Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
I didn't really expect my grandparents to be waiting for me at the gate, on account of them
bothhavingbeendeadformanyyears.ButIsupposeIhadvaguelyhopedthatanothernice
old couple might be living there now and would invite me in to look around and share my
reminiscences. Perhaps they would let me be their grandson. At the very least, I had as-
sumed that my grandparents' house would be just as I had last seen it.
It was not to be. The road leading to the house was still graveled with gleaming gypsum
pebblesandstillthrewupsatisfyingcloudsofdust,buttherailroadtracksweregone.There
was no sign that they had ever been there. The Victorian mansion was gone too, replaced
by a ranch house-style home with cars and propane gas cylinders scattered around the yard
like a toddler's playthings. Worse still, the field of cows was now an estate of box houses.
My grandparents' home had stood well outside the town, a cool island of trees in an ocean
of fields. Now cheap little houses crowded in on it from all sides. With shock, I realized
that the barn was gone. Some jerk had torn down my barn! And the house itself-well, it
wasashack.Painthadabandoneditinchunks.Busheshadbeenpointlesslyuprooted,trees
chopped down. The grass was high and littered with overspill from the house. I stopped
the car on the road out front and just gaped. I cannot describe the sense of loss. Half my
memories were inside that house. After a moment a hugely overweight woman in pink
shorts, talking on a phone with an apparently endless cord, came and stood in the open
doorway and stared at me, wondering what I was doing staring at her.
I drove on into the town. When I was growing up Main Street in Winfield had two grocery
stores, a variety store, a tav ern, a pool hall, a newspaper, a bank, a barbershop, a post of-
fice, two gas stations-all the things you would expect of any thriving little town. Everyone
shopped locally; everyone knew everyone else. Now all that was left was a tavern and a
place selling farm equipment. There were half a dozen vacant lots, full of patchy grass,
where buildings had been torn down and never replaced. Most of the remaining buildings
weredarkandboardedup.Itwaslikeanabandonedfilmsetwhichhadlongsincebeenleft
to decay.
I couldn't understand what had happened. People now must have to drive thirty miles to
buyaloafofbread.Outsidethetavernagroupofyoungthuggy-lookingmotorcyclistswere
hanging out. I was going to stop to ask them what had happened to their town, but one of
them, seeing me slow down, gave me the finger. For no reason. He was about fourteen.
Abruptly, I drove on, back out towards Highway 78, past the scattered farms and gentle
slopes that I knew like my own left leg. It was the first time in my life that I had turned my
back on a place knowing that I would never see it again. It was all very sad, but I should
have known better. As I always used to tell Thomas Wolfe, there are three things you just
