Vacant Lots, Urban Amnesia, and the Transience of it All

I was talking with a poet friend of mine today about poetry, old buildings, old friends, and other stuff. We used to work together and I like his poetry and he likes my blogs and art. I like how his house is filled with books, and art, and family photos. During our conversation, I mentioned one of my regrets: not taking photos of unoccupied farm houses I used to drive by three or four times a years as I traveled the state back when I was doing that. There was one house on the drive to Norfolk and each time I drove by it, something would have changed. It sat a bit up the hill on the east side of the highway and was large and white with a big front porch. I imagine the original occupants spent many an evening sitting on that porch after a day of farming watching the traffic and the sky and the Elkhorn river valley. But no more. The house was empty and no longer a home. Each time I drove by, the lawn was further reverting to long grasses, a tree sprout by the foundation would be larger, one broken window would become three, or a shutter would be hanging from the final screw. Each time, the roof would sag a big more like old things and people tend to sag. Time is not nice to abandoned houses -- or people. I wish I had taken those photos. There were at least half a dozen old farms houses and barns I used to notice. And in Omaha, I will sometimes drive by a place I have been many, many times before, and it will be a newly razed empty lot, and I will not be able to remember what was there the day before. Down by the med center, it can be an entire block that will disappear between drive-bys. Four or five houses in a row will suddenly be gone, and I cannot remember what they looked like. There needs to be a word for that neighborhood amnesia, that archaeological transience. Greg said he read an article about that phenomenon once -- I'll try to find it. Jobbers canyon came up, and I thought of the Clarinda, and now those three buildings the city is trying to buy to give to the Holland Center. I hope they don't just tear them down to make a parking lot. * * * * * * * A small woman who lived a large life, Bernice, used to sit on the opposite end of the pew from me in church on Sundays. I would greet her and ask her how she was and she'd always say, "Not bad for an old lady." She's gone now but I still remember her sitting there. Other people sit there now. Several golfing buddies of mine are gone now. One died in his 40s, another in his 50s, another in his 60s. And I remember them all. My dad passed several years ago and my mother is 90 now and doing well - not bad for an old lady. But I'm guessing there are people on the edges of my life whom I barely notice, like those homes which became houses which became vacant lots, who suddenly are gone and I don't remember who was there. And I suspect I am that same person for others...... That's kind of sad.