More Changing Scenery

The other day, I did a post about the postal system in the village where I live. In that post I had a photo of what is believed to have been the first post office in town, along with a photos of the last two locations of a physical post office here, ending with a photo of the "Cluster mailboxes" we have today.

The purpose of that post was to document how things were to how they are now and was my way of illustrating the history as well as how the town has lost a social venue when the physical building for a post office was removed from us.

Today, I'm going to show you some other things that have changed too over the years. These are all things that have been damaged and the loss is irreplaceable.

This little bungalow type residence was once upon a time the home of the "Company Doctor." It is said that it was one of those mail-order homes -from Sears-Roebuck or one of those places. When I was a child, it was definitely one of the better homes in town -very well-kept, always was enticing to me. I always wished I could see what the inside of the house looked like back then.

That idea will never come to pass -to see the inside of it -as it burned a year or so back and it has been condemned, not enough of the house left standing that it can ever be fixed, returned to its former place of honor and beauty.
The above house shown here also went up in flames about a year or so ago. It didn't have the history behind it as did the former Doctor's house, as it was an old home but it had been remodeled quite extensively in the 50s and 60s and was for a good number of years a very nice residence. I won't go into detail here on the cause of the fire and a side story about that other than to say that two people are awaiting trial because of the fire.
Located directly across the road from the house pictured above is this place. The family who owned it moved away from here back in the late 50s, perhaps early 60s -mainly because the children in the family had to leave to move to the "big city" in order to find gainful employment and then, the parents opted to follow the children there too. To my knowledge, no one has lived in this place since the elders of the family left here and thus, the house was left to just kind of die a slow passing into oblivion.
And here, just up the street and around the bend from the last two former homes is this -the rubble left behind of what once was a house -a home to some family -that has finished its descent into the depths of rubble.

Seeing these places -as well as several others with similar appearances, circumstances, etc. -it makes me think that something should be done to either find a way to restore, if at all possible, some of these homes and if that can't be done, then find a way to eradicate them -kind of like one would do if you had acne and used acne scar removal to make the surface -or the skin -of the village look presentable again.

Kind of like this place now is:
If you could have seen this house the way I saw it when I was a child, it is something that has seen a remarkable transformation!

Back then, it was very run-down, dilapidated and occupied by one old man. From what I have learned about the early history of this village, the family who once owned this place were quite well-to-do but as time moved on, so again did the children, leaving the father to live out his last days alone and unable to tend to the needs of the old house.

Some years after his death, a young couple dared to purchase this place -ramshackle as it was -and they went to work on it, lovingly restoring it to its former beauty.

And yes, it is that today -a beauty! Almost looks like it could a medium sized mansion type home from the Civil War era. The couple who bought it and restored it to look like this really should give and be given too, a big pat on the back for a job very well done.

Seeing the old homes fade away -either because they were flat out abandoned, or by fire or simply just reduced to rubble is something that saddens me very much to see this occur. Each of these places has a history -a family or perhaps even several families -who lived there, enjoyed the warmth and comfort the place had to offer and now, all that's left are memories.