time...... marches on

Here is an observation from my road tip last week.

To catch up all you latecomers, I took a drive upstate New York, last week. I visited a bunch of towns/cities, lots of places that have some sentimental value. Some of these places , I've been visiting on and off for nearly 40 years!!!!! incredible.

There is a timeline, a story, a narative (isn't that word overused these days? everything is part of 'the narative') here it is;

In the late 60's / early 70's,the down town part of the city is in decline. What used to be grocery stores and hardware stores, and shoe stores are now empty. Those stores are all moving to the 'shopping center' at the edge of town.

Late 70's, early 80's, someone gets a great idea-" Lets turn Main St. into a pedestrian mall!"  So the main drag is closed to traffic and some trees are planted and some benches are set up.

Now the Main St. is filled with little specialty shops ( candles and such) and restaurants (Hooligans; an eatery) The Movie theater now has two screens. On friday nights  in the summer,the community orchestra plays.

Late eighties- The shopping center out at the edge of town is half empty because the new mall has opened up out by the thruway. The Movie theater is closed. Every other boutique on the Main St is closed. No more Ochestra nights.

You can see where this goes- The mall is vacant ., Wal Mart, Costco.  have arrived . The shopping center is deserted,. Forget Main St.

We all know that change is inevitable and the good old days never really were, but it still seems to me that we are very short sighted in our planning. No one sees more than 10 years into the future. Maybe thats for the best.

All I know is that for about two years in the 80's I lived in central New York and there was a spectacular supermarket (Tops) within walking distance of my house.  When I was there the other day, I saw that to go food shopping I would have to get in the car, get on the highway and drive.

feh!