now many, many years later were making that trip again with old friends who had also been stationed there. This time we traveled on Interstates, four-lane highways and when we hit what had been a small, sleepy southern town we found overpasses, four-lane roads and not one recognizable landmark from the town of the past. Every fast food known to man was there as well as many new housing areas for the retirees who were flocking to the area. If it had not been for Google I am not sure we could have found the house we lived in all those years ago as nothing else had remained the same. It was a foreign land.
Now that I am home again, I find that when I think of that currently booming southern town, my memories are still of its sleepy predecessor which welcomed me all those years ago. And that is fine, but it is well for me to remember that more things than that town have changed in the last 80 years. And change is neither bad nor good in and of itself. It is just change and nothing more.