Welcome sign on the side of I-20
Frankly, this downtown doesn’t seem historic.
The years hardly reaching further than I could spit, and
of the 1,776 members of the township, the one that made it to TV
on an episode of Hell’s Kitchen, isn’t quite deserving of
a short-term eternity — name etched in sheet aluminum,
the key to the city.
To the bureau of historic towns and preservation:
Teach me the sunrise as well as you know it, not where it comes up in the sky -
but how it sings the general store - how the vote in the last election was nearly
unanimous. How this population sign was made out of the walls of the lustron
homes that have emptied like a slow leak back into the sea of the world.
Once I was driving through Georgia on I-20 and distinctly remember seeing seven or eight towns in a row that had a “historic” downtown - most established after 1880-ish. I thought it was hilarious at the time that we call these historic (after still being so young in the grand scope of time writ large and civilization writ small) and also that someone has determined that the town needs to be called historic — as if the peak and wane of life had already occurred there.
There is much in a small-town that is worth celebrating, highlighting and cherishing — little of it having to do with when it was established, little of it having to do with those who made it out. There is much in the land that worth celebrating, highlight and cherishing — not just what we have chosen to scaffold on top of it.
I imagine that once something is preserved, and valued for its preservation, it’s hard for it to grow and change.