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Date Posted: 16:34:31 03/21/02 Thu
Author: Ralph
Subject: It's Been A Long Time

Late last year, we bought a new piece of property to begin a new house for our growing family, and looked at many dozens of places before deciding on the one we eventually will call our new home. The house will sit on a hilltop "knob" overlooking the valley and our small community below, a setting that has always been a personal dream of mine.

Last weekend, after a long day of cleaning and clearing our new place, and doing misc. preps for getting the house foundation ready, I was sitting on a pile of rocks which are the beginning of a stacked natural stone wall that will lead down the driveway path to the county road nearest our new home. As I was sitting there, tired from the days activities, I realized the "familiarity" I had felt with this place from the start.... a kind of deja vu feeling as if this was where I was meant to be, and as if I had been here before. My thoughts took me back to my grandma's old house far away in another part of the state, and how our new drive closely resembled the old dirt road that led up to the old homeplace where my mom and her family of 7 brothers and sisters were born and raised. My brother and I had spent many an hour "driving" up and down that old road during our childhood, literally running the tires off an old home-built go kart that we nailed and wired together out of pieces of the old family barn and farm implements. Those were days that will always be remembered as some of the best ever in my memories.

I'm sure most of us have paid visits to old abandoned buildings in the various ghost towns throughout the western states, metal detecting, artifact hunting, or just exploring the old storefronts and remains of the heydays of what use to be thriving communities themselves. There were the daylight tours of the now abandoned buildings, and the almost "spooky" feelings we got if caught still there after dark, with thoughts perhaps of why exactly it is that they call them "ghost" towns.

But no visit to any such place is ever complete without a stroll through the old cemetery, usually just on the outskirts of town, perhaps nestled up on top of a nearby hill or rise. All of those people, since long departed, that were once a living part of the old glory of what that particular town use to represent. If only we could still hear their voices, and if only they could relate the stories of their individual lives. Just as today, there were no doubt many happy occasions, many tragedys, many births and deaths, many loves and heartbreaks that wove the people together and perhaps helped to tear them apart. There were friendhips made and lost, denied and abandoned, and surely fortunes of the same fates.

I remember well my last trip past grandma's house, and the terrible feelings of the loneliness of the old farm, with grandma now gone, and all of the voices and laughter that were once a part of that old home. It's not so much the places in our past that we long for again, but the people that made those places something special. Without the people, how much meaning is left really?

Heading to the Jeep to leave our new place that evening after the long days labor, I looked down at the ground in front of me as I stood up from my position on the stone wall, and saw lying there at my feet a small stone arrowhead left by a Native American perhaps hundreds or even thousands of years ago on top of this knob in the hills that we will now call our new "home". It was at that moment I suppose that I stopped to realize all of the loved ones in my own life who have passed on before me, of aunts and uncles, close friends, my grandparents, and even the beloved family pets that all too many times are taken for granted until they are taken from us. Those few moments took me back to all of the places I had been and spent time wondering what it was like when there were people still there... the ghost towns and old mines, old abandoned homes and shantys.

How many times have all of us failed to stop once in awhile, and remember those of days gone by? Not just those in our own lives, but those we never had the opportunity to know or be a part of. How important are our daily trials and problems really in the greater scheme of things?

As a new friend recently reminded me......

"No worries mate..... just enjoy life"

Thanks Matt. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Ralph

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