I went back to Ohio, but my family was gone
I stood on the back porch, there was nobody home
We buried my grandmother in a little town (pop. 300) in northern Ohio, in an old cemetary behind the town's only Catholic church. The night before we spent the evening on the roads, driving from one small town to another.
In between, there were long stretches of silent farmland, with the occasional building. I never saw any people going in or coming out of the houses or working in the yard, although they must have been there.
It was utterly foreign and utterly familiar. Despite cell phones and satellites, it really is an area untouched by time. Driving through at dusk after the rain, it was all too easy to envision my grandparents and their brothers and sisters, driving over these roads and living in these houses, 30 or 60 years ago.
Brian writes about the aesthetics of place. Is there ever going to be a place that will be so evocative of me--or you--in 60 years that to see the place is to remember the people? Or will the coffee shops and cafes that we know be gone, ground under to make room for progress? I suspect I know the answer.
We drove until it got dark and then went back to the hotel. The next day we stood at the grave site in the wet grass and then went back to the city.
hear, hear. Ohio is the westernmost outpost of the east, with the countless small towns bedewing the green hills.
We have cousins there and I was amazed by their willingness to drive half the width of the state for a good steak, from small town to small town.
By the time the forefathers got to Indiana, the straight-line policy had won the day, to the obvious impoverishment of the citizenry.
Posted by: mike on June 5, 2003 11:42 PM