Recently I googled my Great-Grandmother's farm just to reminisce. It wasn't the warm fuzzy I was expecting. The old rutted dirt road leading up to the fenced in farm was now a paved two lane with yellow stripes in the middle. The fence enclosing the fields and barns was gone. The old house still stood next to the road but not one of the buildings--barn, smoke house, tool shed, or two hole outhouse were anywhere to be seen. The old bricked up well was still on the side of the yard but it was covered over with an iron grating to keep idiots from falling in.
Across the street was a double wide with a car parked in front. To the left of the old run down house was a white house built out on the field that used to run high with corn. The field was now a lawn, flat and green, sparsely dotted with new trees in the area where watermelons used to grow.
I went further up the paved road just around the bend where the branch was. The branch was the little stream that ran from the forest to the old dirt road and under to the other side. It was a favorite spot for us kids to float sticks and wade to cool off our bare feet in the summer heat. I searched and searched but there was no sign of the little stream. Both sides of the road were covered in dried bushes and weeds.
The old forest where Clyde and I went hunting squirrels was covered in new growth trees. It was all so foreign.
My son said, "It has been a long time, dad."
He is right. It has been a long time. 60 years is a good stretch. During that time practically every sign that we were there had disappeared.
The old house is now unsafe to enter. The well is covered as a safety precaution. The water cannot be brought to the surface thus removing its significance. The old barn, the sugarcane mill, the gate leading to the cows in the field have all been removed as if they had never existed.
I felt the same as I did the day in 1972 when I drove up to the Riverland Terrace School grounds. While I was overseas it have been demolished. Not one brick remained to show there had been a school on that site. I was in shock for days.
Recently, James Island High School, or what was our high school, was demolished. Bricks from the site were given to some of the alumni for a price, I imagine. Which means another bit of concrete proof of our past is past. It's gone. With these things go our reference points. We can no longer say, that is where I went to school, or that is where my childhood was influenced. We cannot look at our children with pride as they enter those old buildings to begin their education.
Traditions used to be important. Those things handed down generation to generation used to have deep meaning.
Now families are split apart. The young move to where the job is. The family ties are frayed and eventually broken. Traditions? They are lost in the shuffle. The old folks? They are lost in the shuffle. We used to sit on the front porch and listen to the tales told by our grandfolks about the times in which they were raised. We carried those tales forward so that families knew where they came from.
I should never have googled my Great-Grandmother's old address. I was just reminded that we all pass and with us our life story which may or may not have been significant at the time. Life goes on. And in a few years it will go on without me. I plan to be cremated and my ashes to be released on the top of the white cliffs of Dover. Whether that last wish will be granted remains to be seen, but , to coin a phrase, I, too, will be gone with the wind. All traces slipping into the breeze scattering me to the ages.
